The Criterion Collection

It’s the time of year when the movie industry goes panning for gold. With the Academy Awards ceremony this Sunday, we made this week’s selection of free Criterion films on Hulu Oscar Winners. They include a number of best-foreign-language-film award recipients—Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, Ingmar Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly and The Virgin Spring, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, Federico Fellini’s Amarcord and La strada, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, and Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum—as well as a handful of movies awarded in other categories, like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (best cinematography), William Dieterle’s The Devil and Daniel Webster (best musical score), and John Ford’s Stagecoach (best supporting actor for Thomas Mitchell, best musical score).

We’re also presenting the classic British kitchen-sink drama that earned the brilliant Simone Signoret her best actress Oscar: Jack Clayton’s Room at the Top. In it, Signoret plays an aging French thespian living in a British factory town who enters into a destructive relationship with an opportunistic younger cad (Laurence Harvey). Unavailable on DVD or Blu-ray in the U.S., the film can be watched below or at Hulu. And remember that if you sign up for Hulu Plus for just $7.99 a month, you can also see the hundreds of other Criterion films streaming there.