The Criterion Collection
Essays
Dec 9, 1991 — We used as much of the actual detail of physical things and of technique as we could possibly cram in, and as many players reflecting the endless variety of character and emotion of the real men as dramatization would allow.
Essays
May 12, 2020 — In the early 1950s, director John Sturges, then under contract at MGM, read a condensed version of Paul Brickhill’s memoir The Great Escape, which details the mass escape of downed fighter pilots from the German prisoner-of-war camp Stalag Luft III...
The actor and director shares his intimate connections to Eating Raoul and The Great Escape, explains what defines “the Lubitsch touch,” and praises the heartrending performances in The Last Picture Show.
The actor and musician shares his love for Tom Waits in Down by Law, reminisces about watching The Brood in the cinema as a child, and champions the rebellious spirit of The Great Escape.
Mar 22, 2022 — In Robert Aldrich’s epic disaster film, James Stewart leads a pack of temperamentally different men as they struggle to survive in the face of the unknown—a template that would go on to influence Hollywood blockbusters for decades to come.
The Daily
Mar 2, 2018 — New York. MoMA’s retrospective El Indio: The Films of Emilio Fernández is on through March 13. “With his longtime artistic comrade, the great cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa, Fernández directed the movies that gave arthouse audiences worldwide their vision of post-colonial Mexico...
The Daily
Jul 15, 2017 — “The film’s tag line was ‘They share the same body . . . but hate each other’s guts!’ I was told that the timing was a coincidence, but even before the film began it was clear that this was a...
Aug 12, 1991 — It is 1945. For the first time in four years, the Southern Pacific stops in Black Rock. A one-armed man named John J. MacReedy (Spencer Tracy) steps off the train. This brooding stranger makes the few residents who inhabit the...
Feb 11, 2008 — Though today he is most fondly remembered for his later romantic comedies, typifying Hollywood filmmaking in its heyday, it should be known that Ernst Lubitsch was also a pioneer of the modern movie musical.
A delicate hand, effervescent humor, and an economy with words and images define this German director, who became a legendary figure in Hollywood comedy.