The Criterion Collection

New Yorkers will have a chance to get back to cinema basics in the week to come, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center offers up a heaping helping of art-house essentials on the big screen. For the series Janus Film Classics, running through April 1, the Walter Reade Theater screens double-feature matinees of some of the greatest titles from the catalog of the legendary film distributor. Scott Foundas, associate program director at the Film Society, tells us that he thinks of the series as a follow-up to the 2006 retrospective celebrating Janus’s fiftieth anniversary, writing, “Even though that series was fairly extensive, the Janus catalog is such a treasure trove of world cinema, there was more than enough material for an encore, mixing some films from the earlier series with ones not shown at that time.” This week’s offerings include double plays from Milos Forman (Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen’s Ball, March 25), Jean Renoir (The Golden Coach and The Rules of the Game, March 28), Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal and Cries and Whispers, March 29), Pietro Germi (Seduced and Abandoned [pictured] and Divorce Italian Style, March 30), and Sergei Eisenstein (Ivan the Terrible, parts one and two, March 31).

U.S. moviegoers in search of classics from the Criterion Collection on the big screen need not be in New York this week, however. The AFI Silver in Silver Spring, Maryland, will leave viewers breathless with early Hitchcock when The Lady Vanishes gets an extended run (March 25–31). Delightful deception abounds elsewhere, as well: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob le flambeur gives audiences the slip at Portland’s Northwest Film Center (March 25), Stanley Donen’s Charade leaves them guessing at the Trylon in Minneapolis (March 25–27), and Preston Sturges’s The Lady Eve plays the game at the Landmark Loew’s Jersey Theatre in Jersey City (March 25). The Oklahoma City Museum of Art has Godard’s Breathless (March 25 and 26) and Tati’s Playtime (March 27). There’s both Ernst Lubitsch (One Hour with You, March 26) and Yasujiro Ozu (Good Morning and I Was Born, But . . . , March 30) at New York’s Anthology Film Archives. In the same city, Luis Buñuel’s brilliant swan song, That Obscure Object of Desire, will leave audiences at the Museum of the Moving Image with a lot to discuss (March 26). And just a bridge away, there’s pulp paradise at Brooklyn’s BAMCinematek with Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (March 28). Two devastatingly great films from the sixties are in the spotlight at George Eastman House’s Dryden Theater in Rochester, New York: Pasolini’s Mamma Roma (March 26 and 27) and Masahiro Shinoda’s Double Suicide (March 30). Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon sends Beantowners off into the stratosphere at Boston’s ArtsEmerson theater (March 26). Viewers at the Amherst Cinema in Massachusetts can join Fellini’s dance with screenings of 8½ (March 27 and 30). Nicholas Ray proves he’s Bigger Than Life at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin (March 27). Henri-Georges Clouzot leaves viewers damp with fear at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago with Diabolique (March 29). And Jean Renoir schools everyone with The Rules of the Game at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (March 30 and 31).

Catch films from the best contemporary directors across the country, as well. Audiences at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco can get up close and personal with Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s phenomenal fiction-doc hybrid Close-up (March 25). BAMCinematek concludes its Catherine Deneuve retrospective with Arnaud Desplechin’s wonderfully overstuffed A Christmas Tale on March 31 (Truffaut’s The Last Metro also shows, on March 26). There’s love for Jim Jarmusch to go around; the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley has Down by Law (March 26), and the Loft Cinema in Tucson Stranger Than Paradise (March 27 and 29). Terrence Malick’s glorious Days of Heaven blooms in Bloomington, at the Indiana University Cinema (March 27). Claire Denis’ gripping White Material plays for four days at the Ann Arbor Michigan Theater (March 28–31). The Denver Film Society pays tribute to David Fincher, including his poignant romantic fantasy The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (March 29). Nicholas Roeg’s Walkabout treks to the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles (March 30), and just up the street, there’s an unlikely double feature, Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Véronique and De Palma’s Sisters, at Cinefamily (March 31), programmed by sisters Kate and Laura Mulleavy of the fashion label Rodarte.

Turning our sights across the Atlantic: René Clair’s witty comedy classic À nous la liberté marches into the Forum des images in Paris (March 25); London’s BFI Southbank keeps on tipping its hat to Truffaut (The Last Metro, March 25) and Roeg (Insignificance, March 25; Walkabout, March 26 and 29); and Vienna’s Austrian Film Museum continues to go mad for Melville with Le deuxième souffle (March 25), Le samouraï (March 26), and Godard’s Breathless (March 27), in which Melville makes a famous cameo. The Glasgow Film Theatre has quite an assortment, with Rob Reiner’s mockumentary that started it all, This Is Spinal Tap (March 25), Walkabout (March 25–27), and Diabolique (March 28–30), which also plays at London’s Ciné Lumière (March 26). Brussels’s Belgian Cinematek gets in gear for Monte Hellman’s existential road racer Two-Lane Blacktop (March 25, 29, and 31). The Cinémathèque française in Paris kicks of a Kubrick retrospective, which will include Paths of Glory on March 28. Lausanne’s Swiss Cinematheque says hello to Hannibal Lecter with a screening of The Silence of the Lambs (March 29). And finally, the Melbourne Cinematheque puts its viewers on ice with Sergei Eisenstein’s battle masterpiece Alexander Nevsky (March 30).