Before the Fall

Jun 24, 2018 — During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.

Jan 19, 2018 — Two marvels of midcentury social commentary now streaming on the Criterion Channel show how progress can be a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward process.

Sep 18, 2017 — The wide-open vistas of Montana are the backdrop for three interlocking stories about women confronting the disappointments of small-town life.

Aug 8, 2017 — This underappreciated highlight of Michael Curtiz’s filmography grapples with postwar disillusionment and marital strife through the prism of a daylight noir.

Feb 6, 2017 — In the inaugural installment of his new column, archivist Michael Chaiken examines the Nobel Prize–winning icon’s unique artistic process through a collection of ephemera.

Aug 21, 2012 — Andrew Haigh’s boy-meets-boy story reminds us that the biggest pleasures of falling in love come from the little moments of connection.

Dec 16, 2008 — Science-fiction drama, western, love story, metaphysical mystery, and satire of modern America, Nicolas Roeg’s beguiling film established him as a mainstream heir to such 1960s experimentalists as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chris Marker.

Jun 30, 2008 — The novelist Mishima Yukio stepped behind the camera to adapt his own short story, which depicts the act of seppuku as a thing of beauty.

Jul 28, 2026 — Seven dynamite nights with Keaton, Chaplin, Lubitsch, Ford, Murnau, Griffith, and Raoul Walsh.

Jul 1, 2026 — BAM’s thirteen-film series dips into chapters of American history that tend to get overlooked on Fourth of July weekends.