Essential Arthouse

Essential Arthouse

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Essential Arthouse
  • The Adventures of Antoine Doinel

    2 seasons

    The irrepressible Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as François Truffaut’s alter ego across four landmark films of the French New Wave.

  • An Angel at My Table
    Movie + 5 extras

    An Angel at My Table

    Movie + 5 extras

    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 ...

  • 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...

  • Daisies
    Movie + 7 extras

    Daisies

    Movie + 7 extras

    Directed by Věra Chytilová • 1966 • Czechoslovakia
    Starring Ivana Karbanová, Jitka Cerhová, Marie Češková

    If the entire world is bad, why shouldn’t we be? Adopting this insolent attitude as their guiding philosophy, a pair of hedonistic young women (Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová), both named...

  • Close-up
    Movie + 6 extras

    Close-up

    Movie + 6 extras

    Directed by Abbas Kiarostami • 1990 • Iran
    Starring Hossein Sabzian, Abolfazi Ahankhah, Mahrokh Ahankhah

    Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and CLOSE-UP is his most radical, brilliant...

  • The Gold Rush
    Movie + 6 extras

    The Gold Rush

    Movie + 6 extras

    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...

  • 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 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...

  • Touchez pas au grisbi
    Movie + 4 extras

    Touchez pas au grisbi

    Movie + 4 extras

    Directed by Jacques Becker • 1954 • France
    Starring Jean Gabin, René Dary, Paul Frankeur

    Jean Gabin is at his most wearily romantic as aging gangster Max le Menteur in the Jacques Becker gem TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (“Hands Off the Loot”). Having pulled off the heist of a lifetime, Max looks forwar...

  • Floating Clouds
    Movie + 1 extra

    Floating Clouds

    Movie + 1 extra

    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...

  • 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...

  • Hiroshima mon amour
    Movie + 11 extras

    Hiroshima mon amour

    Movie + 11 extras

    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 ...

  • 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...

  • The Seventh Seal
    Movie + 6 extras

    The Seventh Seal

    Movie + 6 extras

    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...

  • Zéro de conduite
    Movie + 4 extras

    Zéro de conduite

    Movie + 4 extras

    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...

  • 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...

  • I Knew Her Well
    Movie + 3 extras

    I Knew Her Well

    Movie + 3 extras

    Directed by Antonio Pietrangeli • 1965 • Italy
    Starring Stefania Sandrelli, Mario Adorf, Jean-Claude Brialy

    Following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE’s Stefania Sandrelli) as she chases her dreams in the Rome of LA DOLCE VITA, I KNEW HER WELL is at once a delight...

  • La Jetée
    Movie + 7 extras

    La Jetée

    Movie + 7 extras

    Directed by Chris Marker • 1963 • France

    Chris Marker, filmmaker, poet, novelist, photographer, editor, and now videographer and digital multimedia artist, has been challenging moviegoers, philosophers, and himself for years with his complex queries about time, memory, and the rapid advancement ...

  • 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...

  • 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...