The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 13, 1992 — Few films have had as exalted, or as tumultuous, a history as The Devil and Daniel Webster. Directed and produced by William Dieterle at RKO after his triumphant Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Devil and Daniel Webster is the finest...
Jun 3, 1991 — Jean Marais on the set of Beauty and the Beast An excerpt from Cocteau: A Biography (1970) by Francis Steegmuller Beauty and the Beast, the first film of Cocteau’s own since The Blood of a Poet, and his finest poem since...
Essays
Jun 25, 1989 — A thoroughgoing investigation of the terms “bravery” and “cowardice,” Stanley Kubrick’s early work offers far more than a mere “anti-war” statement, paring with almost surgical precision to the heart of the fear, hubris and mendacity that keep the war machine...
Essays
Dec 11, 1986 — If events had turned out differently, Orson Welles’s second film might well be widely regarded as “the greatest film of all time.”
Nov 17, 1986 — The best of all the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn comedies, Adam’s Rib is as fresh and topical today as it was in 1949 when it was first released. Written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin and directed by George Cukor, this...
Feb 2, 2018 — On the fiftieth-anniversary commemoration of the armistice that ended World War I, the French television program Les dossiers de l’écran showed G. W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 to a group of veterans and asked for their reactions.
Apr 27, 2017 — In his latest film, director Daniel Raim explores the legacy of two Hollywood veterans whose highly influential six-decade career has long gone unsung.
Features
Aug 27, 2026 — The illuminating 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine follows the celebrated author on a journey through the American South, as he attempts to reckon with the legacy and losses of the civil rights movement.