The Criterion Collection
May 21, 2020 — Judy O’Brien, a ballerina working in a burlesque show to make ends meet, has finally had enough. In the middle of an especially humiliating performance, the audience’s jeering reaches such a peak that she stops, walks down center stage, hands...
May 18, 2020 — It’s hard to imagine Hollywood without Frances Marion. The story of the screenwriter’s career is entwined with the story of Hollywood itself, from its pioneer days to the Golden Age. Part of Marion’s skill as a writer was how her...
Essays
May 12, 2020 — In the early 1950s, director John Sturges, then under contract at MGM, read a condensed version of Paul Brickhill’s memoir The Great Escape, which details the mass escape of downed fighter pilots from the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III...
The Daily
May 8, 2020 — More highlights include a dossier on Hong Sang-soo, a letter from Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Barry Jenkins’s conversation with the young stars of Never Rarely Sometimes Always.
May 8, 2020 — The opening and closing credits in a film are a form of housekeeping, fulfilling a legal obligation to compile the names of cast and crew who made the final product possible. Visionary designer Saul Bass saw the aesthetic potential in...
Features
May 4, 2020 — “You’ve never seen prairie grass with the wind leaning on it, have you, Diz?”Jean Arthur asks this poetic, expressively peculiar question of Thomas Mitchell in Frank Capra’s 1939 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and we understand her yearning for truth...
On the Channel
Apr 30, 2020 — Check out what’s in store next month on our streaming service!
The Daily
Apr 29, 2020 — The actor best known for his work with Danny Boyle, Ang Lee, Asif Kapadia, and Ritesh Batra was only fifty-three.
The Daily
Apr 24, 2020 — Paul Schrader and Petra Costa are among the filmmakers determined to make the most of what they’ve got during lockdown.