The Criterion Collection
Features
Sep 2, 2019 — Dark Passages Thieves’ Highway A hay cart trundles through a sunny field above Fresno, California, in the opening shot of Thieves’ Highway. This is not an image you expect to see in film noir, which most often breeds in cities, alienated from the...
Short Takes
Oct 26, 2012 — Every ten years since 1952, the world-renowned film magazine Sight & Sound has polled a wide international selection of film critics and directors on what they consider to be the ten greatest works of cinema ever made, and then compiled...
Essays
Mar 27, 2012 — Coward and Lean? It may not sound as natural as Launder and Gilliat or Powell and Pressburger, perhaps because we don’t instinctively think of Noël Coward as a filmmaker or of David Lean as part of a team. But they...
Mar 21, 2011 — Living Room The cinema of Mikio Naruse is one of heartbreak but also one of indomitable poise. Melodrama is the director’s stock-in-trade. His stories are inhabited by people, generally women, imprisoned in their domestic and professional circumstances by the status...
Nov 26, 2018 — Even as he chronicles the downfall of an American family, Orson Welles brings a sense of buoyancy to this grim saga through his virtuoso storytelling.
On the Channel
Dec 17, 2025 — This January, savor multiple levels of nostalgia with a survey of ’90s cinema’s riffs on the ’70s, or turn a new page with a collection of films about dreamers seeking fresh starts in life.
Mar 24, 2025 — At the turn of the millennium, a loose collective of filmmakers—including Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg—made a splash with a provocative manifesto and a wave of audacious movies shot on digital video.
On the Channel
Mar 20, 2025 — This month, celebrate the career of one of our greatest contemporary actors, explore a gritty period in New York City’s history, and look back on the legacy of the Vietnam War.
Aug 1, 2024 — Philadelphia’s showcase of work by Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists opens today and runs through the weekend.
Jul 25, 2023 — The protagonists in Budd Boetticher’s five classic Columbia westerns are paired with opponents who, venal though they may be, almost always have their reasons.