The Criterion Collection
Essays
Jun 27, 2005 — Like his earlier adaptations of Terence Rattigan plays, Anthony Asquith’s late work is bereft of heavy-handed directorial flourishes.
Jun 27, 2005 — Kô Nakahira’s taboo-busting melodrama heralded a reinvention of Japanese cinema.
Dec 6, 2004 — In his first freestanding biblical epic, Cecil B. DeMille recognized and revered a profound quality in the American soul—its ability to leap over every contradiction through an invincible sense of its own righteousness.
Essays
Sep 13, 2004 — The following piece by Sony Pictures Classics cofounder and copresident Michael Barker, who picked up Slacker for Orion Classics in 1991, originally appeared in the program for the 2001 Austin Film Society event Slacker: A Ten-Year Reunion. What I’ve found...
Essays
Jun 21, 2004 — Nouvelle vague euphoria was at its height when Jean-Luc Godard made his enormously clever third feature.
Essays
May 24, 2004 — By piling on naturalistic details to keep the heat constantly in our minds, Akira Kurosawa creates a visual and behavioral excess that highlights the fixation of his hero on retrieving his stolen gun.
Mar 13, 2004 — With uncharacteristic warmth and affection for human frailty, Ingmar Bergman raises the question of how love can possibly last forever.
Essays
Feb 23, 2004 — Laurence Olivier’s last entry in his trilogy of Shakespeare films is the crowning glory of the British studio system and the end of the great cycle of British films aimed at international audiences.
Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.
May 26, 2003 — Transcription of a speech given by long-time Derek Jarman collaborator and friend, actress Tilda Swinton