The Criterion Collection
Interviews
Sep 16, 2014 — The following interview is from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley’s 1997 book Lynch on Lynch. The interviews in the book were conducted by Rodley between January 1993 and December 1996. Eraserhead took five years to complete. You must have been...
Jul 28, 2014 — Jacques Demy’s first full-fledged storybook fantasy challenges and subverts traditional fairy-tale norms.
Essays
Apr 17, 2012 — Maybe it is something to do with the sensual seductiveness of cinema: as new-millennium Americans, we care nothing for Japanese poetry, little for Japanese painting and fiction, and certainly too much for Japanese cartoons, and yet Yasujiro Ozu, the least...
Mar 27, 2012 — Noël Coward and David Lean created a patriotic diptych with their first two films: In Which We Serve, from 1942, about the bravery and sacrifice of British sailors and those who love them, and the 1944 This Happy Breed, on...
Dec 13, 2011 — Just what is it that makes Seijun Suzuki’s Tokyo Drifter (1966) so different, so appealing? The cherubic hero in the neat powder blue suit, who looks like he was torn out of a yakuza pop-up book? That hauntingly cornball theme...
Apr 5, 2013 — Did You See This?• Words for the great Roger Ebert: Carson, Edelstein, Emerson • When Kenneth Turan met Burt Lancaster • Alain Delon’s effortless style • Watch Martin Scorsese’s eloquent speech this week at the Kennedy Center. • On illustrating...
Essays
Nov 27, 2018 — With The Magnificent Ambersons, Orson Welles created a model of period filmmaking, lightly deploying historical signifiers while focusing on the haunting power of his actors’ faces.
Feb 24, 2026 — For this existential noir, Joel and Ethan Coen drew inspiration from crime-fiction master James M. Cain’s lean, hard-boiled style and interest in the quotidian world of work.
The Daily
Jun 21, 2023 — The Method, riffs on pop culture, and a fist fight with Lawrence Tierney all figure in this month’s roundup on new and noteworthy titles.
Apr 27, 2023 — Over the course of her four-decade career, the pioneering Indian documentary filmmaker has demonstrated the important roles that joy and pleasure play in the process of political change.