The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?
Nov 18, 2013 — When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with Rashomon three years earlier, and Kenji Mizoguchi was moving to the forefront of the international festival...
Essays
Nov 12, 2013 — Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig create a luminous, romantic portrait of a young woman looking for fulfillment in New York City.
Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.
Oct 25, 2013 — Did You See This?• Stop, thief! • Dave Kehr goes to MoMA • Get to know your Tom Allen • Claire Denis’s visionary right-hand woman • Celebrating pre-Code Lubitsch • Listening to New York in the twenties • Warmest Color...
Sneak Peeks
Oct 24, 2013 — In 2004, actors Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands sat down in Rowlands’s home to discuss their landmark collaboration on John Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence, in a conversation for Criterion. In the seventeen-minute dialogue, Falk (who died in 2011)...
Essays
Oct 22, 2013 — The disc of Faces that you now hold is the most beautiful copy possible of a film that was meant to look lousy. Digital technology painstakingly reproduces John Cassavetes’s lighting, which allowed his actors to move about freely, and so...
Oct 21, 2013 — As a film star, John Cassavetes embodied the kinetic, wild-eyed, insanely grinning villain. He seemed born to the role, with his volatile energy and dynamic outbursts, luminous yet curiously deadened eyes, wide-gaping mouth (David Thomson has likened it to a...
Oct 7, 2013 — René Clair, Fredric March, and Veronica Lake cast sensational spells in this screwball supernatural treat.