The Criterion Collection
Feb 9, 2022 — The Learning Tree may have been Gordon Parks’s first feature film as a director, but by the time filming began in the fall of 1968, Parks already had almost three decades of experience behind a camera. In 1940, the self-taught...
Features
May 2, 2019 — “To begin with, Gone with the Wind is a woman’s story . . . Mr. Cukor, one of Hollywood’s finest directors and the man who has directed Hepburn and Garbo in some of their best, is known as a woman’s...
May 20, 2009 — Iconoclasts are meant to kill their idols, and so it’s fitting that Shohei Imamura launched into his career as if on a patricidal rampage. Like Nagisa Oshima, the other towering figure of the Japanese New Wave, Imamura (1926–2006) rejected the...
Essays
Jan 21, 2008 — While Agnès Varda was prescient in picking up on the new social phenomenon of France’s young female drifters, she also anticipated the culture of extreme individualism that has come to dominate Western society since the 1980s.
Jul 23, 2025 — The director of Female Perversions looks back on the film’s transgressive exploration of women’s sexuality and on Tilda Swinton’s role as a key collaborator.
Sep 24, 2018 — This faithful screen adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s legendary play explores a wide range of perspectives on working-class black life, and over the years has inspired reactions just as diverse.
Jun 9, 2025 — Within the past few days, we’ve lost a vital film historian and a vibrant artist.
Features
Dec 4, 2024 — Before she won acclaim as a pioneering director, the Hollywood icon made her name as a powerfully vivid actor who brought grit and toughness to films by such masters as Raoul Walsh, Nicholas Ray, and Michael Curtiz.
Apr 20, 2009 — The French scientist-educator-filmmaker Jean Painlevé’s groundbreaking work consistently revealed not only a commitment to informed science and effective communication but to the creative expression of ideas.
The Daily
Nov 11, 2019 — This month we’re reading about the women (and men) of Hollywood, weighing arguments from all corners, and picking up an overlooked novel.