The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 27, 2006 — Centered on the destruction wrought by unbridled female eros, Pandora’s Box would, in its shockingly modern, instinct-driven psychology, end up defining both its director and its star.
Apr 21, 2026 — It’s all a bit confusing. Point Blank is based on a novel called The Hunter by Richard Stark, one of several pseudonyms adopted by Donald E. Westlake. The book was republished as Payback in 1999 to tie in with a...
Essays
Nov 25, 2020 — “Yes, life is a dream, but sometimes that dream is a fatal abyss.” Wanda in The White Sheik (1952) I have a vivid memory from the first film-studies class I enrolled in, a class on Italian neorealism, where the weekly...
Sep 15, 2020 — When Claire Denis’s Beau travail (1999) first appeared on American screens, the critic Stephen Holden used a striking phrase to capture its embracing of bold opposites: “voluptuous austerity.” His characterization, widely quoted since, illuminates the film on many levels, and...
Jan 5, 2016 — Toshiya Fujita’s two-film saga set exuberant, manga-inspired martial-arts choreography against a backdrop of a Japanese society in transition to unfold a vivid tale of epic vengeance.
Feb 24, 2015 — Federico Fellini’s fragmentary and picturesque tale of death and debauchery in ancient Rome is a surreal take on reality.
Dec 20, 2013 — Did You See This?• Farran Smith Nehme on Joan Fontaine • David Thomson on Peter O’Toole • The Great Beauty deserves the award for best-dressed. • Liv Ullmann looks back. • Twenty-five new ones for the National Film Registry •...
Apr 22, 2013 — A vivid portrait of a ruthless murderer, Laurence Olivier’s Technicolor Shakespeare adaptation is back in a killer restoration.
Jun 10, 2009 — Kind Hearts and Coronets, that most wicked comedy of ill manners, had established Alec Guinness as an acting force—and coming so soon after he had disappeared into the role of Fagin in David Lean’s Oliver Twist, his dazzling embodiment of...
Essays
Sep 17, 2007 — Today we are used to seeing dance artistically presented on television and in movies—these films about Martha Graham helped to make that happen.