The Criterion Collection
Feb 12, 2007 — Vittorio De Sica’s seminal drama renounces “egoism” for collective concern, envisioning a cinema of impassioned social conscience.
Nov 26, 2019 — Bette Davis gets the first laugh in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950), and a little over two hours later, she gets the last laugh too. The film opens at the dinner for something called the Sarah Siddons Award...
Jun 12, 2017 — Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.
Nov 8, 2010 — To say that Lars von Trier deals in provocation and controversy is like saying John Ford made westerns: obviously true, but far from giving a measure of the director’s importance. Ever since The Element of Crime polarized critics at Cannes...
Essays
May 15, 2000 — Vagabond has been called Agnès Varda’s Ulysses, and with good reason. The comparison with James Joyce’s era-defining epic novel extends well beyond a recognizable similarity between the two artists. Both writer and filmmaker occupy vanguard positions in the history of...
Nov 18, 2025 — Though the first two decades of the Iranian filmmaker’s career have long been underappreciated, this fertile period yielded philosophical and restlessly innovative works that reinvigorated both documentary and narrative-fiction cinema.
The Daily
Jul 26, 2022 — The festival selects urgent documentaries, starry portraits, and family dramas.
On the Channel
Feb 24, 2022 — Next month on the Criterion Channel, we’re pushing the envelope with a series of the pre-Code films made by Paramount Pictures, a centenary tribute to Pier Paolo Pasolini, and a collection of groundbreaking concert documentaries.
Essays
Jan 20, 2026 — The constant negotiation of routine pleasure and profound sorrow—the experience of being human—is at the heart of John Huston’s final film, an exquisite adaptation of James Joyce’s classic short story.
The Daily
Feb 14, 2024 — Portraits of Stanley Kubrick and Agnès Varda, a memoir from Ed Zwick, and a history of Blaxploitation are among the highlights.