The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 29, 2011 — Elephant Boy: Child’s Play It’s hard to imagine a movie role more perfectly suited to the actor playing it than Toomai in Elephant Boy (1937), the part that made Selar Shaik—known as Sabu—one of the least likely superstars in Western...
Essays
Jun 14, 2011 — The dance along the artery The circulation of the lymph Are figured in the drift of stars —T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets The year is 1954: a fabulous bit of film history is about to unfurl. Grips are...
Nov 28, 2010 — “What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films.” So declared the then twenty-nine-year-old beatnik Method actor Dennis Hopper in an unpublished 1965 manifesto. “The whole damn country’s one big real place to utilize...
Essays
Nov 22, 2009 — “The most concrete emblem of every economic cycle is the dump,” writes Naples native and best-selling Italian muckraker Roberto Saviano somewhere near the conclusion of his extraordinary 2006 “nonfiction novel” Gomorrah, a seethingly cogent and literarily constructed indictment of the...
Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.
Oct 16, 2006 — Screenwriter Carlos Cuarón delves into the character played by Luis De Icaza.
Essays
Sep 2, 1993 — Capturing for posterity the portrayal that brought Paul Robeson fame, this film was a turning point—the culmination of his early career and a groundbreaking showcase for the work of a black leading man.
The Daily
Aug 31, 2026 — The festival’s showcase of nineteen new restorations spans more than half a century of cinema history.
Nov 13, 2025 — The director of Rat Trap and Monologue was an uncompromising artist who helped establish the Indian state of Kerala as a hub of bold political filmmaking.
Nov 16, 2022 — After glimpsing his great-great-grandfather on-screen, a writer searches for the history of a landmark silent film.