The Criterion Collection
Apr 17, 2008 — Judging from many of the reactions we get from viewers, there’s a gratifying sense of discovery that accompanies each new Eclipse release. That comes as little surprise to us, since that same feeling is as alive and well here in...
Production Notes
Jan 14, 2008 — From upstairs at the Brasserie Lipp in Paris, you have a perfect view of the Café de Flore, directly across the boulevard Saint-Germain. Both are famous Left Bank institutions where filmmakers such as Louis Malle, François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, and...
Essays
Sep 18, 2006 — Nobuo Nakagawa’s legendary, genre-busting Japanese masterpiece explores the infernal desires that tempt us during our mortal existence—and the afterlife agonies awaiting those who succumb.
Jan 17, 2005 — Jacques Becker’s crime film contains plenty of the requisite genre elements—double-crossings, violence, kidnappings, and gun battles—but it’s also a pensive meditation on age, friendship, and lost opportunities.
Essays
Jun 23, 2003 — One of the most unusual features of Italian cinema of the late ’50s and ’60s is the way that it affords us multiple perspectives on the same event, namely the economic boom following the postwar recovery. Where the directors of...
Essays
Sep 17, 2001 — Jirí Menzel’s war comedy is an absurdist symphony of self-absorption and impotence.
Jul 17, 1995 — Kurosawa made the acquaintance of Desu Uzala thirty years earlier, when he read Vladimir Arseniev’s account of charting the Russian-Manchurian border in the earlier part of this century. There, the Russian soldier and explorer had met Dersu, the Siberian hunter,...
Essays
May 25, 1992 — Cecil B. DeMille’s spectacle turned out to be the silent screen’s most elaborate realization of “the greatest story ever told.”
Oct 31, 1988 — The wittiest, most sophisticated thriller ever made, North by Northwest is one of the crowning achievements in the careers of its director, Alfred Hitchcock, and its star, Cary Grant. Released in 1959 to both critical and public acclaim, this classic...