The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 29, 2001 — Peter Medak’s stinging satire is unashamedly theatrical, emerging from a fascinating period in English culture when theatre and cinema together were mining a rich vein of flamboyant self-analysis.
Essays
Sep 17, 2001 — Jirí Menzel’s war comedy is an absurdist symphony of self-absorption and impotence.
Aug 20, 2001 — Director Torben Skjødt Jensen discusses the "three aesthetic levels" with which he approaches his documentary portrait.
Essays
Apr 24, 2000 — “Most of Aesop’s fables have many different levels and meanings. There are those who make myths of them by choosing some feature that fits in well with the fable. But for most of the fables this is only the first...
Essays
Nov 8, 1999 — In The Third Man—probably the greatest British thriller of the postwar era—director Carol Reed and screenwriter Graham Greene set a fable of moral corruption in a world of near-Byzantine visual complexity: the streets and ruins of occupied Vienna. It is...
Essays
Nov 23, 1998 — Paul Morrissey’s cult classic has obvious appeal for the lover of Grand Guignol—but it equally addresses the thoughtful.
Essays
May 10, 1993 — Green for Danger is a welcome twist on that most venerable of English concoctions, the drawing-room thriller. In this instance, the drawing room is instead a hospital not far from London, where surgery is conducted under a cascade of German...
Essays
Oct 31, 1988 — This ingenious and entertaining crime thriller marks what its director Stanley Kubrick would like to think of as the real beginning of his career.
Essays
Apr 11, 1988 — Over the years countless films have been made about war, its horrors and its devastations—few, however, have been as moving and heartfelt as René Clément’s.