The Criterion Collection

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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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  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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  Night and the City

  Jules Dassin
  1950 • 95 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
  Spine: #274  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray

  Two-bit hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) longs for “a life of ease and plenty.” Trailed by an inglorious history of go-nowhere schemes, he tries to hatch a lucrative plan with a famous wrestler.

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  The Friends of Eddie Coyle

  Peter Yates
  1973 • 102 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
  Spine: #475  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray

  In one of the best performances of his legendary career, Robert Mitchum plays small-time gunrunner Eddie “Fingers” Coyle in an adaptation by Peter Yates of George V. Higgins’s acclaimed novel The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

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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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  Insomnia

  Erik Skjoldbjærg
  1997 • 97 minutes • 1.85:1 • Norway
  Spine: #47  Editions: Dual Format Blu-ray/DVD, DVD, iTunes

  The success of Erik Skjoldbjærg’s chilling procedural anticipated the international hunger for Scandinavian noirs and serial- killer fictions, and the film features one of Skarsgård’s greatest performances.

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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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  The Naked Kiss

  Samuel Fuller
  1964 • 90 minutes • 1.75:1 • United States
  Spine: #18  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, iTunes

  The setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute (a crackerjack Constance Towers) relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit in with mainstream society.

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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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  Homicide

  David Mamet
  1991 • 101 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
  Spine: #486  Edition: DVD

  In this nightmarish urban odyssey, inner-city police detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna), is following the murder of an elderly Jewish candy-shop owner, which leads him down a path of obscure encounters and clues, as well as a profound reckoning with his own self and identity.

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  The Hit

  Stephen Frears
  1984 • 98 minutes • 1.77:1 • United Kingdom
  Spine: #469  Edition: DVD

  Terence Stamp is Willie, a gangster’s henchman turned “supergrass” (informer) trying to live in peaceful hiding in a Spanish village. Sun-dappled bliss turns to nerve-racking suspense, however, when two hit men—played by John Hurt and Tim Roth—come a-calling to bring Willie back for execution.

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  The Third Man

  Carol Reed
  1949 • 104 minutes • 1.33:1 • United Kingdom
  Spine: #64  Editions: DVD, Blu-Ray, Collector’s Sets

  Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, black-market opportunist Harry Lime—and thus begins this legendary tale of love, deception, and murder.

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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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  The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

  John Cassavetes
  1976 • 135 minutes • 1.85:1 • United States
  Spine: #254  Editions: DVD, Collector’s Sets, iTunes

  John Cassavetes engages with film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays a gentleman’s club owner, Cosmo Vitelli, desperately committed to maintaining a facade of suave gentility despite the seediness of his environment.

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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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  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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  Blast of Silence

  Allen Baron
  1961 • 77 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
  Spine: #428  Edition: DVD

  Swift, brutal, and black-hearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir Blast of Silence is a sensational surprise, a low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime.

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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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  Brute Force

  Jules Dassin
  1947 • 98 minutes • 1.33:1 • United States
  Spine: #383  Editions: DVD, iTunes

  As hard-hitting as its title, Brute Force was the first of Jules Dassin’s forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well, starring Burt Lancaster.

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