The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 5, 1998 — Borrowing inspiration from doom-laden French crime movies like Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le samouraï and ancient Chinese chronicles of patriotic assassins, John Woo’s film is a passionate cinematic upheaval.
Essays
May 5, 1998 — John Woo’s last film made in Hong Kong before his emigration to the U.S. reflects the city's anxieties and state of crisis throughout the decade.
Essays
Mar 26, 1998 — In The Lady Vanishes, Alfred Hitchcock pushes the romantic comedy-thriller form to perfection. Endlessly imitated, the film remains unique, even in Hitchcock’s canon. In no other movie but North by Northwest was he able to blend these two genres so...
Essays
Nov 14, 1995 — Tamura (Eiji Funakoshi), the hero of Kon Ichikawa’s drama, may be the loneliest man in the history of the movies—lonelier than the spiritual pilgrims of Bergman, Bresson, and Dreyer.
Essays
Sep 25, 1995 — Noel Coward and David Lean’s drama is the Citizen Kane of war movies, as well as the precursor to Lean’s even more celebrated works.
Essays
Jun 5, 1995 — Kenji Mizoguchi departed abruptly from his earlier sentimental films into a world of acute realism with this bold critique of the position of women in contemporary Japanese society.
Essays
Nov 15, 1994 — Andrzej Wajda’s third full-length film established the director as a leader of the new Polish cinema.
Sep 19, 1994 — The French do not have to take crash courses in order to deal with the man/woman thing. It is in their blood and in their civilization. Hence, they do not have to compensate for a habitual sexism with extravagant portraits...