The Criterion Collection
Production Notes
Jun 25, 2014 — Only a small fraction of the footage Peter Davis shot for Hearts and Minds made it into his 112-minute Academy Award–winning documentary on the Vietnam War. Davis and his crew filmed hundreds of hours in the United States, Vietnam, and...
Jun 2, 2014 — One Scene When I first heard about The Human Condition (1959–61), I was already familiar with director Masaki Kobayashi’s irreverent Harakiri (1962), a favorite film of mine where samurai are scum of the earth and honor is equivalent to dirt....
Apr 18, 2014 — Did You See This?• The best animated films of all time • Olivier Assayas, David Cronenberg, Mike Leigh, and others going to Cannes • Our Frances Ha essayist dances off with a Pulitzer! • British Pathé opens its vaults. •...
Production Notes
Apr 15, 2014 — In the 1950s, many Japanese directors made films that urgently reflected the postwar realities of their country, from economic struggle to nuclear fallout. Another common theme was the influence of American culture on Japan, as seen in films by Nagisa...
Feb 28, 2014 — The Great Beauty, which is up for best foreign-language film at Sunday’s Academy Awards, feels at times like a glorious throwback to a time when art-house cinema reigned. Feeling nostalgic for that era, when films by the great directors of world...
Sneak Peeks
Jan 29, 2014 — Thanks to Terence Davies’s distinctive filmmaking style, The Long Day Closes doesn’t quite feel like any other motion picture. This intensely moving, ethereal reverie on a brief happy period of the director’s often sad childhood in Liverpool during the fifties...
Short Takes
Nov 6, 2013 — Samuel Fuller and Vincent Price would seem to make an incongruous pair. The director’s gritty, unaffected sensibility might seem antithetical to the actor’s lofty, melodramatic approach to performance. But Price is delightful as the protagonist in Fuller’s second film, The...
Short Takes
Aug 7, 2013 — In 1958, in the midst of his most fecund cinematic period, Yasujiro Ozu made his first color film, the splendid Equinox Flower. Like so many of Ozu’s films, this poignant drama is about the subtly difficult emotional landscape navigated by...
Features
Jul 31, 2013 — The story of the author’s long correspondence with the silent film icon.
Jul 19, 2013 — Did You See This?• Rediscoveries at this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato festival • Unburied treasures of cinema past • Our fans amaze us. • Whit Stillman persuaded by Jane Austen • Hollis Frampton comes alive. • Curtis Harrington gets his...