The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jan 26, 2010 — Roberto Rossellini’s second postwar film was released in the United States as Paisan, and one can understand why the distributors wanted to use a title familiar to many Americans as meaning “friend” or “countryman” for a work that is at...
Nov 2, 2009 — The following, written in 1986, is from the first treatment for Wings of Desire. And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!—Rilke, “The Eighth Elegy” At first it’s not possible to describe anything beyond a wish or a...
Essays
Jul 11, 2005 — Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s short story balances realism and fantasy.
Aug 12, 1991 — It is 1945. For the first time in four years, the Southern Pacific stops in Black Rock. A one-armed man named John J. MacReedy (Spencer Tracy) steps off the train. This brooding stranger makes the few residents who inhabit the...
The Daily
Nov 26, 2018 — The cinematographer-turned-director reinvigorated British cinema with bold color and nonlinear storytelling.
Mar 18, 2003 — Director William Dieterle’s 1941 film adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster” is a melodramatic fever dream, a hallucinatory tour de force.
Nov 25, 2025 — Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella Traumnovelle, Stanley Kubrick’s final film is a deeply personal examination of the fragility of marriage and the destructive power of sexual fantasy.
The Daily
Mar 10, 2025 — The Museum of the Moving Image’s annual showcase of “adventurous new cinema” is on from Wednesday through Sunday.
The Daily
Apr 10, 2024 — Oksana Karpovych’s second feature juxtaposes images of a ravaged Ukraine with the voices of Russian soldiers.
The Daily
May 19, 2023 — Take a break from Cannes with Eric Rohmer, the Dardennes, Patrice Chéreau, Joanna Hogg, and Matthew Barney.