The Criterion Collection
Essays
Sep 17, 2001 — George Sluizer’s nightmarish film is a study in everyday madness, rooted in the specifics of the Dutch and French landscapes and character.
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...
Apr 23, 2001 — A majestic synthesis of disparate forms, Sergei Eisenstein’s final film seems to be as much a ballet or a moving painting as it is a movie.
Essays
Apr 23, 2001 — In 1955, Jules Dassin, an American director in exile in Paris, made this flat-out perfect piece of cinema. The film came as a redemption for Dassin: a one-time promising young director cranking out B-movies under an MGM contract ("They were...
Essays
Jan 29, 2001 — Masahiro Shinoda’s historical drama uses traditional elements of Japanese theater to explore the tension between ethics and eroticism.
Dec 18, 2000 — Elegant humor cloaks despair in Luis Buñuel’s masterwork, wherein greedy characters flee their toxic lives and find refuge in the loneliness of dreams.
Nov 13, 2000 — All the opening bands had finished playing, and it was time for the Stones to come out. The sun was still out and there was plenty of daylight left. The crowd had waited all day to see the Stones perform,...