The Leaves Are Falling

Spring is pleasant enough when and if it decides to stop raining, and summer and winter, whatever their charms, invariably overstay their welcome, but fall… well, what’s not to love about fall? Cable knits and upstate apple picking and haunted hayrides and, of course, the movies: the Technicolor peak foliage of New England in Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, and Todd Haynes’s Sirkian Far from Heaven are sufficient unto themselves to make an argument for autumn as the most cinematically scrumptious of seasons, and we’ve got masterworks by Bergman, Ozu, and other formidable figures for good measure. All of the pleasures of the season, and not so much as a hint of pumpkin spice.