The Criterion Collection
Essays
Apr 2, 2009 — Writing the screenplay with Suzanne Schiffman, I intended to do for the theater what I had done for the cinema in Day for Night: the chronicle of a troupe at work, within a framework respecting the unities of place, time,...
Mar 26, 2009 — We have some good news: preorders are back at criterion.com! We’ve worked out some kinks in the system, and starting today you can once again order upcoming Criterion titles and your credit card won’t be charged until your order is...
Mar 25, 2009 — J.Hoberman’s got a sharp and snazzy piece in the New York Times on American expat director Jules Dassin—just in time for Film Forum’s fifteen-film retrospective of his career. The blacklisted filmmaker of black-hearted crime dramas (and a couple of hot-blooded...
Mar 13, 2009 — In the latest edition of her newsletter, Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow asked “five brilliant directors (four of whom I have worked with and one who I worship) to share their top five DVD rental picks.” The results, from Steven, Wes, Jon,...
Essays
Feb 16, 2009 — Through the story of thunderously, wondrously henpecked men and a determined woman’s romantic zeal, David Lean’s comedy depicts private and social revolution.
Feb 11, 2009 — In honor of the bicentennial of the birth of Abraham Lincoln, we’ve revisited John Ford’s great portrait of the leader as a preheroic man, Young Mr. Lincoln, and picked this clip to mark the moment. The beauty of it, we...
Jan 21, 2009 — It’s a clichéd truism that moviemaking is a collaborative art. Of course it is, and there are dozens, if not hundreds, of examples of directors working time and again with the same crew members, trusted writers, cameramen, production designers, editors,...
Essays
Jan 19, 2009 — In 1929, a fifty-one-year-old Congregationalist pastor named Lloyd C. Douglas published his first novel. It was a ramshackle sort of book, at its core an undiluted Christian sermon on the life-transforming power of charitable works. But it was a sermon...
Jan 15, 2009 — The Berlin International Film Festival this week announced the competition lineup for its upcoming fifty-ninth edition, and the list includes an intriguing array of world premieres from Criterion-family directors. Costa-Gavras, whose Missing we released last October, returns with Eden Is...
Jan 6, 2009 — Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film is not just an epic but also a small film, one in which, somehow or other, the scope of David Lean has been enriched with the vision of Ozu.