The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 16, 2010 — To make a silent film in 1931, four years after The Jazz Singer, was to buck the trend in a film industry rapidly divesting itself of silence. To make another in 1936, nearly a decade after the advent of sound,...
Jan 26, 2010 — Today, most people’s knowledge of George Bernard Shaw doesn’t extend much further than his classic comedy Pygmalion. But the legendary playwright and theater critic (1856–1950) wrote more than sixty plays. In February, we at the Criterion Collection will do our part...
Aug 18, 2008 — This modest-scale psychological drama by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger follows an explosives expert with a drinking problem who harbors a great deal of bitterness.
Jun 5, 2006 — Painful, beautiful, and discomfiting, Maurice Pialat’s coming-of-age drama remains as startling in its honesty, its unique mix of savagery and delicacy, as it was in 1983.
Essays
May 26, 2003 — Despite its modest claims, Volker Schlöndorff’s twelfth film—about the near-civil war that raged in the Baltic provinces in the early twenties—is a jewel among his creations.
The Daily
Jun 17, 2022 — This week: Surrealism and cinema, a Cold War “travesty,” talking about Bruno, and walking in Hong Kong.
The Daily
Apr 30, 2019 — With its fresh vision, and yes, box office success, Boyz n the Hood (1991) made Singleton a force to be reckoned with for nearly three decades.
Feb 12, 2007 — Vittorio De Sica’s seminal drama renounces “egoism” for collective concern, envisioning a cinema of impassioned social conscience.
Jun 25, 2024 — Barry Jenkins’s extraordinarily ambitious limited series distinguishes itself in the tradition of the cinematic slavery epic through its understanding that Black joy and Black trauma cannot be cleaved from each other.
The Daily
Jan 4, 2023 — New York’s Film Forum presents three recently restored short films that capture the writer in Istanbul, Paris, and London.