The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 23, 2004 — With his drama about a Sicilian bandit, Francesco Rosi developed the style and method that would make him, during the sixties and seventies, the greatest political filmmaker of his time.
Apr 28, 2003 — François Truffaut’s short Antoine Doinel film exposes an entire universe of male adolescent experience.
Essays
Jun 4, 2001 — Mario Monicelli’s caper comedy is that genuine rarity in popular culture: a satire that not only helped kill off one movie genre, but started a whole new subgenre in the process.
Essays
Apr 23, 2001 — In 1955, Jules Dassin, an American director in exile in Paris, made this flat-out perfect piece of cinema. The film came as a redemption for Dassin: a one-time promising young director cranking out B-movies under an MGM contract ("They were...
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Agnes Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, the first fully-achieved feature by the woman who would become the premiere female director of her generation, dazzled when it opened, and looks even more timely today in its tackling of the fashionable...
Essays
Jun 10, 1996 — Ever since Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction created a sensation at [this year’s] Cannes Film Festival, where it won top honors (the Palme d’Or), it has been swathed in the wildest hyperbole. In fact, it has sparked an excitement bound to...
Nov 19, 1992 — In Hieronymous Karl Friedrich, Baron von Munchausen, the greatest liar in history outside of politics, director Terry Gilliam has found perhaps his closest fictional counterpart.
Essays
Nov 30, 1991 — Starring Jack Nicholson and Candice Bergen, Mike Nichols’s provocative drama is about sex without relationships and eroticism.
On the Channel
Aug 3, 2017 — In honor of one of the great leading ladies of French cinema, who passed away earlier this week, the Criterion Channel features ten of her most memorable performances.
Short Takes
Nov 14, 2016 — From the delicate natural lighting in Jacques Demy’s Lola to the breathtaking widescreen Technicolor in Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou, the late cinematographer Raoul Coutard’s most indelible images remain hallmarks of modern French cinema. In his memory, we’ve gathered a...