The Criterion Collection
Essays
Aug 11, 2020 — The Complete Films of Agnès Varda The poster for the seventy-second Cannes Film Festival, held in May 2019, used a photograph taken during the shooting of Agnès Varda’s first film, La Pointe Courte, in 1954. Wearing rolled-up trousers, a shirt,...
Sep 30, 2019 — At first glance, Jean-Pierre Melville’s body of work might seem to display a schizophrenic split between two currents or tendencies. The first is in total symbiosis with the history of France and is rooted in the filmmaker’s own life, notably...
Jun 12, 2018 — Among the six movies Lino Brocka directed between 1974 and ’76, there were three landmark works that changed the course of his career and that of Philippine cinema: Weighed but Found Wanting (1974), Manila in the Claws of Light (1975),...
Apr 10, 2017 — In this 1964 television interview, Jacques Demy defends his use of wall-to-wall singing and Michel Legrand takes to the piano for a few bars from one of his most famous compositions.
Jan 2, 2017 — With the debut of Me and You and Everyone We Know on the Criterion Channel, the acclaimed multi-hyphenate discusses her evolving creative process and her love of Jane Campion.
Short Takes
Oct 23, 2015 — Sweden's new two-hundred-krona bill features the country's most renowned filmmaker.
May 7, 2013 — Blame it on the Madison. Or blame it on Arthur, Franz, and Odile’s gleeful race through the Louvre in an attempt to break the world record (held by an American, of course) for the quickest visit ever. Blame it on...
Essays
Jun 27, 2012 — The warrior and philosopher protagonist of The Samurai Trilogy, Musashi Miyamoto, was a real-life seventeenth-century figure. Here, the translator of Musashi’s The Book of Five Rings tells us about this fascinating man and his principles of swordplay and spirituality.
Feb 11, 2008 — Though today he is most fondly remembered for his later romantic comedies, typifying Hollywood filmmaking in its heyday, it should be known that Ernst Lubitsch was also a pioneer of the modern movie musical.
Essays
Jun 16, 1992 — Of the 18 movies made by the filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, none was as personally and artistically fulfilling as The Tales of Hoffmann. This dazzling screen adaptation of the Offenbach opera—a visual, sonic, and sensual delight—marked...