Criterion Collection
Articles and Essays on Criterion Collection
Yojimbo (1961)
Every western audience should be able to recognize the theme in the beginning shots of Yojimbo, Akira Kurosawa’s most popular film in Japan. A ronin and a ‘man with no name’ played by the legendary Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, walks into what appears to be an abandoned village with dust and leaves blowing across a wide, empty street as […]
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Wages of Fear, The (1953)
In one of the most nerve-racking thrillers ever made, Henry-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is like a full frontal assault on a viewers senses with its heart pounding suspense and unrelenting tension. Four men drive two trucks of nitroglycerin three hundred miles across a hellish landscape full of potholes, rock-stewn passes, rickety bridges and dangerously tight turns to […]
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Rififi (1955)
American director Jules Dassin has crafted one of the greatest French heist thrillers of all time with Rififi, creating a noir gangster story constructed around a 33 minute safe cracking sequence, which was duplicated and copied several times after and yet never surpassed. The story of veteran criminals that gather a group of specialists together to carry out […]
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Nights of Cabiria (1957)
One of the great attributes in Federico Fellini’s tragic masterpiece Nights of Cabiria is the sensational performance by his wife and leading lady Giulietta Masina; who won the Best Actress award at the Cannes Film Festival. The way she manipulates her wide eyes, her large eyebrows and her walk and manner is a complete character performance and […]
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Wings of Desire (1987)
“Dedicated to all the former angels but especially to Yasujiro, Francois and Andrei…” German director Wim Wenders Wings of Desire is one of the most spiritual and poetic films ever made. When watching the hypnotic beauty of the film it quickly gets you seduced under it’s spell and you become entranced by its visual beauty and meditating power. The angels in the film are […]
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