Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

Congratulations to yesterday’s winner, Rotem! Rotem’s favorite use of music or sound in a Kurosawa film is:

In Ikiru, after his visit to the doctor where Kanji is notified about his situation, and that he has only a few months to live, we follow him in the next scene walking in the street. Instead of adding a sad tune to the scene, or introducing us to his thoughts via voice-over, all we get is silence: we hear nothing, not the people walking around him, not the cars, not the birds—absolutely total silence. But after a few seconds, the sounds burst back in: a loud sound of cars and people all mixed together is suddenly introduced to us—because they are now a threat on Kanji, who crossed the street while there is danger around him—a danger which he didn’t notice because he was overwhelmed by the doctor’s diagnosis he got moments ago. This is a brilliant use of sound, or un-use of it: In the most difficult moment of a man, what can words say? What meaning does music have? All we are left with is the nothingness of the acceptance of the upcoming death.

We also liked Doug Bray’s description of this moment in The Hidden Fortress:

Kurosawa’s use of the same song twice in The Hidden Fortress, first as a lighthearted celebration at the fire festival, then as a eulogy the princess sings awaiting death; she sings the whole song with not one cut or movement. Using the same song to express a moment of happiness and one of utter despair, brilliant.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Create an anagram using the title of a favorite Kurosawa film, or an actor or character’s name.

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a Criterion or Janus T-shirt).

Categories: Contests

Congratulations to Friday’s winner, Dan! Dan’s caption for this screenshot from Throne of Blood was:

The Emperor initially resisted the switch from plastic bags to cloth.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

What’s your favorite use of music or sound in a Kurosawa film?

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a Rashomon DVD).

Categories: Contests

Forty-seven years after Anna Karina communed with The Passion of Joan of Arc’s Maria Falconetti in Vivre sa vie, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Saint Joan continues to inspire artists. According to a Pitchfork Media report, Will Gregory and Adrian Utley, members of the bands Goldfrapp and Portishead, are collaborating on a new score for the silent, spare 1922 masterpiece. The full-length piece—which will feature electric guitar, horns, percussion, keyboard, and members of the London-based Monteverdi Choir—will premiere May 7 in the United Kingdom, at Colston Hall in Bristol.

The Passion of Joan of Arc

Carl Th. Dreyer

1928

110 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Categories: News

Starting today and running through Sunday, March 14, London’s Tate Modern investigates the relationship between photography and the moving image in a fascinating series entitled PhotoFilm, showcasing films that make the still photograph central to their narrative or aesthetic. In six thematic programs (with titles like The Dancing Photo on Film, Recall and Memory, and The Photo Novel), the museum will feature works by such Criterion filmmakers as Chris Marker, Nagisa Oshima, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda, and Sergei Eisenstein, as well as Hollis Frampton, Jean Eustache, and many more. The Tate has also planned a special sidebar symposium connecting the subject of photo films to new digital media, featuring luminaries in the film studies field, Raymond Bellour, Ian Christie, and Laura Mulvey among them.

La Jetée

Chris Marker

1962

28 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Categories: News

Congratulations to yesterday’s winners, Joe and Michael! Joe’s Hollywood-style tagline for Ikiru was:

This summer: Death is only the beginning.

And Michael’s, for Rashomon, was:

He said. She said. He said. He said.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Write a caption for the following image.

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite on Monday. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a Throne of Blood DVD).

Categories: Contests

Congratulations to yesterday’s winner, Jason Venzor! Jason wrote:

I wish that I could say I was most like Kyūzō—the consummate swordsman and samurai whose last action would be to cast away the arms he held so closely during life, but the real answer for me is Katsushirō.
Like Katsushirō, I am in awe of Kyūzō, but I can only aspire to be like him. In the meantime I’d fall in love with a farm girl that is dressed like a boy.

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Write a Hollywood-style tagline for your favorite Kurosawa movie.

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite tomorrow. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a Rashomon poster).

Categories: Contests

Our own Eric Skillman, who has crafted the covers for numerous releases over the years (including Red Beard, Yi Yi, The Bad Sleep Well, Berlin Alexanderplatz, the recent Revanche, and so many more), is the subject of a new interview with Light & Shadow, the online graduate review journal of the film studies department at Boston University. In it, Eric lets us in on the way he distills a film to an iconic image, designers he admires and whose work influences him, and his favorite projects at Criterion and elsewhere (on album and book covers). He even shares some of his favorite mock-ups that were ultimately rejected.

As fans of his work may already know, this look behind the scenes isn’t out of the ordinary for Eric, who’s been delighting readers with peeks into his process since 2007 at his blog, Cozy Lummox, and even here in the Current.

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

1980

940 min

Color

1.33:1

Revanche

Götz Spielmann

2008

122 min

Color

1.85:1

Categories: Clippings, On Five

Director Jan Troell, best known for The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972), his evocative chronicles of the struggles of nineteenth-century Swedes to make new lives in America, will be stateside himself this week. Tonight, Troell will be on hand to introduce his latest film, Everlasting Moments, at Berkeley, California’s Pacific Film Archives. Moments, which will come to the Criterion Collection this summer, is a rich, lovingly composed portrait of a troubled marriage at the turn of the twentieth century, and the creative liberation that wife Maria experiences when she discovers photography. Not far from the PFA, Troell is also being honored at the California Film Institute’s San Rafael Film Center, with an eight-film retrospective, titled The Cinema of Jan Troell and running through Saturday. He is introducing several of the films in that series, too.

On the occasion of these fêtes, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Walter Addiego has conducted an interview with Troell, in which the director discusses his career, his preference for shooting with natural light, and an upcoming project.

Categories: News

March is Akira Kurosawa month at Criterion. On the twenty-third, the great Japanese filmmaker would have been one hundred years old. For this centennial celebration, we will be posting trivia questions and other contests all month, and giving away a different prize every weekday.

Today’s prompt:

Which of the seven samurai are you most like? Which would you most like to be like?

Please respond by commenting below, and we’ll choose our favorite at the end of the day. You must leave a valid e-mail address to be eligible for the prize (a $50 gift certificate to criterion.com).

Categories: Contests

The Guardian has begun an exciting new short essay series called The Film That Changed My Life, and the first entry brings together two titans of cinema history. Bernardo Bertolucci writes lovingly of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, whose impact on his career was immeasurable. In his brief but personal take, the Last Emperor director discusses the powerful experience of seeing Renoir’s scathing class study at a young age, as well as the French filmmaker’s admirable embrace of all his own characters, whether noble or not. Bertolucci also reminisces about meeting a quick-witted Renoir at age eighty, and reveals the homage to The Rules of the Game tucked into his 1976 epic Novecento.

The Rules of the Game

Jean Renoir

1939

106 min

Black and White

1.33:1

The Last Emperor

Bernardo Bertolucci

1987

160 min

2.00:1

Categories: Clippings