The Criterion Collection
Nov 11, 2009 — As a member of the Harlem Amateur Players, Robeson had heard a great deal about Brutus Jones from the Playhouse’s set designer, Cleo Throckmorton. Moved by Robeson’s performances with the Manhattan-based troupe, Throckmorton was the first to approach him about...
May 13, 2009 — Alexander Korda’s oeuvre is often characterized as larger-than-life, undoubtedly in part because the figures he was attracted to—kings and queens, legendary lovers and great artists—were often extraordinary.
Apr 23, 2009 — These profiles of the real-life Sada Abé and the actress who portrayed her in Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses first appeared in Donald Richie’s 1987 book Different People: Pictures of Some Japanese, and can also be found...
Jan 14, 2008 — As Japan was coming out of World War II, Akira Kurosawa was coming into his own as a filmmaker.
Sep 18, 2006 — Released in 1973, in the dying days of General Franco’s forty-year dictatorship, The Spirit of the Beehive soon established itself as the consummate masterpiece of Spanish cinema. Yet, strangely, many of the gifted artists who collaborated on Víctor Erice’s first...
Essays
Aug 2, 2004 — Anna Magnani’s flair for demotic street comedy was transfigured into stylized nobility by sumptuous costuming and Jean Renoir’s formal camera work.
Mar 31, 2026 — Claude Lelouch’s Palme d’Or–winning breakout hit combines elements of a classic Hollywood love story with dynamic photography, an edgy editing style, and a naturalistic sense of character and location.
The Daily
Sep 18, 2024 — We’re reading or anticipating new books from Pedro Almodóvar, Al Pacino, Werner Herzog, and Cher.
Essays
Jun 11, 2024 — A radically strange, postmodern adaptation of a novel by Jean Genet, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film is grounded by a sweaty, seething, meaty eroticism—a confrontational sexuality that remains bracing.