The Criterion Collection
Oct 21, 2014 — Federico Fellini’s frantic tragicomedy is such a classic it risks being underestimated.
Sneak Peeks
Jan 28, 2014 — Among the delights of Aki Kaurismäki’s La vie de bohème are the guest appearances by François Truffaut alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud and the two-fisted American auteur Samuel Fuller. The former plays an eccentric collector who takes an interest in the...
Short Takes
Jan 24, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki first read Henri Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème in 1976. The highly influential 1851 book—an episodic novel about a group of starving artists that also inspired Puccini’s 1896 opera La bohème—captured the Finnish filmmaker’s imagination and,...
Jan 20, 2014 — Aki Kaurismäki pays wry tribute to the starving artist in his sad and funny update of Henri Murger’s classic book.
Essays
Oct 28, 2013 — A husband and wife in 1960s Milan are isolated from each other and displaced in the modern world in Michelangelo Antonioni’s tale of love and space.
Sneak Peeks
Sep 13, 2013 — Edouard Molinaro’s 1978 La Cage aux Folles is not only an entertaining farce but also a landmark, for the way it opened many viewers’ eyes to both drag culture and same-sex relationships. To find out more about the film’s sexual...
Sep 9, 2013 — As outré as it is, the most subversive thing about this classic farce is its take on what’s normal.
Sneak Peeks
Aug 15, 2012 — The idea that Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have an uncanny ability to get right on top of the action in a scene without their camera’s ever feeling intrusive—to actors or viewers—is a common refrain in discussions of the Belgian directors’...
Essays
Aug 14, 2012 — The Dardennes threw down the gauntlet for a new type of unadorned dramatic storytelling with their breakthrough tale of a working-class boy’s fraught coming-of-age.
Short Takes
Aug 2, 2012 — This week we lost one of the great artists of the past century, Chris Marker. Though best known for his 1962 La Jetée, a science-fiction epic in miniature told through black-and-white still photographs, and his 1983 Sans Soleil, a personal...