The Criterion Collection
Criterion Designs
Jan 22, 2014 — When it came time to assemble the Criterion release of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, using Jack’s classic art was a no-brainer, and we were thrilled to find the man himself willing to revisit the film and provide...
Dec 12, 2013 — A beloved filmmaker in India, the Bengali director Ritwik Ghatak digs into his region’s traumatic history in this epic melodrama.
Dec 3, 2013 — This scathing drama about a toxic society established Elio Petri as an important director of popular political entertainment in Italy.
Nov 18, 2013 — When Tokyo Story was released in late 1953, Western audiences were just being exposed to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa had made his breakthrough with Rashomon three years earlier, and Kenji Mizoguchi was moving to the forefront of the international festival...
Nov 11, 2013 — A boldly silent film in the talkie era, Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece has a grace that has never been equaled.
Short Takes
Nov 6, 2013 — Samuel Fuller and Vincent Price would seem to make an incongruous pair. The director’s gritty, unaffected sensibility might seem antithetical to the actor’s lofty, melodramatic approach to performance. But Price is delightful as the protagonist in Fuller’s second film, The...
Oct 24, 2013 — In John Cassavetes’s personal cinema, the director was always trying to break away from the formulas of Hollywood narrative, in order to uncover some fugitive truth about the way people behave. At the same time, he took seriously his responsibilities...
Oct 7, 2013 — René Clair, Fredric March, and Veronica Lake cast sensational spells in this screwball supernatural treat.
Aug 27, 2013 — Ernst Lubitsch’s World War II–era high-wire act is a profound take on the absurdity cruelty of civilization and a perfect black comedy to boot.
Essays
Aug 13, 2013 — John Frankenheimer burrows into the insidious side of the American sixties in his visually dazzling thriller.