The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 26, 2000 — Brief Encounter was the fourth and final film that David Lean made in association with Noël Coward. Derived from Still Life, a one-act play which Coward included in the portmanteau Tonight 8:30, the story tells of a suburban housewife, Laura...
Essays
May 15, 2000 — In René Clair’s ebullient early talkie, an unsentimental love of humanity permeates every frame.
Nov 1, 1999 — The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a profoundly beguiling movie about sex, love, and rebellion.
Essays
Sep 8, 1998 — In David Lean’s Summertime, in which Rossano Brazzi seduces Katharine Hepburn—an aging, repressed Ohio “working girl” on vacation in Venice—the Continental lover reached his pinnacle and approached his end. In the next decade, he would be embodied by Marcello Mastroianni,...
Sep 22, 1997 — I ?rst read The English Patient in one gulp, sitting in a room on 77th and Columbus the morning after I’d ?nished a sweltering summer of ?lming in New York. When I put the book down, it was dark, and...
Essays
Mar 30, 1992 — John Schlesinger’s controversial masterpiece made moviegoers squirm with its bold, bleak portrayal of unrequited love, gay and otherwise, and it remains as jolting and thought-provoking as ever.
Oct 29, 1990 — Luis Buñuel’s ode to obsessive love is injected with the biting subversive wit, symbolism, originality and surreal touches that distinguish his finest achievements.
The actor shares her love for My Life as a Dog, praises the films of Elaine May, and selects two high-energy classic Hollywood favorites.
An irrepressible feminist tale, a subversive reimagining of the American cowboy, a defining 1990s thriller, a scorching study of toxic love, three personal and panoramic family portraits, a tender look at a fractured family, and a poignant take on a...