The Criterion Collection
Dec 30, 2016 — Did You See This? Richard Adams, the author of the beloved 1972 children’s novel Watership Down, passed away this week at the age of ninety-six. Adams’s best-selling book, which grapples with themes of political upheaval and ecological destruction through the...
Aug 23, 2016 — Tony Richardson’s era-defining exploration of sexuality, race, and working-class life brought a uniquely female perspective to England’s Free Cinema movement.
Sneak Peeks
Jul 1, 2015 — Beautiful and strange from beginning to end, Jaromil Jireš’s Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is a film like no other. It’s fairy tale, horror movie, and coming-of-age story all at once, like Alice in Wonderland with medieval and religious...
Jan 8, 2013 — 01 Because it’s the purest American road movie ever. 02 Because it’s like a drive-in movie directed by a French new wave director. 03 Because the only thing that can get between a boy and his car obsession is a...
Jun 28, 2011 — Black Moon may well deserve the title of Louis Malle’s film maudit. The release in September 1975 of what he called his “mythological fairy tale taking place in the near future” disconcerted many, especially as people had expected him to...
With her mix of sultry glamour and no-nonsense wit, Jeanne Moreau has been the embodiment of intelligent French moviestardom for six decades. The Paris-born daughter of a Folies Bergère dancer and a restaurateur, Moreau started out as a stage actress...
Sep 19, 2005 — When I was a teenage cinephile, in the mid-1970s, Masculin féminin was enormously significant to me. It represented France’s nouvelle vague of the sixties, with its youthful, anarchic spirit of freedom and spontaneity. It was in black and white and...
The singer-songwriter reminisces about the pleasure of discovering Czechoslovak New Wave films on trips to the video store, shares why Moonstruck ignited her Nicolas Cage fandom, and praises the use of classical music in The Piano Teacher.
The actor selects Czechoslovak New Wave favorites by Miloš Forman and Věra Chytilová, shares her love for British realism and A Taste of Honey, and talks about Agnès Varda’s daring depictions of womanhood.
Jonathan Owen is a writer and researcher specializing in Eastern and Central European cinema, avant-gardes, and cult film. He is the author of Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties (2011) and the coeditor of A Reader...