The Criterion Collection
Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.
Essays
Jun 25, 2013 — How Claude Lanzmann made a thoughtful film about the unthinkable and unfilmable.
Features
May 26, 2011 — Last month, a new art-house theater opened here in Austin, the Violet Crown Cinema. (Our city has several pet names, and one of them is the City of the Violet Crown. Why it’s called that has been completely lost to...
Nov 16, 2010 — The Night of the Hunter (1955)—the first film directed by Charles Laughton and also, sadly, the last—is among the greatest horror movies ever made, and perhaps, of that select company, the most irreducibly American in spirit. It’s about those venerable...
Oct 15, 2009 — Our favorite Manitoban, Guy Maddin, cheerfully grim chronicler of storybook psychosexuality and charmingly modest self-mythologizer, is in Paris now for a special event. Though just fifty-three and very much still working, the filmmaker is the subject of a complete career...
Apr 23, 2009 — This interview, conducted by Michael Henry, first appeared in the May 1978 issue of Positif.
Jun 13, 2005 — Ernst Lubitsch was a big-city director. The historical dramas that he made in Germany in the late 1910s and early 1920s were known around the world for their distinctively urbane approach, focusing on the private lives of public people. This...
May 26, 2003 — Transcription of a speech given by long-time Derek Jarman collaborator and friend, actress Tilda Swinton
Sep 19, 2012 — Marcel Carné’s tale of love and devilry in medieval France was a sensation during the German occupation.
Dec 9, 2025 — In one of cinema’s greatest love stories, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger use the mercurial beauty of Scotland’s Inner Hebrides to evoke the unruly passions of an indelible heroine.