The Criterion Collection
Essays
Oct 15, 2001 — Preston Sturges’s beloved comedy provides insights into the way Hollywood formulas work on us.
Essays
Jul 9, 2001 — John Schlesinger’s beloved dramedy subverts the conventions of British kitchen-sink realism.
Essays
Jul 9, 2001 — With its dunderhead millionaires, erudite bums, effulgently dysfunctional families, and beneficent providence, My Man Godfrey is the Depression comedy par excellence. It is also, superficially at least, a movie about the Depression. A suicidal millionaire regains his zest for living...
Essays
Feb 19, 2001 — Leaving the theater after the tumultuous world premiere of Do the Right Thing at Cannes in May of 1989, I found myself too shaken to speak, and I avoided the clusters of people where arguments were already heating up. One...
Essays
Feb 19, 2001 — Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s romance film spins a web of myth and evocative symbolism around its central search for self-discovery.
Nov 1, 1999 — The Unbearable Lightness of Being is a profoundly beguiling movie about sex, love, and rebellion.
Essays
Apr 26, 1999 — At some point in their lives, probably every sleepless person has switched on the TV in the wee hours of a weekend morning and chanced upon a fishing show. Invariably, a beefy, half-forgotten retired athlete shares a boat with some...
Essays
Jan 11, 1999 — In 1910 Sir William Mackenzie hired Robert Flaherty to prospect the vast area east of the Hudson Bay for its railway and mineral potential. Over the course of several years and through four lengthy expeditions Flaherty had frequent contact with...