The Criterion Collection
Sneak Peeks
Mar 5, 2012 — Akiko Crowther, a grand master of Japanese calligraphy, created the title treatment for our release of The Human Condition. This is the original design she sent us. —Sarah Habibi, art director
Feb 14, 2012 — For nearly three decades, Hideo Gosha (1929–1992) made some of the most explosive, artful, and original films in Japanese cinema. Along the way, he also became one of his country’s most established and acclaimed filmmakers. But his reputation in the...
Features
Dec 26, 2011 — Noël Coward’s play Design for Living was produced for Broadway in 1933, starring Coward, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne. But it started life back in 1921. Coward was on his first impoverished visit to America. He arrived in New York...
Dec 13, 2011 — The English actor Dominic Monaghan is best known for his roles as Meriadoc Brandybuck in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Charlie Pace on the series Lost. Monaghan writes, “I’m embarrassed to say most of my film...
Essays
Nov 29, 2011 — Elephant Boy: Child’s Play It’s hard to imagine a movie role more perfectly suited to the actor playing it than Toomai in Elephant Boy (1937), the part that made Selar Shaik—known as Sabu—one of the least likely superstars in Western...
The world’s most famous Finnish filmmaker excels at a distinctive and effortless mix of scalpel-sharp comedy and spare, pitch-perfect visual storytelling.
Essays
Oct 25, 2011 — The film is made up of a succession of small visions, observed and executed with apparent ease but thought through with such exquisite care and attention that the experience becomes overwhelming.
Sep 19, 2011 — Jean-Luc Godard, lover of paradox, once characterized Claude Chabrol’s Les cousins (1959) as “a deeply hollow and therefore profound film,” a pronouncement, like so many of the pithy mots Godard used to reel off in the pages of Cahiers du...
Essays
Sep 13, 2011 — Robert Altman’s spellbinding drama about stolen identities is propelled by evanescent reveries of his own and inventive contributions from cast and crew.
Sep 7, 2011 — The Dryden Theatre—the exhibition space of the renowned George Eastman House film archive in Rochester, New York—is celebrating its sixtieth anniversary this year. And its recently hired programmer: Lori Donnelly, is thrilled to be there for the occasion. “It’s a...