The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jul 14, 2026 — In May of 1962, when Martin Ritt arrived in the Texas Panhandle town of Claude to begin filming Hud, he may have sensed that his career was about to change. Hud would be Ritt’s ninth feature but his first personal...
May 27, 2026 — Is it possible to look without trying to grasp the object of one’s gaze? Traditional ethnographic documentaries, much like the written ethnographies that preceded them, have attempted to explain a given culture to those who don’t belong to it, assuming...
May 26, 2026 — Women’s hands dance over typewriter keys. The percussive racket they make, like the tapping of an unruly chorus line, takes the place of music during the opening credits of The Office Wife (1930), which appear over a montage of female...
Essays
May 26, 2026 — Of all the performing arts, stand-up comedy may be the most ephemeral, even more so if the humor is considered dangerous or taboo. Stand-up relies on the charged dynamic between a comedian and an audience, with both sides often bringing...
May 19, 2026 — “My history’s burning up out here,” Ned Racine (William Hurt) tells his lover in the opening minutes of Lawrence Kasdan’s directorial debut, Body Heat (1981). Ned, a small-time attorney and local roué in his South Florida beach town, recognizes the...
Jun 17, 2025 — Drawing from over a dozen hours of black-and-white footage, Direct Cinema pioneer Charlotte Zwerin created this elliptical and moving portrait of one of American music’s most original artists.
Aug 28, 2024 — Albert Brooks and Debbie Reynolds are at their comedic best in this tale of parent-child bonding filled with Oedipal humor and emotional insight.
Apr 25, 2023 — In his second Palme d’Or–winning film, Ruben Östlund uses familiar reality-television tropes to stage a deeply unnerving spectacle of obscene wealth and class outrage.
Apr 25, 2023 — Steve McQueen’s monumental, five-film portrait of London’s West Indian community is a howl of endorsement for political resistance and a vivid indictment of institutional malaise.
Jul 13, 2022 — Stylistically informed by film noir, Martin Scorsese’s searing drama plumbs male violence and rage through a boxing champ’s self-destruction.