The Criterion Collection
May 14, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s classic western is psychologically probing, magnificently shot, and fascinatingly ambiguous.
Essays
May 13, 2013 — Delmer Daves’s visually majestic, emotionally charged western finds its drama in the decency of its characters.
May 7, 2013 — Blame it on the Madison. Or blame it on Arthur, Franz, and Odile’s gleeful race through the Louvre in an attempt to break the world record (held by an American, of course) for the quickest visit ever. Blame it on...
Apr 9, 2013 — David Cronenberg and William S. Burroughs: it was a meeting of the mutant minds years in the making.
Production Notes
Apr 4, 2013 — 1. Director Robert Bresson originally titled his screenplay Aide-toi . . ., a reference to the French expression “Aide-toi et le ciel t’aidera” (“Heaven helps those who help themselves”). He ultimately decided instead to use the title Devigny’s journalistic account of his...
Mar 27, 2013 — You can’t talk about Robert Bresson for long before his use of sound comes up. His stripped-down masterpieces are memorable for the way they engage the ear as well as the eye. A Man Escaped, out this week on Blu-ray...
Mar 26, 2013 — Charlie Chaplin manages to make a ruthless murderer likable in his brilliant satire of middle-class morality.
Mar 13, 2013 — The slimiest movie monster of them all is part of—and perfects—a great tradition of unstoppable outer-space invaders.
Sneak Peeks
Feb 28, 2013 — Chronicle of a Summer, a sui generis 1961 collaboration between sociologist Edgar Morin and documentary filmmaker and anthropologist Jean Rouch, is considered a pioneering work of cinéma-vérité. That term—coined by Morin himself—gets thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean?...
Sneak Peeks
Feb 11, 2013 — The movies of the Belgian filmmaking duo Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are at once studies in propulsive forward motion and moral tales that plumb the depths of their troubled characters with jittery concern. In works like La promesse, Rosetta, and...