The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 17, 2020 — Consider Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) as a very promiscuous romance picture above anything else—even if not all of its many objects of affection are what you might call properly human and there is no...
Aug 8, 2017 — This underappreciated highlight of Michael Curtiz’s filmography grapples with postwar disillusionment and marital strife through the prism of a daylight noir.
Essays
Jan 7, 2020 — Understudies everywhere should take heart at the tale of Katharine Hepburn’s long history with the role of Linda Seton, the high-spirited but reclusive heiress she plays in George Cukor’s 1938 Holiday. When the Philip Barry play the film is based...
Mar 9, 2021 — “Oral tradition is a tradition of images. What is said is stronger than what is written; the word addresses itself to the imagination, not the ear. Imagination creates the image and the image creates cinema, so we are in direct...
Aug 14, 2019 — There is a scene in Henry King’s State Fair (1933) that ranks among the most poetic moments in all of 1930s American cinema. There is not much to it, just a family driving through the dusk in their rattling pickup...
Apr 12, 2011 — With his 1970 gangster epic Le cercle rouge, Jean-Pierre Melville finally landed his white whale.
The Daily
May 22, 2020 — This week’s round features the story behind John Cassavetes’s debut feature and conversations with Dan Sallitt and Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The Daily
Mar 6, 2026 — Jonathan Rosenbaum returns to the Reader, there’s a new Cineaste, plus: Hiroshi Shimizu, John Akomfrah, and Robert Vas.
The Daily
Jan 16, 2024 — The festival will premiere ten new restorations as well as Martin Scorsese’s journey through the work of Powell and Pressburger.
Nov 15, 2022 — A box-office success that buoyed Hong Kong’s beleaguered movie industry in the early 2000s, this suite of crime films combines narrative intricacy and moral complexity with an abundance of megastar charisma.