The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 10, 1986 — Max Ophuls’s masterpiece is a transformation of a conventional subject into an avant-garde adventure, and a spectacular stylistic breakthrough in the utilization of wide screen and color.
May 13, 2009 — It doesn’t really come as a surprise that Chris Marker is a devoted inhabitant of the virtual world Second Life. After all, one could call the playful French filmmaker and multimedia artist’s kitty—and alter ego—Guillaume-en-Egypt a trailblazing avatar (when asked...
Sep 28, 2022 — A high point of early Argentine cinema, Mario Soffici’s 1939 film about the plight of plantation workers is an unflinching examination of exploitation and violence.
Sep 20, 2018 — The sheer strangeness of wealth and class divisions is fodder for screwball hilarity in Gregory La Cava’s Depression-era masterpiece.
May 1, 2015 — In his first feature, Jean-Pierre Melville found subtly radical ways to adapt Vercors's underground French novel about quiet resistance against the German occupation.
Sneak Peeks
Apr 28, 2015 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le silence de la mer is undoubtedly one of the most assured film debuts of all time; an adaptation of an underground novel by Jean Bruller, written (under the pseudonym Vercors) during the Nazi occupation of France, the...
Essays
Jan 31, 2005 — With this early work, Bernardo Bertolucci confidently demonstrated the instinctive lyricism and sensuality that in his maturity would become his very own signature.
Essays
Sep 30, 1992 — The unprecedented popularity of this gender-bending sex farce inspired two sequels, a hit Broadway musical, and at least one transvestite nightclub.
Jun 18, 2025 — Throughout a small but indelible body of work that includes the 1984 neorealist masterpiece Bless Their Little Hearts, the veteran filmmaker has explored how everyday life is lived within structures of power.