Criterion+collection

In the 1940s, the wit of playwright Noël Coward and the craft of filmmaker David Lean melded harmoniously in one of cinema’s greatest writer-director collaborations. With the wartime military drama sensation In Which We Serve, Coward and Lean (along with producing partners Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan) embarked on a series of literate, socially engaged, and enormously entertaining pictures that ranged from domestic epic (This Happy Breed) to whimsical comedy (Blithe Spirit) to poignant romance (Brief Encounter). These films created a lasting testament to Coward’s artistic legacy and introduced Lean’s visionary talents to the world.

A singular artist and activist, Godfrey Reggio is best known for the galvanizing films of The Qatsi Trilogy. Astonishingly photographed, and featuring unforgettable, cascading scores by Philip Glass, these are immersive sensory experiences that meditate on the havoc humankind’s obsession with technological advancement has wreaked on our world. From 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi to 1988’s Powaqqatsi to 2002’s Naqoyqatsi, Reggio takes us on a journey from the ancient to the contemporary, from nature to industry, exploring life out of balance, in transformation, and as war, all the while keeping our eyes wide with wonder.

One of the most acclaimed Japanese directors of all time, Hiroshi Teshigahara distinguished himself in the sixties with a series of sinuous, atmospheric, and daring films. Teshigahara found his spiritual partner in novelist and screenwriter Kobo Abe, with whom he collaborated on these Kafkaesque portraits of identities in peril, films that captivated mainstream audiences while also touching the edges of the Japanese avant-garde. The existential ghost story Pitfall (Otoshiana), the shocking, erotic fable Woman in the Dunes (Sunna no onna), and the sci-fi–tinged nightmare The Face of Another (Tanin no kao) are among cinema’s enduring enigmas and rarest pleasures.

In 1964, with the Cuban Missile Crisis fresh in viewers' minds, the Cold War at its frostiest, and the hydrogen bomb relatively new and frightening, Stanley Kubrick dared to make a film about what could happen if the wrong person pushed the wrong button – and played the situation for laughs. Dr. Strangelove's jet-black satire (from a script by director Stanley Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern) and a host of superb comic performances (including three from Peter Sellers) have kept the film fresh and entertaining, even as its issues have become (slightly) less timely.

In the 1960s, Japanese filmmakers responded to a stale studio system by looking for fresh ways to tell stories, and Shohei Imamura was one of the leading figures of this new wave. With the three films in this set—Pigs and Battleships, The Insect Woman, and Intentions of Murder—Imamura truly emerged as an auteur, bringing to his national cinema an anthropological eye and a previously unseen taste for the irreverent. Claiming his interests lay in “the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure,” Imamura dotted the decade with earthy, juicy, idiosyncratic films featuring persevering, willful heroines. His remains a unique cinematic voice.

A lavishly illustrated coffee-table book celebrating thirty years of artwork from the Criterion Collection.

In the thirties and forties, the young Indian actor known as Sabu (born Selar Shaik) captured the hearts of moviegoers in Britain and the United States as a completely new kind of big-screen icon. Sabu was a maharaja’s elephant driver when he was cast in Elephant Boy, a Rudyard Kipling adaptation directed by documentary trailblazer Robert Flaherty and Zoltán Korda that would prove to be enormously popular. Sabu went on to headline a series of fantasies and adventures for the British film titans the Korda brothers, transcending the exoticism projected onto him by commanding the screen with effortless grace and humor. This series collects three of those lavish productions (which also included the classic The Thief of Bagdad):Elephant Boy, the colonialist adventure The Drum, and the timeless Jungle Book.

In Criterion’s first volume of the anthology By Brakhage, we brought twenty-six astonishing works by the avant-garde film pioneer Stan Brakhage to home video for the first time. Now, in this second installment, we are proud to present thirty more of Brakhage’s visionary creations, from 1950s films to his final work, from 2003, curated by his wife, Marilyn Brakhage. Highlights of this collection include the war meditation 23rd Psalm Branch; hand-painted films from Persian Series; The Wonder Ring, made for a commission by Joseph Cornell; the autobiographical Scenes from Under Childhood, Section One; and the found-footage film Murder Psalm.