The Criterion Collection
Essays
Nov 25, 2013 — He massages, he gambles, and he’s great with a blade. Who is this blind swordsman, anyway?
Jul 16, 2013 — Theater legend Peter Brook’s approach to bringing the classic fable about human savagery to the screen was radical in its straightforwardness.
Mar 12, 2013 — Working in America, German master Fritz Lang contributed to the anti-Nazi effort with this nightmarish, surreal tale of espionage.
Dec 7, 2010 — In 1981, it seemed to me that a new era of fantastic cinema was upon us.
Nov 28, 2010 — “What we need are good old American—and that’s not to be confused with European—Art Films.” So declared the then twenty-nine-year-old beatnik Method actor Dennis Hopper in an unpublished 1965 manifesto. “The whole damn country’s one big real place to utilize...
Aug 13, 2007 — Samuel Fuller knew how to handle a gun from his army days, and this experience colored all of his filmmaking, which he began at the age of thirty-six.
Apr 23, 2007 — Louis Malle’s documentary work adopts certain tenets of cinéma direct—improvisation, minimal crew, the refusal to organize reality—and applies them to a consistently class-conscious, outsider perspective.
Mar 14, 2005 — A director is naturally a man like everyone else. Yet his life isn’t normal. For us, seeing is a necessity. For a painter, too, the problem is to see. But while the painter has to discover a static reality, or...
Sep 29, 2003 — Rainer Werner Fassbinder dedicated his final energies to bringing the lost, gray years of postwar Germany back to life.
May 27, 2026 — When Joachim Trier made his debut in 2006 with the film Reprise, I felt as if a veil had been lifted. There was nothing wrong with Norwegian cinema before Trier’s arrival, but it always seemed to be about someone else,...