The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 17, 2017 — In this lavishly mounted epic, Stanley Kubrick captures the ghostly ephemerality of a vanishing world with paradoxical immediacy.
May 1, 2015 — In his first feature, Jean-Pierre Melville found subtly radical ways to adapt Vercors's underground French novel about quiet resistance against the German occupation.
Apr 1, 2015 — Ingmar Bergman plumbs unfathomable depths in his cinematically sensual tale of four women facing the inevitable in mind and body.
Feb 10, 2015 — The late film scholar beautifully analyzes the visual lyricism of the French master’s legendary short work.
Nov 18, 2013 — When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with Rashomon three years earlier, and Kenji Mizoguchi was moving to the forefront of the international festival...
Sep 26, 2013 — Roberto Rossellini officially left neorealism behind with his modern masterpiece, an intimate tale of marriage on the rocks.
Oct 4, 2011 — Masaki Kobayashi rejects the notion of individual submission to the group, condemning the hierarchical structures that pervaded Japanese political and social life in the 1950s and 1960s.
Jul 13, 2010 — At the author’s request, Japanese names are given here in their traditional form: surname first. Ozu Yasujiro’s personal feelings about Japanese militarism in the 1930s and 1940s are not on record. Perhaps, like most people around him, he accepted the...
Aug 20, 2007 — In the mid-sixties, Luis Buñuel became fascinated by the youth rebellion that culminated with the events of May 1968 in Paris and also manifested itself in music, fashion, opposition to institutions, family, and state. Buñuel felt that the forces of...
Aug 1, 2007 — Two towering figures of cinema died this week, and while we can all be grateful that they lived such long and fruitful lives, their departures were nevertheless profoundly saddening, and shocking in their coincidence. Look to your right at our...