The Criterion Collection
Jun 17, 2016 — The late 1920s and early 1930s were wonderfully productive years for Jean Renoir and Michel Simon, a simpatico director-actor duo who produced four films together: Tire au flanc (which gave Simon his first starring role), On purge bébé, La chienne,...
Jun 14, 2016 — Alexander Hall’s 1941 film showcased Robert Montgomery’s star power and, with its premise of a death revoked, provided much-needed comic relief to war-worried audiences.
Short Takes
Jun 6, 2016 — For the Paris Review’s site, Dante A. Ciampaglia writes about the midcentury film writing of artist-writer-poet-filmmaker and all-around New York legend Jonas Mekas. For more than half a century, Mekas, now ninety-three, has been changing the landscape of experimental film,...
Sneak Peeks
Apr 14, 2016 — Before he became one of cinema’s greatest directors, Howard Hawks was a pilot for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War I. And in the years following the war, Hawks took advantage of his flying expertise and the public’s...
Essays
Mar 17, 2016 — Decades later, Ingmar Bergman’s self-reflexive masterpiece remains a provocative enigma worthy of close investigation.
Mar 11, 2016 — Valley of Love (2015), dir. Guillaume Nicloux “Filmmaking is a collective assemblage of desires,” said Isabelle Huppert when we sat down to talk on a recent morning. We were speaking about how she picks her roles, and how her own intuition...
Short Takes
Mar 2, 2016 — Over at the Sight & Sound blog, the BFI has just published an insightful and exhaustive article by Albertine Fox about the brilliant career of Anne-Marie Miéville, the Swiss-born multimedia artist and director of several acclaimed features, including: My Dear...
Jan 20, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis (now out on Blu-ray and DVD), the Coen brothers’ latest odyssey into the more desolate corners of Americana, stars Oscar Isaac in the title role, as an ill-fated musician navigating the Greenwich Village folk scene of the...
Jan 19, 2016 — Inside Llewyn Davis takes its protagonist on a Hero’s Journey of characteristically Coen-esque proportions—a voyage at turns serious and comic, and framed by an exquisitely curated selection of folk melodies.
Sneak Peeks
Nov 24, 2015 — Our new release of In Cold Blood, Richard Brooks’s chilling 1967 true-crime masterpiece, features an interview with film critic and jazz historian Gary Giddins, who offers a wonderfully illuminating examination of legendary record producer Quincy Jones’s music for the film....