The Criterion Collection
Aug 18, 2014 — The director explains the inspiration for his provocative erotic comedy, and how he dove into it even before finishing his previous movie.
Feb 18, 2014 — The immediacy of an ongoing war electrifies Alfred Hitchcock’s suspenseful second Hollywood feature.
Essays
Nov 12, 2013 — Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig create a luminous, romantic portrait of a young woman looking for fulfillment in New York City.
Sep 10, 2013 — Martin Ritt’s 1965 movie of John le Carré’s first great novel (and first best seller), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, declares “a plague on all your houses” to capitalists, Communists, and ruthless intelligence operatives. It’s one espionage...
Apr 10, 2013 — Teinosuke Kinugasa’s landmark color film is a visual feast that has finally been vibrantly restored.
Feb 12, 2013 — The Dardenne brothers return to the streets of Seraing for a typically humane and suspenseful story of personal redemption.
Oct 24, 2011 — “For a long time I stayed away from the Acropolis,” says the narrator of Don DeLillo’s novel The Names. “It daunted me, that somber rock. I preferred to wander in the modern city, imperfect, blaring. The weight and moment of...
Nov 26, 2010 — Early in Peter Bogdanovich’s The Last Picture Show, as the wind from the Texas plains whips the small town of Anarene, the high-school senior Sonny Crawford (Timothy Bottoms) halts his recalcitrant pickup truck—Hank Williams is warbling “Why Don’t You Love...
Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...
Essays
Apr 21, 2009 — “Just takes a few months to get to be a hundred. If you’re in the right place at the right time.” I first saw Henri-Georges Clouzot’s masterpiece The Wages of Fear when the restored version was released in the U.S.,...