The Criterion Collection
Nov 10, 2008 — The life and work of American writer and painter Manny Farber, one of the most celebrated and idiosyncratic voices in the history of film criticism, will be honored by New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center in a two-week festival—simply...
"Life caught unawares," that's how Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov defined the principle and art of documentary in the thirties. Yet the documentary has taken so many forms over the past century that it is too simple to call it the...
These two filmmakers forged an alliance that lasted from the late thirties to the early seventies, making their mark on the world of British cinema by always going against its realist strain.
After making his mark in the early thirties with two very different films, this French master closed out the decade with two humanistic studies of French society that routinely turn up on lists of the greatest films ever made.
Once widely misunderstood, this French master of suspense dealt in misanthropic, black-humored tales and is now recognized to be among the greatest directors of the 1950s.
Oct 20, 2008 — Though he had been directing films since the silent era, Kenji Mizoguchi didn’t become an international sensation until after the Second World War, benefiting from a new fascination with Japan’s cinematic output.
Oct 6, 2008 — Jean-Pierre Melville’s ninth and to that point most commercially successful feature in France, was an important watershed in the director’s career.
Essays
Oct 6, 2008 — It is pretty much a convention of the hard-boiled gangster picture that most, if not all, of the principal characters wind up dead by the final shot. So it ought not constitute a “spoiler” to note that Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le...
Sep 22, 2008 — With their rotating casts of sourpuss Finns and their stringent compositions, Aki Kaurismäki’s films would seem the least likely candidates for laughs, yet his black-comic precision has made him one of the most warmly embraced filmmakers on the international art-house...
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.