The Criterion Collection Articles

Dustin Hoffman in Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs STRAW DOGS Review: Part II The ending is famed, and justly so. In the car, Henry says, “I don’t know my way home” David smiles and says, “That’s okay, I don’t either.” If only the rest of the film had the subtlety and enigmatic poesy of that ending, Straw Dogs would truly be the masterpiece its acolytes proclaim. [...]

Federico Fellini’s Amarcord AMARCORD Review: Part I That most of the characters in the film, save one or two, either love or are indifferent to the Fascists is not a latter-day bourgeois forgiveness of their crimes, but a reflection of reality as it was in the 1930s. True, after the Fascists plunged Italy into the ruinous Second World War, they became reviled, but in the [...]

Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless BREATHLESS Review Part I Raoul Coutard’s black-and-white cinematography and composition is also rather forgettable, looking haphazard, poorly framed, and poorly lit. Again, deliberation and the excuse of "realism" does not make up for the murky end result. Also, unlike true film noir, Coutard makes no great use of the power of black-and-white imagery, be it the grays, or the [...]

Flike, Carlo Battisti in Vittorio De Sica’s Umberto D. UMBERTO D. Review Part I Still, Vittorio De Sica’s film is most of all about human indifference to suffering: The sons of a dying man laugh at his bedside in the hospital; the pound workers blithely take the dogs to their deaths; Umberto’s old co-workers look askance at him — as if he’s diseased — when [...]