Perfect Crimes

Starting this weekend on the Criterion Channel, you’ll be able to steal some time with one of cinema’s most pulse-pounding subgenres. In the heist movie, even the most perfectly planned crimes run the risk of going awry, putting the mettle of each and every accomplice to the test. For our series The Art of the Heist, we’ve assembled a formidable team of break-in classics from all over the world, including the noirish criminal netherworlds of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing, Nicholas Ray’s They Live by Night, and Takumi Furukawa’s Cruel Gun Story; impossibly cool French procedurals by Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le flambeur and Le cercle rouge) and Jules Dassin (Rififi); and the friskier thrill rides of The Italian Job and Big Deal on Madonna Street. To sneak a peek at all the double crosses, car chases, and treasure troves that the twelve-film program has in store, watch the teaser above. Then race on over to the Channel to crack the vault containing the films themselves.