Directed by René Clair • 1931 • France
Starring Raymond Cordy, Henri Marchand, Rolla France

One of the all-time comedy classics, René Clair’s À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ tells the story of Louis, an escaped convict who becomes a wealthy industrialist. Unfortunately, his past returns (in the form of old ja...

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...

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...

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...

Directed by Charles Chaplin • 1942 • United States
Starring Charles Chaplin, Georgia Hale, Mack Swain

Charlie Chaplin’s comedic masterwork—which charts a prospector’s search for fortune in the Klondike and his discovery of romance (with the beautiful Georgia Hale)—forever cemented the iconic sta...

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1964 • Italy
Starring Monica Vitti, Richard Harris

Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960s panoramas of contemporary alienation were decade-defining artistic events, and RED DESERT, his first color film, is perhaps his most epochal. This provocative look at the spirit...

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 ...

Directed by Andrzej Żuławski • 1981 • France, West Germany
Starring Isabelle Adjani, Sam Neill, Heinz Bennent

Andrzej Żuławski’s stunningly choreographed nightmare of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other. Professional spy Mark (Sam Neill) returns to his West Berlin home to fin...

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...

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...

Directed by Alain Resnais • 1959 • France, Japan
Starring Emmanuelle Riva, Eiji Okada

A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a ...

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...

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...

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...

Directed by Ingmar Bergman • 1957 • Sweden
Starring Max von Sydow, Inga Landgré, Gunnar Björnstrand

Returning exhausted from the Crusades to find medieval Sweden gripped by the Plague, a knight (Max von Sydow) suddenly comes face-to-face with the hooded figure of Death, and challenges him to a g...

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...

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 ...

Directed by William Dieterle • 1941 • United States
Starring Edward Arnold, Walter Huston, James Craig

Jabez Stone is a hardworking farmer trying to make an honest living, but a streak of bad luck tempts him to do the unthinkable: bargain with the devil himself. In exchange for seven years of go...

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 Jane Campion • 1990 • New Zealand
Starring Kerry Fox, Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson

With AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jane Campion brought to the screen the harrowing autobiography of Janet Frame, New Zealand’s most distinguished author. Three actors in turn ...

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...

Directed by Mikio Naruse • 1955 • Japan
Starring Hideko Takamine, Masayuki Mori, Mariko Okada

“Short is the life of flowers, infinite their sorrows . . .” Director Mikio Naruse’s most famous film in Japan is a haunting portrait of obsessive love in a ruined world. Set amid the bombed-out landsca...

Directed by Jean Vigo • 1933 • France
Starring Jean Dasté, Gérard de Bédarieux, Louis Lefebvre

So effervescent and charming that one can easily forget its importance in film history, Jean Vigo’s enormously influential portrait of prankish boarding-school students is one of cinema’s great acts of...

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...