The Most Beautiful Day

Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...

Jul 21, 2008 — Carl Theodor Dreyer’s elliptical and dreamlike vampire film defies definitive shots at interpretation.

Nov 26, 2018 — The legendary filmmaker possessed the greatest speaking voice in American cinema, and The Magnificent Ambersons represents the summit of his work as a vocal actor.

Nov 3, 2025 — Beginning on November 24, the Criterion Channel will exclusively premiere the long-awaited television series from visionary director Wong Kar Wai.

Apr 19, 2004 — “Floating weeds, drifting down the leisurely river of our lives,” has long been a favored metaphor in Japanese prose and poetry. This plant, the ukigusa (duckweed in English), floating aimlessly, carried by stronger currents, is seen as emblematic of our...

Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.

Apr 17, 2013 — Four of the great Japanese director’s lesser-known, early films show the coming into being of a political artist.

Sep 24, 2017 — For the final issue in print of the Village Voice, Bilge Ebiri talks with Jonas Mekas, “the 94-year-old filmmaker, artist, critic, poet, photographer, cinema owner, and all-around underground impresario who transformed film criticism, filmmaking, and exhibition throughout the 1960s and...

Dec 10, 2019 — Rock music, as director Wim Wenders once joked in an interview, offered to him and other Germans of his generation the “only alternative to Beethoven.” There is likely as much truth as hyper­­bole in the statement; considering the role that...

Aug 14, 2007 — When I found out last year that we’d be working on Days of Heaven, I got goose bumps. It’s always been one of my favorite films, and I had wished it could be in the Criterion Collection ever since I...