The Criterion Collection
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Vagabond has been called Agnès Varda’s Ulysses, and with good reason. The comparison with James Joyce’s era-defining epic novel extends well beyond a recognizable similarity between the two artists. Both writer and filmmaker occupy vanguard positions in the history of...
Essays
May 31, 1999 — In Abbas Kiarostami’s universe, it might be said, there are no things, only relations between things. Likewise, in his cinema: no films, only relations between films—and within them. And between them and us.Three and one. The most celebrated of Iran’s...
Essays
May 10, 1993 — Green for Danger is a welcome twist on that most venerable of English concoctions, the drawing-room thriller. In this instance, the drawing room is instead a hospital not far from London, where surgery is conducted under a cascade of German...
Aug 20, 2001 — I have known Torben Skjødt since 1983. His debut video Englefjæs—which I thought to be very accomplished—was presented during a film week in Silkeborg. A debut work, yes, but made with a self-assured maturity by a self-taught creator of images....
Bernard Eisenschitz is a film historian and translator who lives in Paris. He is the author of Nicholas Ray: An American Journey and Fritz Lang au travail. He has written, and occasionally made film essays, about Soviet and German cinema,...
Director and writer Bertrand Tavernier (1941–2021) made films including The Clockmaker (1974), ’Round Midnight (1986), and My Journey Through French Cinema (2016). He was the author of 50 ans de cinéma américain (with Jean-Pierre Coursodon); Amis américains, entretiens avec les...
On the Channel
Sep 18, 2025 — This month’s programs offer a feast of horror, including a John Carpenter retrospective and a collection of the most terrifying films of the 2000s.
The Daily
Jul 29, 2022 — We head back to the 1940s in Los Angeles, the 1960s in New York and Paris, and to every summer you remember.