The Criterion Collection
Essays
Apr 23, 2013 — Who is Pierre Etaix and where has he been all your life? This is the story of a filmmaker who was vanished, banished, skipped over. It’s as if one of those invisible cubicles mimes are always getting themselves shut in...
Short Takes
Apr 8, 2013 — Photo by Maureen Gosling The great American documentarian Les Blank died yesterday at age seventy-seven. A crafter of intimate, idiosyncratic nonfiction films, Blank made movies for almost fifty years; his topics included traditional American music, food, and, of course, Werner...
Mar 26, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin manages to make a ruthless murderer likable in his brilliant satire of middle-class morality.
Feb 27, 2013 — More than eighty films into his career, Kenji Mizoguchi made this emotionally devastating masterpiece, from a story by Ogai Mori.
Production Notes
Feb 19, 2013 — Photo by Grant Delin, 2012 Today we mourn the loss of Donald Richie, writer, critic, curator, cultural explorer, and my friend since 2001. I met him when he came to New York to record a commentary track for our DVD...
Jan 16, 2013 — Both sparkling and suspenseful, Alfred Hitchcock’s benchmark thriller is the perfect getaway, and it set the scene for much of the master’s later work.
Dec 11, 2012 — Cinema is both an educational tool and a vessel for kinetic, avant-garde expression for filmmaker and activist Godfrey Reggio.
Nov 20, 2012 — For a brief, shining moment, the genteel Japanese studio mutated into a fun house of grim ghouls and slimy aliens.
Essays
Oct 25, 2012 — The following piece by Sunday Bloody Sunday screenwriter Penelope Gilliatt originally appeared as the introduction to the 1971 U.S. publication of the script. A friend of mine who had started scrubbing at fourteen and went on to be a barmaid...
Short Takes
Oct 22, 2012 — Television legend Sonny Fox has been the talk of the town lately. The eighty-seven-year-old, Brooklyn-born Emmy winner—who produced the PBS series featured in our box set The Golden Age of Television—has been making the rounds in the New York area...