The Criterion Collection
Apr 7, 2017 — Barnaby Clay is a British film director from London. He graduated in 1996 from the London International Film School and has spent the past fifteen years directing music videos for bands and artists such as Gnarls Barkley, Dave Gahan, TV...
Jun 19, 2009 — Forty-six years ago, Last Year at Marienbad opened in London. Resnais and Robbe-Grillet came over for the press screening, and I chatted to them in the lobby of the now defunct Cameo-Poly art house on London’s Upper Regent Street. Resnais...
Production Notes
Oct 14, 2008 — Okay, quiz time. What does the music video for Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” have to do with the Criterion Collection? Give up? Well, it was shot by none other than ace director of photography Christopher Doyle, whose work is being brought...
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...
Production Notes
Nov 23, 2006 — I first met Robert Altman in person in 1999, when I was producing a series of video introductions featuring contemporary directors discussing their favorite Janus films. Altman was the first Criterion director to respond to our request. We had sent...
Jun 3, 2002 — In addition to being his funniest film, The Horse’s Mouth is the most personal, and touching, of all Alec Guinness’ movies. Apart from starring as the brilliant but bedraggled artist Gulley Jimson, Guinness also adapted the Oscar-nominated screenplay from Joyce...
Essays
Dec 31, 1999 — As a tour de force of screen acting, Autumn Sonata stands unchallenged as the finest work of Ingmar Bergman’s last few years as a movie director. Fanny and Alexander may have won the Oscars, but Autumn Sonata represents Bergman’s chamber...
May 31, 1990 — Isabelle Huppert shot from minor actress to full-fledged French star with a mesmerizing performance as, ironically, a young woman who is incapable of escaping anonymity. In Swiss director Claude Goretta’s elegant, beautifully observed tragedy/character study, Huppert is “Pomme,” a lovely,...
Nov 1, 2022 — In one of the most incendiary and formally experimental films of the Czechoslovak New Wave, two mysterious young women uncover humanity’s endless potential for revolt.
Mar 18, 2019 — One Scene When Jia Zhangke made his 1997 feature debut, Xiao Wu, he was rebelling against decades of tradition that had drawn a hard line between cinema and reality. Chinese film history is rooted in genres found in classical theater...