Directed by Marcel Carné • 1946 • France
Starring Yves Montand, Pierre Brasseur, Serge Reggiani

The last of the celebrated collaborations between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (CHILDREN OF PARADISE) unfolds in a dreamily beautiful vision of a wintry, nocturnal Paris shor...

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 ...

Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin

The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. A ...

Criterion Collection Edition #535

Directed by Nagisa Oshima • 1983 • Japan
Starring David Bowie, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tom Conti

In this captivating, skewed World War II drama from Nagisa Oshima, David Bowie regally embodies Celliers, a British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. Rock star R...

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...