Before the Night

May 16, 2016 — Almost from the moment she made her breakthrough performance in Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City, Anna Magnani became an icon of Italian cinema. Her ferocious presence and multifaceted talent continued to enliven the work of a wide range of directors,...

Nov 18, 2025 — This tale of paranoia and romantic jealousy slyly combines the conventions of popular Mexican filmmaking with the surrealist sensibility that made its director, Luis Buñuel, a legendary figure in his native Spain.

May 21, 2021 — On our minds this week: John Schlesinger, Nathaniel Dorsky and Jerome Hiler, Marguerite Duras, Agnès Varda, and David Cronenberg.

Nov 11, 2018 — Criterion producer Abbey Lustgarten walks us through the structure and features of a monumental new box set celebrating the Swedish master.

Oct 29, 2018 — Supporting roles bring potent flavor to classic Hollywood’s darkest genre. In the first installment of a series, Imogen Sara Smith pays tribute to the queen of character actors: Thelma Ritter.

Sep 8, 2017 — Right on the heels of his report on this years Venice International Critics Week awards comes Variety’s Nick Vivarelli once again with news from the other independently run program, Venice Days. “Colombian new wave producer-director Jhonny Hendrix Hinestroza’s Candelaria, a...

Mar 24, 2014 — Rome is as exquisite as it is suffocating in Paolo Sorrentino’s profound tale of contemporary entropy.

Mar 21, 2011 — Living Room The cinema of Mikio Naruse is one of heartbreak but also one of indomitable poise. Melodrama is the director’s stock-in-trade. His stories are inhabited by people, generally women, imprisoned in their domestic and professional circumstances by the status...

Jul 19, 2010 — “Why do you want to dance?” “Why do you want to live?” A question followed by another question stands at the beating heart of The Red Shoes. It’s an entirely rhetorical exchange, but it underscores the power and the mystery...

Feb 17, 2015 — It was never, of course, Yasujiro Ozu’s intention that An Autumn Afternoon (1962) should be the final film of his thirty-­five­-year career as a writer­-director. Indeed, before he died on his sixtieth birthday, in December 1963, he had made notes...