The Criterion Collection

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  The Element of Crime

  Lars von Trier
  1984 • 104 minutes • 1.85:1 • Denmark
  Spine: #80  Edition: DVD

  Lars von Trier’s stunning debut film, influenced equally by Hitchcock and science fiction, is the story of Fisher, an exiled ex-cop who returns to his old beat to catch a serial killer with a taste for young girls.

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  Europa

  Lars von Trier
  1991 • 107 minutes • 2.35:1 • Denmark
  Spine: #454  Edition: DVD

  Lars von Trier’s hypnotic Europa is a fever dream in which American pacifist Leopold Kessler stumbles into a job as a sleeping-car conductor for the Zentropa railways in a Kafkaesque 1945 postwar Frankfurt. Europa is one of the great Danish filmmaker’s weirdest and most wonderful works.

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  Breathless

  Jean-Luc Godard
  1960 • 90 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
  Spine: #408  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.

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  Alphaville

  Jean-Luc Godard
  1965 • 99 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
  Spine: #25  Edition: DVD

  Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60, in Jean-Luc Godard’s irreverent, cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry.

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  Diabolique

  Henri-Georges Clouzot
  1955 • 117 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
  Spine: #35  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray

  Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was Diabolique, a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Véra Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse.

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  Classe tous risques

  Claude Sautet
  1960 • 108 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #434  Edition: DVD

  A character study of a career criminal at the end of his rope, this rugged noir from Claude Sautet is a thrilling highlight of sixties French cinema, starring Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo.

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  Coup de torchon

  Bertrand Tavernier
  1981 • 128 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #106  Edition: DVD

  An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson’s pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier’s Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief turned heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa.

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  Rififi

  Jules Dassin
  1955 • 118 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
  Spine: #115  Editions: Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD, Collector’s Sets

  After making such American noir classics as Brute Force and The Naked City, the blacklisted director Jules Dassin went to Paris and embarked on his masterpiece: a twisting, turning tale of four ex-cons who hatch one last glorious robbery in the City of Light.

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  Le trou

  Jacques Becker
  1960 • 131 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #129  Edition: DVD

  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.

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  Le cercle rouge

  Jean-Pierre Melville
  1970 • 140 minutes • 1.85:1 • France
  Spine: #218  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray

  Alain Delon plays a master thief, fresh out of prison, who crosses paths with a notorious escapee and an alcoholic ex-cop (Yves Montand). The unlikely trio plot a heist, against impossible odds, until a relentless inspector and their own pasts seal their fates.

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  Army of Shadows

  Jean-Pierre Melville
  1969 • 145 minutes • 1.85:1 • France
  Spine: #385  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, Collector’s Sets

  Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.

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  Le doulos

  Jean-Pierre Melville
  1962 • 109 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #447  Edition: DVD

  A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel, just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. Le doulos is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.

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  Le deuxième souffle

  Jean-Pierre Melville
  1966 • 144 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #448  Editions: DVD, iTunes

  With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him.

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  Shoot the Piano Player

  François Truffaut
  1960 • 81 minutes • 2.35:1 • France
  Spine: #315  Editions: DVD, iTunes

  Part thriller, part comedy, part tragedy, Shoot the Piano Player relates the adventures of mild-mannered piano player Charlie (Charles Aznavour) as he stumbles into the criminal underworld and a whirlwind love affair.

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  Elevator to the Gallows

  Louis Malle
  1958 • 92 minutes • 1.66:1 • France
  Spine: #335  Editions: DVD, iTunes

  A touchstone of the careers of both its star and director, Louis Malle’s debut feature, Elevator to the Gallows, starring Jeanne Moreau, is a richly atmospheric thriller of murder and mistaken identity unfolding over one restless Parisian night.

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  Touchez pas au grisbi

  Jacques Becker
  1954 • 96 minutes • 1.33:1 • France
  Spine: #271  Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets

  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.

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  Le samouraï

  Jean-Pierre Melville
  1967 • 105 minutes • 1.85:1 • France
  Spine: #306  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  This elegantly stylized masterpiece of cool is a razor-sharp cocktail of 1940s American gangster cinema and 1960s French pop culture—with a liberal dose of Japanese lone-warrior mythology.

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  High and Low

  Akira Kurosawa
  1963 • 143 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
  Spine: #24  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, Collector’s Sets, iTunes

  Adapting Ed McBain’s detective novel King’s Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.

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  Branded to Kill

  Seijun Suzuki
  1967 • 91 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
  Spine: #38  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired.

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  Tokyo Drifter

  Seijun Suzuki
  1966 • 82 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
  Spine: #39  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang.

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  The Bad Sleep Well

  Akira Kurosawa
  1960 • 150 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
  Spine: #319  Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets

  A young executive hunts down his father’s killer in director Akira Kurosawa’s scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect.

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  Stray Dog

  Akira Kurosawa
  1949 • 122 minutes • 1.33:1 • Japan
  Spine: #233  Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets

  When a pickpocket steals a rookie detective’s gun on a hot, crowded bus, the cop goes undercover in a desperate attempt to right the wrong. Kurosawa’s thrilling noir probes the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind.

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  Vengeance Is Mine

  Shohei Imamura
  1979 • 140 minutes • 1.66:1 • Japan
  Spine: #384  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern.

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  Drunken Angel

  Akira Kurosawa
  1948 • 98 minutes • 1.33:1 • Japan
  Spine: #413  Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets

  In this powerful early noir from the great Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune bursts onto the screen as a volatile, tubercular criminal who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Takashi Shimura’s jaded physician.

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  Youth of the Beast

  Seijun Suzuki
  1963 • 92 minutes • 2.35:1 • Japan
  Spine: #268  Edition: DVD

  When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo’s underworld explodes with violence. Youth of the Beast was a breakthrough for director Seijun Suzuki, introducing the flamboyant colors, hallucinatory images, and striking compositions that would become his trademark.

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