The Criterion Collection
Short Takes
Dec 16, 2016 — Did You See This? To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Adam Scovell visited the film’s unforgettable London locations. Another masterpiece made half a century ago is Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl, a scathing critique of racism anchored by...
May 29, 2015 — A shocking chapter of Soviet Czechoslovakian history is dramatized in Costa-Gavras’s controversial follow-up to Z.
Jun 28, 2011 — Raymond Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro is the funniest book ever written in, and about, the French language. When it came out in 1959, it “made the whole of France laugh,” Jean-Paul Rappeneau, who helped Louis Malle adapt it to...
Interviews
Oct 22, 2009 — Almost a decade ago, Catherine Breillat, one of contemporary cinema’s great provocateurs, gave us Fat Girl (À ma soeur!), a disturbing and graphic look at the pitfalls of adolescent sexuality from the point of view of a pair of young sisters....
Apr 16, 2007 — Following debates about tensions between police and immigrant communities in France, director Mathieu Kassovitz began a public correspondence with the right-wing minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy.
Essays
Nov 22, 1999 — Amarcord presents a scathing satirical critique of Italian provincial life during the 1930s, the height of the fascist period (1922–43). In this era, Mussolini’s dictatorship enjoyed its greatest popular support. While Fellini’s depiction of the provincial world under fascism provides...
Essays
Nov 15, 1999 — Michael Powell’s controversial late film makes the cinema spectator’s own voyeurism shockingly obvious.
Essays
Jan 11, 1994 — A harrowing nightmare about life in inner-city hell, this 1993 sleeper-hit is a powerhouse filmmaking debut by the Hughes brothers.