The Criterion Collection
Essays
Apr 25, 2005 — Andrzej Wajda’s first feature film marks the beginning of the Polish School, the paradigm of Polish cinema that arose from the political and cultural thaw of the mid-1950s.
Essays
Mar 14, 2005 — The appearance of this 1966 film signaled not only the debut of Volker Schlöndorff as a major international filmmaker but also the beginnings of what would become known as the New German Cinema, one of the most important film movements...
Essays
Jul 19, 2004 — Marcel Carné's third feature is as epochal as any film made in France in the 1930s, exemplifying the style known as “poetic realism.”
Essays
Apr 19, 2004 — “Floating weeds, drifting down the leisurely river of our lives,” has long been a favored metaphor in Japanese prose and poetry. This plant, the ukigusa (duckweed in English), floating aimlessly, carried by stronger currents, is seen as emblematic of our...
Essays
Oct 27, 2003 — Attuned to the ineffable weirdness and crushing mundanity of workplace paranoia, Steven Soderbergh’s film finds anger and sorrow in the way we brutalize our means of communication
Aug 18, 2003 — The two versions of Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist romance offer case studies in Hollywood and European sensibilities as they existed in the early 1950s.
Essays
Sep 9, 2002 — With her debut feature, Lynne Ramsay confirmed herself as one of the most distinct and important voices to emerge from the United Kingdom in recent years.
Essays
Jun 4, 2001 — Mad with images of nature in rebellion, Luis Buñuel’s 1964 film is a droll vision of Eden during the Fall starring a sumptuous Jeanne Moreau.
Essays
Dec 9, 1990 — Michael Powell’s war thriller ranks alongside Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent as one of the two finest amalgams of suspense and propaganda to grace the big screen during the years 1939-45.
Essays
Aug 24, 1989 — Yasujiro Ozu’s favorite theme of the stresses and strains of parent-child relationships figure prominently in this story of a raggle-taggle theater troupe giving its final performances in a small fishing village.