The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 20, 2015 — Here he is: the real, unreal Guy Maddin, in his phantasmagorical, polymathic stew of sex, memory, and dreams.
Jan 13, 2015 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s characters play an endlessly layered game of dress-up in this tale of sadomasochistic love.
Features
Dec 28, 2014 — In person, Sam was a blunt-nosed nonconformist, small of stature but forever leading with his Cuban cigar.
Sneak Peeks
Dec 24, 2014 — Keisuke Kinoshita’s poignant Morning for the Osone Family looks at grief over World War II from the perspective of one Japanese family. Shot immediately following the country’s surrender, when directors like Kinoshita were no longer under the thumb of wartime...
Dec 11, 2014 — The opening installment of Terry Gilliam’s “Trilogy of Imagination” reminds us we’d be better off if we paid more attention to the kid’s-eye view of things.
Short Takes
Dec 5, 2014 — Earlier this week, we had a party for the release of our new book, Criterion Designs, at the Society of Illustrators in New York. Our friend the filmmaker :: kogonada brought the following video, in which Criterion artwork comes to...
Nov 25, 2014 — Features Director Michelangelo Antonioni made these famous remarks at the press conference following the May 1960 Cannes Film Festival premiere of L’avventura. They appear here in a translation published in the spring 1962 issue of the journal Film Culture. Today...
Essays
Nov 25, 2014 — More than just observational, Les Blank’s sensual documentaries are personal and participatory celebrations of American culture.
Sneak Peeks
Nov 24, 2014 — There are few greater admirers of the late documentarian Les Blank than the legendary German filmmaker Werner Herzog. (The two were already close when Blank filmed the making of Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo for Burden of Dreams.) So we knew we wanted...
With its unbridled frontier violence, themes of civilization versus savagery, and iconographic cowboy figure, the western is the most beloved and recognizable of American cinematic genres.