David Lehman

David Lehman, a contributing editor of the Scholar, is a poet, critic, and the general editor of The Best American Poetry annual anthology and author of the book One Hundred Autobiographies. He currently writes our Talking Pictures column.

Homage to the Uncanny

Dead of Night (1945), a masterpiece of horror

By David Lehman | Thursday February 29, 2024

How Well Do You Know Your Hitchcock?

A multiple-choice test for the maestro’s fans

By David Lehman | Friday January 19, 2024

“Mr. Lucky” Didn’t Know Who He Was

How Cary Grant’s magical film career paralleled a lifelong identity crisis

By David Lehman | Thursday September 28, 2023

Brilliant Carnage

Sam Peckinpah’s slow-motion bullet ballet

By David Lehman | Thursday February 23, 2023

What Hath Gable Got?

“Rhett Butler” romances Claudette Colbert in Frank Capra’s comic masterpiece It Happened One Night

By David Lehman | Monday November 28, 2022

The Allure of the Enigmatic

“Mod” London takes center stage in Michelangelo Antonioni’s mind-blowing Blow-Up

By David Lehman | Thursday August 25, 2022

Famous Last Lines

How many do you know by heart?

By David Lehman | Thursday July 21, 2022

The Last Cigarette

Cinema’s most seductive prop

By David Lehman | Saturday May 14, 2022

The Plot to Kill de Gaulle

Fred Zinnemann’s “clock management” in The Day of the Jackal

By David Lehman | Saturday March 5, 2022

The Prophecy of an Assassination

John Frankenheimer’s prescient 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate

By David Lehman | Saturday January 22, 2022
Black and white "walk" sign

Impromptu

By David Lehman | Tuesday June 11, 2019

A Sonnet Is Ample Space

By David Lehman | Tuesday June 4, 2019

How to Be a Big-League Critic

By David Lehman | Monday June 3, 2019
Close-up, macro shot of a bloody knife
Red mailbox
Old fashioned mailbox that says LETTERS

Read Emily’s Mind

By David Lehman | Tuesday May 7, 2019
A black and white photograph of a subway car

Poetic Metamorphosis

By David Lehman | Tuesday April 30, 2019

The Love Poem in an Unromantic Age

By David Lehman | Tuesday April 23, 2019

Questions and Echoes

By David Lehman | Tuesday April 16, 2019

Why Not?

By David Lehman | Tuesday April 9, 2019

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