In 1990, Martin Scorsese founded an organization whose stated mission told the world, in no uncertain terms, that movies matter, that the art of cinema and its history is a legacy worth preserving. Three decades later, The Film Foundation is an indispensable pillar of moving-image culture, helping to make possible over 850 restorations so far and raising much-needed awareness of the necessity of film preservation as central to the safeguarding of our cultural heritage. In recognition of thirty years of vital work, the Criterion Channel looks back at a selection of the many brilliant films that, thanks to the efforts of The Film Foundation, have been rescued from the ravages of time for future generations to discover. This series will expand over the next year, with new additions to be announced monthly.
In the following conversation, recorded remotely in 2020, filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Ari Aster discuss the mission, evolution, and ongoing work of The Film Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving motion-picture history that Scorsese established in 1990.
Directed by Maurice Tourneur • 1919 • United States
Starring Lew Cody, Mary Alden, Pauline Starke
Unseen for one hundred years until its recent restoration, this lost-and-found romantic melodrama from silent-cinema master Maurice Tourneur follows the fortunes of Marcene Elliot (Pauline Starke), ...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock • 1929 • United Kindgom
Starring Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, John Longden
Alfred Hitchcock’s—and Britain’s—first talkie finds the director using sound technology as inventively as he used the camera. Anny Ondra (prototype for the many Hitchcock blondes to come) play...
Directed by Frank Borzage • 1932 • United States
Starring Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes, Adolphe Menjou
Classic Hollywood’s arch-poet of romantic mysticism, Frank Borzage, transforms Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel into a feverish paean to the transcendent power of love. Gary Cooper is the troubl...
Directed by William A. Seiter • 1933 • United States
Starring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charley Chase
Legendary comedy team Laurel and Hardy’s finest feature finds the pair going to elaborate lengths to deceive their disapproving wives in order to attend the annual convention of their Shriners-...
Directed by Jean Vigo • 1934 • France
In Jean Vigo's hands, an unassuming tale of conjugal love becomes an achingly romantic reverie of desire and hope. Jean (Jean Dasté), a barge captain, marries Juliette (Dita Parlo), an innocent country girl, and the two climb aboard Jean's boat, the L'Atalan...
Directed by Juan Bustillo Oro • 1934 • Mexico
Starring Víctor Urruchúa, Carlos Villatoro, Magda Haller
This vividly stylized, broodingly intense early Mexican sound melodrama by Juan Bustillo Oro hinges on an audacious flashback structure. When an ailing monk recognizes a new brother at his cloi...
Directed by Lewis Milestone • 1939 • United States
Starring Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field
George and Lennie are California migrant workers on the run from the law because of something the simple-minded giant Lennie did. They find work at a local ranch, where they dream of making ...
Directed by John Ford • 1940 • United States
Starring John Wayne, Ward Bond, Ian Hunter
Shot in stunning chiaroscuro by master cinematographer Gregg Toland, THE LONG VOYAGE HOME is John Ford’s and screenwriter Dudley Nichols’s lyrical adaptation of four one-act plays by Eugene O’Neill, distilled...
Directed by John Ford • 1941 • United States
Starring Walter Pidgeon, Maureen O’Hara, Donald Crisp
John Ford’s majestically moving portrait of a Welsh coal-mining family unfolds from the perspective of its youngest son, Huw (Roddy McDowall), as he looks back on his hardscrabble Victorian-era chi...
Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1948 • United Kingdom
Starring Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring
THE RED SHOES, the singular fantasia from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, is cinema’s quintessential backstage drama, as well as one of the most glorious Tech...
Directed by Abraham Polonsky • 1948 • United States
Starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Marie Windsor
In this expressively tough and terse noir classic, shady lawyer Joe Morse (John Garfield) joins forces with a ruthless gangster (Roy Roberts) to consolidate control of the numbers racket in Ne...
Directed by Max Ophuls • 1949 • United States
Starring James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan
One of the outstanding and often overlooked films that the legendary European filmmaker Max Ophuls (THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE . . .) made during his Hollywood exile is a visually superb, noir-ting...
Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, RASHOMON is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accou...
Directed by Jean Renoir • 1951 • France, United Kingdom, India, United States
Starring Nora Swinburne, Esmond Knight, Arthur Shields
Director Jean Renoir’s entrancing first color feature, shot entirely on location in India, is a visual tour de force. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the fi...
Directed by Albert Lewin • 1951 • United States
Starring James Mason, Ava Gardner
This timeless romance based on the legend of the Flying Dutchman features sumptuous color cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Ava Gardner, one of the most beautiful screen goddesses of all time, plays Pandora, a wom...
Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi • 1953 • Japan
Starring Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Kinuyo Tanaka
By the time he made UGETSU, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ...
Directed by Luchino Visconti • 1954 • Italy
Starring Alida Valli, Farley Granger
This lush, Technicolor tragic romance from Luchino Visconti stars Alida Valli as a nineteenth-century Italian countess who, during the Austrian occupation of her country, puts her marriage and political principle...
Directed by Federico Fellini • 1954 • Italy
There has never been a face quite like that of Giulietta Masina. Her husband, the legendary Federico Fellini, directs her as Gelsomina in La strada, the film that launched them both to international stardom. Gelsomina is sold by her mother into the emp...
Directed by Vittorio De Seta • 1954 • Italy
This prize-winning short is a poetic portrait of life on the coast of Sicily before, during, and following a volcanic eruption.
Directed by Vittorio De Seta • 1954 • Italy
Vittorio De Seta’s rhythmic editing adds drama to this chronicle of a Sicilian spearfishing expedition.
Directed by Laurence Olivier • 1955 • United Kingdom
Starring Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Claire Bloom
In RICHARD III, director, producer, and star Laurence Olivier brings Shakespeare’s masterpiece of Machiavellian villainy to ravishing cinematic life. Olivier is diabolically captivat...
Directed by Vittorio De Seta • 1955 • Italy
Vittorio De Seta captures the music and pageantry of an Easter celebration in Sicily.
