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May 12, 2008 — If ever an actor could reconcile his natural-born swagger with a kind of pervasive lethargy it was Maurice Ronet, the star of Louis Malle’s staggering psychological drama.

May 12, 2008 — This intensely personal work about a self-destructive young man would help alleviate Louis Malle’s doubts about his career.

Apr 28, 2008 — It’s a fascinating tradition of children’s fiction that Albert Lamorisse’s film continues, evoking an Edenic world of children and animals living in harmony—one very far away from where we are.

Apr 21, 2008 — Juan Antonio Bardem combines neorealism with noir thriller to create a new dialect that would forge a new Spanish cinematic language.

Mar 11, 2008 — There’s no real rhyme or reason to explain which Criterion films I end up watching. For example, I saw Breathless over the holiday break after Abbey convinced me to give Godard a chance. Then I watched The Seventh Seal in...

Feb 11, 2008 — Though today he is most fondly remembered for his later romantic comedies, typifying Hollywood filmmaking in its heyday, it should be known that Ernst Lubitsch was also a pioneer of the modern movie musical.

Jan 21, 2008 — Married thrice and divorced from all of his wives at a time in Western culture when such marital fluctuation was rare, the playwright August Strindberg undoubtedly used his own dramatic life as a sourcebook.

Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”

Jan 21, 2008 — While Agnès Varda was prescient in picking up on the new social phenomenon of France’s young female drifters, she also anticipated the culture of extreme individualism that has come to dominate Western society since the 1980s.

Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.