The Criterion Collection
In the late sixties and early seventies, young, innovative, and politically radical directors took up arms against the propriety of West German society and its failing film industry.
Essays
Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...
Mar 11, 2008 — There’s no real rhyme or reason to explain which Criterion films I end up watching. For example, I saw Breathless over the holiday break after Abbey convinced me to give Godard a chance. Then I watched The Seventh Seal in...
Mar 16, 2007 — The first of his films to be shown outside Japan, Ichikawa Kon’s twenty-seventh feature dramatically raised the director’s profile.
Dec 4, 2006 — I had said that I was going to write about growing up with a projector in my attic, and Peter’s writing about home last week brought back some memories. Movies were cool. In the late sixties, my father would bring...
Essays
Feb 23, 2004 — With his drama about a Sicilian bandit, Francesco Rosi developed the style and method that would make him, during the sixties and seventies, the greatest political filmmaker of his time.
Sep 1, 1992 — The evolution of Jason and the Argonauts began in the late 1950s, after the initial success of 20 Million Miles to Earth. Harryhausen and his producer, Charles Schneer, decided to get away from doing “monster-on-the-loose” stories and try something more...
The filmmaker returns to the Criterion Closet, where he praises seventies thrillers like The Parallax View and Straw Dogs, talks about You Can Count on Me and how “no one writes dialogue like Kenneth Lonergan,” and connects Targets to his...
The Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins and his collaborator James Deakins—who discuss filmmaking on their podcast, Team Deakins—share stories about the heyday of punk, childhood memories of watching The Seventh Seal, and commentary about one of the most stunning black-and-white films...
Oct 4, 2023 — In his forty-seventh film, Wiseman explores all that goes into running one of the world’s greatest restaurants.