The Criterion Collection
Tech Corner
Aug 12, 2010 — One of the most challenging aspects of our work is to get accurate color for films when there are no filmmakers to consult with. This is especially true of films from the fifties and sixties, for which cinematographers, directors, editors,...
This maverick director—one of the most audacious filmmakers to make his breakthrough in the 1970s—is known for his sprawling ensemble casts, richly layered narratives, and searing assessments of American culture and politics.
The Criterion Collection is bursting with films that have earned Hollywood’s prestigious little golden guy.
Short Takes
Feb 16, 2010 — It may be news to many, but in addition to creating such larger-than-life characters as The Silence of the Lambs’ Hannibal Lecter and Howards End’s Henry Wilcox (not to mention, once upon a time, the titular protagonist in James Ivory’s...
Feb 10, 2010 — Revanche begins with a reflection of trees in a lake at twilight. They’re seen upside down—an image of nature reversed—yet the earth is eerily calm. This almost otherworldly illusion arouses a viewer’s awareness of perspective, which is then disturbed by...
Jan 25, 2010 — Unlike the more aesthetically and intellectually conceived French New Wave, Italian neorealism was above all an ethical initiative—a way of saying that people were important, occasioned by a war that made many of them voiceless, faceless, and nameless victims. But...
Sep 29, 2009 — It’s been six years since Jane Campion last directed a feature film, but her earthy, melancholy new Bright Star, about the romance between poet John Keats and his great love, Fanny Brawne, was well worth the wait. And now that...
Jun 30, 2009 — Quick, how many directors can you name who have pulled a 320-ton steamship over a mountain? Yes, that megalomaniacal masterpiece Fitzcarraldo is just further proof that Werner Herzog stands alone in the annals of filmmaking. And though this tireless artist...
Tech Corner
Jan 23, 2008 — Of all the great places I get to go for transfer work, London is probably my favorite. First off, everyone speaks English, and there’s an abundance of great Indian food. But there’s also the excitement that when the workday ends,...
Essays
Jan 21, 2008 — As late as 1970, Alf Sjöberg’s boldly experimental 1951 adaptation of August Strindberg’s play was declared as inaugurating “a new cinematic language.”