The Criterion Collection

This Labor Day weekend, many art-house cinemas and film museums are hitting the open road just like the rest of us. The all-American yearning for that wide highway of possibilities is writ large this week on screens across the country—and is vast enough to make it all the way to Europe. Our weekly map to Criterion titles that may be playing at a theater near you begins with two days of Bob Rafelson’s gritty Five Easy Pieces, featuring Jack Nicholson as an icon of commitment phobia en route to nowhere, at Columbus, Ohio’s Wexner Center for the Arts (September 3 and 4). Sixties and seventies American alienation also turns up in Detroit and Seattle (Dazed and Confused is playing at the Landmark theaters the Main Art, September 3–5, and the Metro, September 8, respectively), and Vienna, where Dennis Hopper’s cataclysmic crowd-pleaser Easy Rider (September 3) and Monte Hellman’s restrained race movie Two-Lane Blacktop (September 4), starring an elegantly laconic James Taylor, will screen as part of the Austrian Film Museum’s Auto-Kino series. Read more

Categories: Screenings

Lucky West Coasters can swoon to Rock Hudson on the big screen this coming week. Two magnificent melodramas from Douglas Sirk, All That Heaven Allows and Written on the Wind, will be splashed across screens at, respectively, Seattle’s Metro Landmark Theatre and San Francisco’s Castro Theater, both on Wednesday, September 1.

They’re just two of a handful of eye-popping color classics available from Criterion that will be playing theatrically over the next seven days. Moviegoers in Paris and London hankering for vivid Technicolor are in luck: the Cinémathèque française in Paris screens the sparkling comedy Heaven Can Wait on August 29 as part of a continuing Ernst Lubitsch series; the BFI Southbank in London will be showing a new digital restoration of Visconti’s lustrous The Leopard (pictured), starting August 27 and running all the way through September 29; then, as part of its Deborah Kerr retrospective, BFI will also present Powell and Pressburger’s dazzling tongue-in-cheek epic The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp on September 1. Read more

Categories: Screenings

Classic French auteurs dot the repertory house landscape this week, from early sound-cinema legends Réné Clair and Sacha Guitry to New Wave dam-breakers Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut. Let’s start at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where Guitry’s The Story of a Cheat (August 23 and 25) and Clair’s Under the Roofs of Paris (August 25 and 26) get rare big-screen showcases. Skipping ahead in time, we arrive in the early fifties, when Jacques Tati debuted the iconic title character of M. Hulot’s Holiday, playing at the Keene State College Film Society theater in Keene, New Hampshire (August 20–26), New York’s Symphony Space (August 21), and the Austin Paramount Theatre (August 24–25). The Paramount also catches up with Godard’s Breathless (August 20–22), which races across the screens at the Nashville Belcourt Theatre (August 20–26) and at London’s BFI Southbank (August 20–31), as well.

A different kind of New Waver, Eric Rohmer, continues to be celebrated at New York’s Walter Reade Theater (My Night at Maud’s, August 20–24; The Bakery Girl of Monceau and Suzanne’s Career, August 21; La collectionneuse [pictured] August 22; Love in the Afternoon, August 24; Claire’s Knee, August 25), as well as at Cambridge’s Harvard Film Archive (My Night at Maud’s, August 20; Claire’s Knee, August 21). Meanwhile, the second part of a summer Truffaut series comes to a close at the AFI Silver in Silver Springs, but not before giving The Last Metro its due (August 20, 22, and 25). Read more

Categories: Screenings

New York–area Eric Rohmer fans will have a lot to chat about this coming week: The Sign of Rohmer, the most complete North American retrospective of the French director’s work in more than a decade, begins August 18 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater. And heading up this outpouring of relationship sketches and historical dramas will be one of Rohmer’s very best, the sparkling 1969 hit My Night at Maud’s, in a weeklong run from the series’ opening day to August 24.

Simultaneously, romances from an artist of a different sort will be honored across the Atlantic, as a major retrospective of Ernst Lubitsch begins August 18 at the Swiss Cinematheque in Lausanne. First up is a tuneful trio of the German-born Hollywood director's groundbreaking early musicals, The Love Parade (August 18), Monte Carlo (August 19), and The Smiling Lieutenant (August 19). (New Yorkers can also take a ride on The Love Parade this week, as the Museum of Modern Art is showing it from August 18 to 20.)

On a less frothy tip, Berlin’s Kino Arsenal continues its Wim Wenders series, presenting some of the glorious usual suspects, Wings of Desire (August 17) and Paris, Texas (August 19), but also something a little less known, the director’s feature-length Ozu tribute, Tokyo-Ga (August 13), which is available from Criterion as a supplement on the special edition DVD of Ozu’s Late Spring.

Tokyo-Ga isn’t the only off-the-beaten-path Criterion treasure that’s screening somewhere this week: Lausanne’s Swiss Cinematheque patrons can breathe in René Clément’s vivid Émile Zola adaptation Gervaise (August 15 and 16); the Plaza Theatre in El Paso, Texas, blasts off with Seijun Suzuki’s Youth of the Beast as part of its continuing Plaza Classic Film Festival (August 13); the appropriately named Madcap Theatres in Tempe, Arizona, sets up House, Obayashi’s tirelessly nutty horror show (August 13 and 14); Kurosawa’s early, female-driven political saga No Regrets for Our Youth plays at Los Angeles’s UCLA Film and Television Archive (August 13); Abbas Kiarostami’s brilliant fiction-documentary whatsit Close-up graces Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (August 13 and 15); Guy Maddin’s wonderfully oddball thingamajig Brand Upon the Brain! lights up Cambridge’s historic Brattle Theater (August 19); and the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York, gets down and dirty with Takumi Furukawa’s double-and-triple-cross-bearing Cruel Gun Story (August 19).

What’s left? Oh, nothing but masterpieces, those building blocks of any cinematic education. Godard’s Breathless sprints from August 13 to August 19 at Portland, Oregon’s Cinema21, and also makes an appearance at the El Paso Plaza Theatre, along with Renoir’s The Rules of the Game, Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (also at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive on August 17), and Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes—the last of which also flits across the screen at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (August 15). Back in Lausanne, viewers can march along with Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (August 16 and 17), and in Columbus, Ohio, they can take a ride with De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves at the Wexner Center (August 19) . Kurosawa benchmarks abound as well: Ikiru (Nashville’s Belcourt Theatre, August 14–16); The Lower Depths (Silver Springs’ AFI Silver (August 14-17); Kagemusha (Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, August 16); Yojimbo (Ottawa’s Bytowne Cinema, August 16–17); Red Beard and Drunken Angel (Los Angeles’s UCLA Film and Television Archive, August 15 and 18); and Dodes’ka-den (Rochester, New York’s George Eastman House, August 19).

But let’s exit on an irreverent note with a couple of midnight showings: Wes Anderson’s wonderfully wiseass Rushmore at the Landmark Inwood in Dallas (August 13), and Richard Linklater’s tokin’ comedy, Dazed and Confused, at the Minneapolis Uptown Theatre (August 13–14).

Categories: Screenings

Let’s kick things off in the Lone Star State. The Plaza Classic Film Festival in El Paso, which presents great films the way they were meant to be seen at the city’s historic and newly restored Plaza Theatre, begins this week and runs until August 15. Mixed in among the festival’s vast program are a handful of Criterion favorites, ranging from New Wave chic to old-school horror: Cleo from 5 to 7 (August 7), Yojimbo (August 7), Stagecoach (August 8), Wild Strawberries (August 9), Charade (August 9), Rashomon (August 10), and Eyes Without a Face (August 12).

The Viz Theater in San Francisco’s Japantown has its own series of classics—specifically, Japanese films about World War II, including two by Kon Ichikawa, The Burmese Harp and Fires on the Plain, and one from Oshima, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence; the program runs August 7–12. From there, it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump to more Japanese cinema at Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archive, with Kurosawa’s High and Low (August 7) and Dodes’ka-den (August 11), and a short flight to Los Angeles’s UCLA Film & Television Archive for Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (August 6) and The Lower Depths (August 7). Read more

Categories: Screenings

There must be something in the air here in New York this week, because the breezy films of Sacha Guitry are making an appearance not only in our new Eclipse set but also on the big screen at the Museum of Modern Art. As part of their ongoing series French Comedy, Gaumont Style, a tribute to the world’s oldest movie company, MoMA is showing Guitry’s snappy costume comedy The Pearls of the Crown on August 1 and 2 and his romantic roundelay Quadrille on August 5. Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque is in a light Gallic mood as well, as their look back at Rohmer’s Moral Tales goes on, with screenings of My Night at Maud’s (July 30), La collectionneuse (July 31), and Claire’s Knee (August 5). TIFF also continues its retrospectives of Kurosawa and Pasolini with two very different films, Madadayo (August 2) and Salò (August 3), respectively.

Plenty of other Criterion titles are getting the big-screen treatment in the coming seven days. Moving east to west: Boston’s historic Brattle Theater is all hot and bothered with In the Mood for Love (August 5); New York’s Film Forum shows us that Lubitsch touch with The Smiling Lieutenant; the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theater in Rochester takes viewers to a mad, mad world with Time Bandits (August 3); Columbus’s Wexner Center shows its love for Italian cinema twice over with a double feature of Amarcord and Divorce Italian Style (August 5); Cleveland’s Institute of Art dances away with The Red Shoes (July 30–31); the Detroit Film Theatre throws a hell of a dinner party with Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel (July 31); Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center goes deep into the artist’s mind with a weeklong run of 8½ (July 30–August 5); Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts takes viewers to Paris (Breathless, July 30–August 1) and way out west (Stagecoach, August 1); and the Flicks in Boise resurrects Harry Lime for a showing of The Third Man (August 3).

Of course, it wouldn’t be a repertory roundup without a little (or a lot of) Kurosawa. Films from the timeless Japanese master can be viewed at Vancouver’s Pacific Cinematheque (The Bad Sleep Well, Dodes-ka’den, Kagemusha, The Lower Depths, July 30–August 5); St. Louis’s Webster University (Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Kagemusha, July 30–August 1); the AFI Silver Theatre in Silver Springs, Maryland (Red Beard, July 30–August 1); Ciné in Athens, Georgia (Seven Samurai, July 30–August 5); Nashville’s Belcourt Theater (I Live in Fear, July 31–August 2); Columbia, Missouri’s Ragtag Cinema (Ran, July 31); Berkeley’s Pacific Film Archives (Sanjuro and Scandal, July 31, and The Idiot, August 4); Rochester’s Dryden Theater at the George Eastman House (Stray Dog, August 5); and the Flicks in Boise (Ikiru, August 5).

A quick look over the Atlantic reveals that Renoir’s The Lower Depths is playing August 1 at Paris’s Cinémathèque française, where Bergman’s The Virgin Spring is also showing, on July 31. And one more out-of-this-world screening to note: The Man Who Fell to Earth beams down to London’s BFI Southbank on July 30 and 31, as part of their Film Science: Future Human series.

Categories: Screenings

This hot summer weekend, in many cities across North America, you’ll have a good chance to catch up on your big-screen Kurosawa. Look for centennial celebrations of the Japanese master in Vancouver (I Live in Fear, The Hidden Fortress, High and Low, and Dodes-ka’den at the Pacific Cinematheque, July 23–29); Toronto (Kagemusha at TIFF Cinematheque, July 25); Hartford, Connecticut (Rashomon at Trinity College’s Cinestudio, July 23–26); St. Louis (Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, High and Low, and Red Beard at Webster University, July 23–26); Silver Spring, Maryland (Yojimbo and Sanjuro at the AFI Silver Theatre, July 23–27); Cleveland (Stray Dog at the Cleveland Institute of Art, July 23–24); Nashville (Seven Samurai at the Belcourt Theatre, July 24–26); Berkeley (Yojimbo and One Wonderful Sunday at the Pacific Film Archive, July 24 and 28); and Boise (Fortress at The Flicks, July 29). And if you happen to live in Paris, the Cinémathèque française will also be happy to grant your Kurosawa wishes, with a full program all week long, ranging from The Most Beautiful to Ikiru.

Of course, other auteurs are getting their due in rep houses everywhere too. Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque inaugurates retrospectives on Catherine Breillat (Fat Girl, July 23) and Eric Rohmer (The Bakery Girl of Monceau and Suzanne’s Career,9 July 29); the Detroit Film Theatre goes Godardian with two weeks of Breathless (July 23–August 1); Pittsburgh’s Regent Square Theater has a Fellini fling with four days of 8½ (July 26–29); Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center gets up close and personal with Kiarostami (Close-up, July 23–28); and the Portland Art Museum’s Northwest Film Center swoons for Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (July 24–25).

There’s more: Torontonians, already blessed with choices, can savor Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House at the Bloor Cinema (July 23–29); Ohioans in Columbus can treat themselves to Alberto Lattuada’s dark and delirious Mafioso at the Wexner on July 29 (in a criminally awesome double feature with Bertolucci’s The Conformist); and New Yorkers can keep on going against the hagiographic grain at Anthology Film Archives’ Anti-Biopics series, with Robert Altman’s intense Nixon rant Secret Honor (July 23), Francesco Rosi’s headline-ripped Salvatore Giuliano (July 23), and Paul Schrader’s dazzlingly mounted Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (July 26).

Categories: Screenings

For today’s survey of films connected to the Criterion Collection that you can catch on the big screen over the coming week, let’s start right here at Manhattan’s Film Forum, where Janus Films’ Chaplin series premieres with a weeklong run of a new 35 mm print of The Circus. This retrospective of the work of “the greatest star the movies ever produced” (J. Hoberman) runs through August 3 and features all the delightful usual suspects, from City Lights to Limelight. Silence is also golden at San Francisco’s legendary Castro Theatre, which will host the fifteenth annual San Francisco Silent Film Festival. Screenings will include Benjamin Christensen’s diabolical 1922 witchcraft wonder Häxan (pictured), in a restored, tinted 35 mm print from the Swedish Film Institute and accompanied by the Matti Bye Ensemble, on Saturday, July 17. Read more

Categories: Screenings

Local repertory movie houses are magical places, and, with a wealth of fabulous summer series beginning all over North America, the coming week promises to be a great time to put yourself under their spell. Here are some films from the Criterion Collection that you can see in an air-conditioned theater over the next several days.

On the East Coast: Harvard Film Archive starts its monthlong series Nicholas Ray: Hollywood’s Last Romantic with a screening of Bigger Than Life, featuring a Q&A with the director’s widow, Susan Ray. Anthology Film Archives in New York goes against convention for Anti-biopics, showing such radical alternatives to bloated Hollywood hagiographies as Walker, Blaise Pascal, Secret Honor, and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. New York’s IFC Center begins a Yasujiro Ozu retrospective—running on weekends through November—that features the usual suspects (Early Summer, Late Spring) as well as some serious rarities (An Inn at Tokyo kicks it off this weekend). Meanwhile, Toronto’s TIFF Cinematheque eschews Ozu-like gentility with its series Pier Paolo Pasolini: The Poet of Contamination, beginning with the Anna Magnani tour de force Mamma Roma. Read more

Categories: Screenings