274 Results
Form and Function: On the Object Lessons of Summer Hours
Separated from the domestic spaces they once inhabited, two glass vases and a mahogany desk settle into a caged museum life in Olivier Assayas’s deeply felt family portrait.
Party Time in Fellini Land
In La dolce vita, an upbeat tune by Nino Rota turns a dour party into a feast of ecstatic movement.
Alberto Sordi: Italian Storyteller
In celebration of his hundredth birthday, we look back on the legacy of the extraordinarily prolific icon of Italian cinema, whose unmatched rapport with audiences stretched across a six-decade career.
Turn the Gaze Around
A racist, traditionally desexualized archetype from classic Hollywood gets queered and eroticized in Cheryl Dunye’s indie landmark The Watermelon Woman, now playing on the Criterion Channel.
Mother Lode: Chantal Akerman’s Maternal Portraiture
The legendary Belgian-born filmmaker sought to break free from the strictures and conventions of cinematic portraiture, a career-long project that brought her relationship with her mother into focus.
Stepping Out: On Watching Women Walk
A pedestrian activity becomes a radical vision in Elevator to the Gallows, La notte, Vagabond, and other films that follow their female stars on foot.
Remembering Harvey Milk on His Ninetieth Birthday
The director of The Times of Harvey Milk pays tribute to one of LGBTQ history’s most beloved trailblazers and looks back on the making of the Oscar-winning documentary portrait.
The Memory Lane That Runs Through A Kid for Two Farthings
Now playing on the Criterion Channel, this underappreciated gem by British master Carol Reed captures the lively, antic spirit of a bustling section of London’s East End.
The Woman Who Invented the Hollywood Screenwriter
The highest-paid writer in Hollywood at a time when women were at the forefront of shaping the industry, Oscar winner Frances Marion created some of the most unforgettable stories in 1920s and ’30s American cinema.
The Sweet Taste of Queer Victory in The Times of Harvey Milk
The director of Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project and Spaceship Earth reflects on the power of seeing a moment of pure joy—the defeat of California’s homophobic Proposition 6 in 1978—in Rob Epstein’s classic portrait of Harvey Milk.
Credit Where It’s Due: The Father of the Title Sequence
To celebrate the centenary of Saul Bass, we spoke with six contemporary title designers about highlights from his legendary four-decade filmography.
Jean Arthur, the Nonconformist
A down-to-earth goddess of screwball, this Hollywood legend exuded a disarming mix of toughness and vulnerability, and made her mark as one of the most fiercely independent stars of her era.
Only the Lonely: Maren Ade’s Squirm-Inducing Debut Feature
The director of Toni Erdmann burst onto the international festival circuit in 2003 with a piercing, unsettlingly funny look at the life of an idealistic schoolteacher.
Defending Your Life: Philip Baker Hall in Secret Honor
A few dozen versions of Richard Nixon wrestle for control in Robert Altman’s portrait of the disgraced president, fueled by a lead performance of pure, unloosed spleen.
From Elvis in Taipei
The King of Rock and Roll’s tender ballad “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” becomes a central motif in the Taiwanese epic A Brighter Summer Day, bringing to the surface unresolved feelings about love, national identity, and lost innocence.
Feast Your Eyes: A Tour of the Sartorial ’70s
From the outré to the elegant, the looks on display in 1970s American cinema capture a decade of disorienting social transformation.
Who’s That Man? Mifune at 100
An actor of extraordinary physical presence and kinetic energy, Toshiro Mifune was the most widely recognized and transformative superstar in postwar Japanese cinema.
Manic Mahler
British cinema’s mad genius Ken Russell dispenses with history, chronology, genre, and taste in this wild reimagining of the great composer’s life.
Rita Hayworth’s Artful Indecency
Behind her carefully crafted bombshell persona, the great Hollywood actor found ingenious ways of signaling how aware she was of the artifice of her own image.
Les Blank Lets the Good Times Roll
The director of Beasts of the Southern Wild and Wendy finds inspiration in the 1973 documentary Dry Wood, one of his first cinematic encounters with his adopted home of Louisiana.
Five Shots of Tarkovsky
Michael Almereyda, Geoff Dyer, Shirin Neshat, Peter Strickland, and Colm Tóibín dive deep into moments from the Russian master’s work that continue to haunt them.
Quincy Goes to Hollywood
During a fertile period in American film history, Grammy-winning icon Quincy Jones used the cinematic medium as a platform for his wide-ranging musical ambitions.
Black Cinema at Its Birth
The earliest decades of African American filmmaking, celebrated in a monumental collection of “race films” now playing on the Criterion Channel, were fueled by an urgent need for self-representation.
A Half-Century of Friendship with Finnish Renaissance Man Jörn Donner
The prolific writer and filmmaker passed earlier this year, leaving behind an enduring legacy that has shaped Finland’s cultural scene.