Essential Arthouse

Essential Arthouse

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Essential Arthouse
  • The Rules of the Game
    Movie + 16 extras

    The Rules of the Game

    Movie + 16 extras

    Directed by Jean Renoir • 1939 • France
    Starring Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély

    Considered one of the greatest films ever made, THE RULES OF THE GAME (LA RÈGLE DU JEU), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend a...

  • Rashomon
    Movie + 9 extras

    Rashomon

    Movie + 9 extras

    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...

  • 8½
    Movie + 15 extras

    Movie + 15 extras

    Directed by Federico Fellini • 1963 • Italy
    Starring Marcello Mastroianni, Bruno Agostini, Sandra Milo

    Marcello Mastroianni plays Guido Anselmi, a director whose new project is collapsing around him, along with his life. One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini’s 8½ (Otto...

  • Chungking Express
    Movie + 9 extras

    Chungking Express

    Movie + 9 extras

    Criterion Collection Edition #453

    Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1994 • Hong Kong
    Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Faye Wong, Takeshi Kaneshiro

    The whiplash, double-pronged CHUNGKING EXPRESS is one of the defining works of 1990s cinema and the film that made Wong Kar Wai an instant icon. Two heartsick...

  • Seven Samurai
    Movie + 8 extras

    Seven Samurai

    Movie + 8 extras

    Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1954 • Japan
    Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima

    One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, SEVEN SAMURAI (SHICHININ NO SAMURAI) tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to pro...

  • Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

    Movie + 12 extras

    Directed by Chantal Akerman • 1975 • Belgium
    Starring Delphine Seyrig, Jan Decorte

    A singular work in film history, Chantal Akerman’s JEANNE DIELMAN, 23, QUAI DU COMMERCE, 1080 BRUXELLES meticulously details, with a sense of impending doom, the daily routine of a middle-aged widow, whose chores ...

  • Richard III
    Movie + 3 extras

    Richard III

    Movie + 3 extras

    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...

  • Alexander Nevsky
    Movie + 1 extra

    Alexander Nevsky

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Sergei Eisenstein • 1938 • Soviet Union
    Starring Nikolai Cherkasov, Nikolai Okhlopkov, Andrei Abrikosov

    Eisenstein drew on history, Russian folk narratives, and the techniques of Walt Disney to create this broadly painted epic of Russian resilience. This story of Teutonic knights van...

  • When a Woman Ascends the Stairs

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1960 • Japan
    Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Reiko Dan

    WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS might be Japanese filmmaker Mikio Naruse’s finest hour, a delicate, devastating study of a woman, Keiko (played heartbreakingly by Hideko Takamine), who works as a bar hoste...

  • Happy Together
    Movie + 3 extras

    Happy Together

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Wong Kar Wai • 1997 • Hong Kong
    Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing

    One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheun...

  • Vagabond
    Movie + 6 extras

    Vagabond

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Agnès Varda • 1985 • France
    Starring Sandrine Bonnaire, Macha Méril, Stéphane Freiss

    Sandrine Bonnaire won the Best Actress César for her portrayal of the defiant young drifter Mona, found frozen to death in a ditch at the beginning of VAGABOND. Agnès Varda pieces together Mona’s sto...

  • The Battle of Algiers
    Movie + 12 extras

    The Battle of Algiers

    Movie + 12 extras

    Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo • 1966 • Algeria, Italy
    Starring Brahim Haggiag, Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef

    One of the most influential political films in history, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, by Gillo Pontecorvo, vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the o...

  • Jules and Jim
    Movie + 14 extras

    Jules and Jim

    Movie + 14 extras

    Directed by François Truffaut • 1962 • France
    Starring Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre

    Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, JULES AND JIM charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffau...

  • The Crime of Monsieur Lange

    Movie + 1 extra

    Directed by Jean Renoir • 1936 • France
    Starring René Lefèvre, Florelle, Jules Berry

    An oft-overlooked jewel from Jean Renoir, this exuberant ode to working-class solidarity is both one of the director’s most thoroughly charming works as well as one of his most sly political statements. Channeli...

  • Bicycle Thieves
    Movie + 6 extras

    Bicycle Thieves

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Vittorio De Sica • 1948 • Italy
    Starring Lamberto Maggiorani, Enzo Staiola, Lianella Carell

    Hailed around the world as one of the greatest movies ever made, the Academy Award-winning BICYCLE THIEVES, directed by Vittorio De Sica, defined an era in cinema. In poverty-stricken postwar ...

  • Sansho the Bailiff
    Movie + 5 extras

    Sansho the Bailiff

    Movie + 5 extras

    Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi • 1954 • Japan
    Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyoko Kagawa

    When an idealistic governor disobeys the reigning feudal lord, he is cast into exile, his wife and children left to fend for themselves and eventually wrenched apart by vicious slave traders. Under...

  • Smiles of a Summer Night

    Movie + 2 extras

    Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1955 • Sweden
    Starring Ulla Jacobsson, Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson

    After fifteen films that received mostly local acclaim, the comedy SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT at last ushered in an international audience for Ingmar Bergman. In turn-of-the-century Sweden, four men...

  • Black Narcissus
    Movie + 6 extras

    Black Narcissus

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger • 1947 • United Kingdom
    Starring Deborah Kerr, Sabu, David Farrar

    This explosive work about the conflict between the spirit and the flesh is the epitome of the sensuous style of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. A group of nuns—played by som...

  • Pickpocket
    Movie + 7 extras

    Pickpocket

    Movie + 7 extras

    Directed by Robert Bresson • 1959 • France
    Starring Martin LaSalle, Marika Green, Pierre Leymarie

    This incomparable story of crime and redemption from the French master Robert Bresson follows Michel, a young pickpocket who spends his days working the streets, subway cars, and train stations of P...

  • Sawdust and Tinsel
    Movie + 3 extras

    Sawdust and Tinsel

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1953 • Sweden
    Starring Åke Grönberg, Harriet Andersson

    Ingmar Bergman presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival of humiliation in SAWDUST AND TINSEL, one of the master’s most vivid early works and his first of many collaborations with the g...

  • Beauty and the Beast
    Movie + 8 extras

    Beauty and the Beast

    Movie + 8 extras

    Criterion Collection Edition #6

    Jean Cocteau’s sublime adaptation of Mme. Leprince de Beaumont’s fairy-tale masterpiece—in which the pure love of a beautiful girl melts the heart of a feral but gentle beast—is a landmark of motion picture fantasy, with unforgettably romantic performances by Jean...

  • The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

    Movie + 4 extras

    Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1972 • West Germany
    Starring Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake

    In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional regi...

  • The Wages of Fear
    Movie + 8 extras

    The Wages of Fear

    Movie + 8 extras

    Directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot • 1953 • France
    Starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter Van Eyck

    In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive...

  • Children of Paradise
    Movie + 8 extras

    Children of Paradise

    Movie + 8 extras

    Directed by Marcel Carné • 1945 • France
    Starring Arletty, Jean-Louis Barrault, Pierre Brasseur

    Poetic realism reached sublime heights with CHILDREN OF PARADISE, widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimon...