The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 24, 2018 — During a period when studios gave him carte blanche, Josef von Sternberg created a sublime cinematic language that shrugged off one orthodoxy after another.
Jan 19, 2018 — Two marvels of midcentury social commentary now streaming on the Criterion Channel show how progress can be a one-step-forward, two-steps-backward process.
Sep 27, 2016 — This monumental meditation on the Ten Commandments captures the spiritual undercurrents of life in late-Communist Poland.
Oct 14, 2014 — What happens offscreen is as important as what’s on- in John Ford’s subtle, elegiac take on the Wyatt Earp–Doc Holliday story.
Mar 18, 2014 — In addition to technical brilliance and a humanist message, Akira Kurosawa’s adventure features one of the director’s strongest female characters.
Jun 20, 2013 — The prophetic voice of H. G. Wells resonates throughout this singularly ambitious, spectacularly designed vision.
Jan 11, 2011 — His most personal film as well as the final one to deal with the German occupation of France, Jean-Pierre Melville’s thriller showcases human consciousness grappling with mortality.
Mar 13, 2024 — The subject of a revelatory retrospective at last year’s Morelia International Film Festival, this groundbreaking director ushered in Mexican cinema’s golden age with vibrant explorations of the nation’s folk traditions and revolutionary past.
Jan 30, 2024 — A kaleidoscopic work of literary adaptation, Dee Rees’s fourth feature film is anchored in a powerful fraternal bond between two men from opposite sides of the color line.
Aug 22, 2023 — In 1962, the young Bo Widerberg threw a grenade into the complacent waters of Swedish cinema. It came in the form of four articles in the evening newspaper Expressen—followed by a book version titled Vision in Swedish Film—in which Widerberg...