The Exam

Sep 15, 2008 — Max Ophuls’s ingenious tale of Viennese cafe society conveys both the transience of individual passions and the durability of passion itself as a motivating force in human behavior.

Jun 19, 2007 — One of the blessings (and curses) of working at Criterion is that every film we put out inspires a passionate response from someone, somewhere. Knowing how deeply people feel about a movie as I’m producing the DVD leads to some...

Apr 16, 2007 — Following debates about tensions between police and immigrant communities in France, director Mathieu Kassovitz began a public correspondence with the right-wing minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy.

Feb 12, 2007 — Vittorio De Sica’s seminal drama renounces “egoism” for collective concern, envisioning a cinema of impassioned social conscience.

Dec 30, 2003 — Akira Kurosawa was a man of his time, who participated fully in the artistic and intellectual world of Japan from the 1930s until his death in 1998. Although filmgoers may think of him in terms of the screen images he...

Aug 18, 2003 — Ingmar Bergman’s chamber film is his most concentrated inquiry into the significance of religion, and of Lutheranism specifically.

May 26, 2003 — Embracing the world while pretending to sneer at it, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s crime film is rich, deep, and wily.

May 26, 2003 — Derek Jarman’s early film epitomizes the despairing and angry mood of Britain in the mid-seventies—a country facing economic recession, virtual war with the IRA, and an uncertain post-imperial future.

Aug 20, 2001 — Before Lars von Trier, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson there was Carl Th. Dreyer. The first great film artist to pursue the ineffable in cinema, Dreyer gave depth to what early silent filmmakers innately understood yet took...

Jan 7, 1991 — Vittorio de Sica remembers the inspirations behind and the making of his classic film.