The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 1, 1988 — Charles Laughton’s classic has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it also mixes rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good...
Essays
Feb 1, 1988 — Based on the novel by W.T. Burnett, this heist film set in a nameless midwestern city offered moviegoers in 1950 a new view of crime.
Jan 11, 1988 — In Young and Innocent (1937) Alfred Hitchcock uses all the signs in his visual vocabulary to tell one of his favorite stories: fugitive hero unjustly accused of murder. Yet this is also a story of youth and innocence triumphant—a light...
Essays
Dec 6, 1987 — Mike Nichols’s treatment of a young man’s initiation into the mysteries of sex at the hands of an older married woman has become a model for this common fantasy.
Essays
Oct 12, 1987 — Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling Cinemascope epic is set squarely within the traditions of the Japanese film genre known as the “Chambara.”
Essays
Dec 9, 1985 — Movie thrillers may come and go, but after half a century, Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps still reigns supreme. And not only for the sheer, breathless excitement of the story; the seamless construction; the chilling, beautifully realized atmosphere; and the...
Jul 6, 2020 — Josephine Decker’s most recent feature film, Shirley, which was released in June by Neon, premiered in U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance, where it received the Special Jury Award for Auteur Filmmaking. Madeline’s Madeline, Josephine's previous film, premiered at the 2018...
Jan 23, 2024 — In the first ten years of her extraordinary career, the Belgian filmmaker used the raw materials of quotidian, marginal lives to spark a radical reinvention of cinema.
Apr 28, 2023 — One of Britain’s most celebrated playwrights talks about bringing her uncompromising exploration of racism and resistance to the screen.