The Swissmakers

Jun 2, 2015 — Having made such urgent, ripped-from-the-headlines, international dramas as Z, The Confession, State of Siege, and Missing, it stands to reason that the Greek director Costa-Gavras is often referred to as a political filmmaker. But in this excerpt from a wide-ranging...

Jun 1, 2015 — A legionnaire turned fruit seller misses out on Germany’s economic miracle in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s breakthrough melodrama.

May 29, 2015 — A shocking chapter of Soviet Czechoslovakian history is dramatized in Costa-Gavras’s controversial follow-up to Z.

May 28, 2015 — We sat down with the eminent German cinema scholar Eric Rentschler for a new interview about The Merchant of Four Seasons, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first Douglas Sirk–inspired film. In this excerpt, Rentschler describes the major turning point the movie represented...

May 27, 2015 — You may not know his name, but Raoul Coutard is a crucial figure in modern cinema. A war photographer turned cinematographer, he was the camera man of choice for many directors of the French New Wave, shooting an astonishing array...

May 22, 2015 — A music star burns brightly and flames out beautifully in Mark Rydell’s visceral rock-and-roll film, starring a sensational Bette Midler.

May 20, 2015 — We were thrilled to sit down with the iconic Bette Midler about her dazzling breakthrough performance as a Janis Joplin–esque rock star at the end of her rope in The Rose, a wild, energetic turn that was the result of...

Apr 29, 2015 — Peter Yates's crime drama is a haunting, singular experience, brutal and minutely observed, with a remarkably authentic sense of place.

Apr 22, 2015 — Knowing Martin Scorsese was a fan of Jean Renoir’s India-set The River, we asked him to record an introduction when we first released it in 2004 (since then, he even included it in his Criterion Top 10, calling it “a...

Apr 20, 2015 — "Afilm about India without elephants and tiger hunts”—this was how Jean Renoir described his objective in making The River. Guided by Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel, he rejected the India of exotic action and spectacle to make a meditative, almost mystical...