Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

One of the finest British films ever made, this benchmark of “kitchen-sink realism” follows the self-defeating professional and romantic pursuits of a miner turned rugby player eking out an existence in drab Yorkshire, played by an astonishing Richard Harris.

Hiroshi Teshigahara found his spiritual partner in novelist and screenwriter Kobo Abe, with whom he collaborated on these Kafkaesque portraits of identities in peril, films that captivated mainstream audiences while also touching the edges of the Japanese avant-garde.

Set in the impoverished back alleys of Victorian London, The Threepenny Opera follows underworld antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) as he tries to woo Polly Peachum and elude the authorities. Set to Kurt Weill’s irresistible score, this film remains a benchmark of early sound cinema.

Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood reimagines Macbeth in feudal Japan. Starring Kurosawa’s longtime collaborator Toshiro Mifune and the legendary Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife, the film tells of a valiant warrior’s savage rise to power and his ignominious fall.

In Terry Gilliam’s fantastic voyage through time and space, a young boy escapes his gadget-obsessed parents to join a band of time-traveling dwarves.

Volker Schlöndorff’s visionary, surreal adaptation of Nobel laureate Günter Grass’s acclaimed novel depicts a boy caught in a baffling state of perpetual childhood while the chaotic world marches onward to the madness and folly of World War II.

In Seijun Suzuki’s free-jazz gangster film, reformed killer “Phoenix” Tetsu drifts around Japan, awaiting his own execution, until he’s called back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang.

Utilizing glorious widescreen cinematography, Kon Ichikawa examines the beauty and rich drama on display at the 1964 Summer Games in Tokyo. A spectacle of magnificent proportions, Tokyo Olympiad ranks among the greatest documents of sport ever committed to film.

One of cinema’s greatest masterpieces, Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, postwar Tokyo.

Having pulled off the heist of a lifetime, Max looks forward to spending his remaining days relaxing with his beautiful young girlfriend. But when Max’s hapless partner lets word of the loot slip to loose-lipped, two-timing Josy (Jeanne Moreau), Max is reluctantly drawn back into the underworld.

Jean-Luc Godard and Jean-Pierre Gorin’s free-ranging assault on consumer capitalism and the establishment left tells the story of a wildcat strike at a sausage factory as witnessed by an American reporter (Jane Fonda) and her has-been New Wave film director husband (Yves Montand).

Steven Soderbergh employs an innovative, color-coded cinematic treatment to distinguish the interwoven stories of a newly appointed drug czar and his family, a West Coast kingpin’s wife, a key informant, and cops on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border.

For his final outing, Monsieur Hulot is employed as an auto company’s director of design, and accompanies his new vehicle (a camper tricked out with absurd gadgetry) to an auto show in Amsterdam. Naturally, the road is paved with modern-age mishaps in Jacques Tati’s Trafic.

In a Paris prison cell, five inmates use every ounce of their tenacity and ingenuity in an elaborate attempt to tunnel to freedom. Based on the novel by José Giovanni, Jacques Becker’s Le trou (The Hole) balances lyrical humanism with a tense, unshakable air of imminent danger.

When thief Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) meets his true love in pickpocket Lily (Miriam Hopkins), they embark on a scam to rob lovely perfume company executive Mariette Colet (Kay Francis). Legendary director Ernst Lubitsch’s masterful touch is in full flower in Trouble in Paradise.

A lifetime officer and an educated scion of an old military family battle each other to win the loyalties of a peacetime Scottish battalion. Ronald Neame’s portrayal of the rigid hierarchy of military life also examines the institutional contradictions and class divisions of English society.

One of Japan’s most popular and enduring classics, Keisuke Kinoshita’s Twenty-Four Eyes is an elegant, emotional chronicle of a teacher’s unwavering commitment to her students, her profession, and her sense of morality.

A young Jewish boy living in Nazi-occupied Paris is sent by his parents to the countryside to live with an elderly Catholic couple until France’s liberation. Forced to hide his identity, the eight-year-old, Claude, bonds with the irascible, staunchly anti-Semitic Grampa (Michel Simon).

Drag racing east from L.A. in a souped-up ’55 Chevy are the wayward Driver and Mechanic, accompanied by a tagalong Girl. Monte Hellman’s stripped-down look at American male obsession is one of the artistic high points of 1970s cinema, and possibly the greatest road movie ever.

Derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, Ugetsu, a ghost story like no other, is surely the Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi’s supreme achievement and one of the most beautiful films ever made.