The Criterion Collection
Essays
Feb 16, 2004 — Henri-Georges Clouzot took the standard ingredients of the Continental-Films detective movies and used them to make something darker and more complex—to make, in fact, the first classic French film noir.
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...
Dec 30, 2003 — In 1936 the rise of Hitler in Germany and the Popular Front in France created within the French Left a new sense of solidarity with the Soviet Union. In that context the Russian immigrant producer Alexander Kamenka asked Jean Renoir...
Sep 29, 2003 — “Gray literature” is the term German film historians use to describe the material written purely for publicity purposes and made available to the press, but not meant for official publication. Often this gray literature, which is only accessible to film...
Sep 29, 2003 — Fassbinder had long dreamed of a “German Hollywood film.” He sought not only success with the audience, but also professionalism. The auteur film in its purest form is an attempt to abolish the division of labor: the filmmaker represents in...
Essays
Jun 23, 2003 — One of the most unusual features of Italian cinema of the late ’50s and ’60s is the way that it affords us multiple perspectives on the same event, namely the economic boom following the postwar recovery. Where the directors of...
Sep 23, 2002 — The theatricality of Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller makes the point that psychoanalysis is a sister to cinema rather than a rival.
Essays
Mar 4, 2002 — Wong Kar-wai’s biggest commercial success to date elevated him to the mainstream of international art house cinema, and it echoes the end of an era with pure melancholic power.