The Criterion Collection
Sep 22, 2016 — In this 1979 French television interview, the Cat People director discusses Lewton’s creative idealism and the impact it had on his own pragmatic sensibility.
Sep 21, 2016 — An exhilarating blend of noir and splatter-flick tropes, the Coen brothers’ debut feature established their unique brand of cosmic fatalism.
Sep 20, 2016 — Cloaked in chiaroscuro and innuendo, this stylistically innovative creature feature leaves its greatest horrors to the imagination.
Features
Sep 19, 2016 — If you consider noir as a global phenomenon, then films like Julien Duvivier’s Pépé le moko (1937), Jean Renoir’s La bête humaine (1938), and Carné’s Port of Shadows (1938) may be the first full harvest of this bitter crop.
Visual Analysis
Sep 19, 2016 — Featuring commentary by the Coens, Sonnenfeld, and actor Frances McDormand, this video, created by photographer Grant Delin, highlights the careful planning that went into the film’s construction.
Sep 16, 2016 — Did You See This? Over at The Quietus, director Joe Dante selects his thirteen favorite films, including David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels, and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be. Angelo Badalamenti sits down with Vulture...
Sneak Peeks
Sep 16, 2016 — Critic Phillip Lopate explores the duality of the director’s approach to his female protagonists and asks whether his films are proto- or antifeminist.
Short Takes
Sep 15, 2016 — From its formal and technical complexity to its potent social commentary, Mizoguchi’s early-career masterpiece The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum offers a rich learning experience for directors seeking to hone their craft.
Sneak Peeks
Sep 14, 2016 — Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns unpacks the significance of Zatoichi’s name and the strict social hierarchy that the character so gleefully upends.
Sep 12, 2016 — During a research mission to Spain, Criterion web producer/researcher Valeria Rotella takes a day trip to the medieval desert town of Chinchón, where Orson Welles is rumored to have shot Chimes at Midnight and The Immortal Story.