The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 26, 2000 — Brief Encounter was the fourth and final film that David Lean made in association with Noël Coward. Derived from Still Life, a one-act play which Coward included in the portmanteau Tonight 8:30, the story tells of a suburban housewife, Laura...
The critic and cowriter of Nightmare Alley explores the complexity of Gene Tierney’s femme fatale in Leave Her to Heaven, compares Adam Sandler and Paul Thomas Anderson’s work on Punch-Drunk Love to the collaboration of James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock,...
The director of Cowboy Bebop shares his love for The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and how John Cassavetes blurred the line between fictional drama and realism, talks about what makes Branded to Kill a mesmerizing masterpiece, and finds inspiration...
The director and cowriter of Dune draws connections between the ways Krzysztof Kieślowski and Ingmar Bergman captured women on-screen, shares why Che is his favorite Steven Soderbergh film, and talks about how Lars von Trier broke the codes of cinema...
The director and cowriter of Emilia Pérez shares his love for Fritz Lang’s rich visual language, compares Robert Altman’s narratives to “surrealist exquisite-corpse exercises,” and praises the Viennese sensibility of Max Ophuls’s La ronde.
The director and cowriter of WALL·E shares why Paper Moon and Local Hero speak to his heart, reminisces about the privilege of collaborating with Albert Brooks, and talks about why Matewan is an essential film for everyone to see.
The director and cowriter of Nickel Boys praises The Qatsi Trilogy as “vital for understanding the visual world,” quotes from Chris Marker’s Sans Soleil, and talks about watching Bruce Lee movies with his dad.
Barry Day is a Noël Coward scholar and the author of Coward on Film: The Cinema of Noël Coward.
Sam Wasson is the best-selling author of many books on film, including Hollywood: The Oral History, cowritten with Jeanine Basinger and published in November 2022.