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Stack our Shelves
Since we redesigned the Criterion store, you've surely noticed the conspicuous horizontal line of DVD spines at the top of the page. Click the image and you'll be taken to a corresponding "shelf". We’d love to hear if you have any fun ways of grouping Criterion titles into these single-themed shelves. They should be concise and easily characterized in just a few words (e.g., Oscar-winning features, love stories) and should encompass at least forty films, which you need to list in order to be eligible. If you’re the first to send us a great shelf idea that we use, we’ll send you a $25 Criterion gift certificate! E-mail us at shelves@criterion.com. Here are the ones we already have, some by us and some by you!
DIRECTOR-APPROVED EDITIONS
The most important thumbs-up of all.
HORROR AND SCIENCE FICTION
Criterion’s not all old masters and new waves: we’ve also got atomic submarines, Peeping Toms, and naked lunches.
COMEDIES
Mouchette . . . The Passion of Joan of Arc . . . The Virgin Spring . . . are all not on this list. WAR FILMS
Whether fighting the battles themselves or living in occupied zones, the characters in these films are embroiled in some of the defining wars of the twentieth century.
LOVE STORIES
Love may mean never having to say you’re sorry, but it can also mean having to declare your devotion to a wary bisexual street hustler, murdering con artist, or saucy pickpocket.
GREAT ADAPTATIONS
The source material can be as ubiquitous as Dickens or as obscure as Jean Redon, but the films are as good as gold.
FEATURE DEBUT FILMS
You always remember their first time.
OSCAR-WINNING FEATURES
In 1962, Divorce Italian Style beat out Last Year at Marienbad and Through a Glass Darkly for best original screenplay. But the competition’s not always so tough at the Academy Awards: Days of Heaven prevailed over The Wiz for best cinematography in 1978. WOMEN ON THE VERGE
Thanks, Wade Niziolek, for reminding us how many neurotic women there are in the Criterion Collection.
SHORT MOVIES
Justin Rielly came up with forty films that run under ninety minutes each. So at least we know he didn’t spend more than sixty hours watching them.
GROWING PAINS
The strangest thing about Felix Gonzalez’s list of films featuring kids coming of age? Kirk Cameron doesn’t appear in a single one.FAMILY AFFAIRS
With their abundant cries, whispers, and fists in pockets, we wouldn’t necessarily want to be members of the families on Buddy Hedrick’s list, but we sure like watching them.CREATIVE TYPES
Ron Griffith’s list of films about performers, artists, and all-around aesthetes takes us from the Folies Bergère to the dusty outskirts of Los Angeles.CANNES WINNERS
We wish we could have bought Victor Leung a round-trip ticket to the Riviera for compiling this list.INTERNATIONAL NEW WAVES
Surf’s up . . . Gregory Nipper and Peter Rinaldi both came up with the idea for this shelf, featuring films from the French new wave and all the other such undulations around the world.AMERICAN INDEPENDENTS
Jeff Romig’s shelf reminds us that long before the term Sundance entered our vocabulary, trailblazing American filmmakers, from Robert Flaherty to John Cassavetes, had been mounting and financing their films from way outside the studio system.FAITH IN CRISIS
Beggars, priests, knights . . . and Monty Pythoners—the characters in this shelf, compiled by David Jones, are looking for God in all the wrong places.YOUNG DIRECTORS
It’s youth before beauty on Joel Bocko’s list, which features films whose directors were thirty-five years or younger when they were made.ROAD MOVIES
By car, bike, or foot, the characters in Ron Griffith’s shelf hopscotch across great distances and encounter various pitfalls along their milky way to a place stranger than paradise.BANNED, CENSORED, OR CONDEMNED
Lock up your daughters! Today these films may not seem all that crude, but once upon a time they scared many a prude. Thanks to both Felix Eason and Matt Dicker for that stroll down bad memory lane.
COMPARE AND CONTRAST
Ian Wildman takes us on a tour of Criterion releases that provide multiple versions: Why choose between the fifteen-and-a-half hour version of Berlin Alexanderplatz and the ninety-minute 1931 version when you can have both? And maybe, after watching John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln projected onto your flat-screen, you’ll want to listen to its radio dramatization, conveniently downloadable to your iPod. Vive la difference!
MUSIC ON FILM
All singing! All dancing! All . . . zithering? We're glad to let William Hernandez sort this one out.
DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY
From the horse's mouth. Just don't expect one on The Horse's Mouth.THE ORIGINALS
Richard Gere in Breathless! Sharon Stone in Diabolique! Rebecca De Mornay in And God Created Woman…? Yeah, thanks, Cameron Tripp—we'll also stick with the originals.POST–WORLD WAR II CINEMA
Drunken angels, fallen idols, and country priests trying to make their way through a postwar, pre-waves cinema. Thanks to Rosen Rachev."PRIME" CRITERIONS
We're not sure if this is the best way to go about collecting Criterions, but Jesse Bordwin believes these are the "prime" candidates for your shelf. Prime spine numbers, that is.SELF-DIRECTED PERFORMANCES
You don't have to be an Olivier to pull off starring in your own film. Just check out Benjamin Christensen's, uh, devilish cameo in Häxan and call us in the morning. Thanks to Victor Leung.UNFORGETTABLE ENDINGS
That 400 Blows freeze frame. That Fists in the Pocket freak-out. That Seventh Seal dance of death. Still not convinced? Take it up with Francisco Lo.URBAN LANDSCAPES
Cities are often as much characters as the people who inhabit them, says Noah Miller—from the architecture of Barcelona to the shadowy alleys of Vienna.