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No streaming service does a director retrospective like the Criterion Channel, and March offers two masters at opposite ends of exposure. On one side is Michael Mann, whose work from Thief through Collateral (minus The Keep) is given a spotlight; on the other is Alain Guiraudie, who (in advance of Misericordia opening on March 21) has five films arriving. (2001’s duet of That Old Dream That Moves and Sunshine for the Scoundrels have perhaps never streamed in the U.S. before.) Meanwhile, three noirs from Douglas Sirk are programmed alongside a Lee Chang-dong retrospective that features three new restorations.

Showcases will be staged for Dogme 95, Best Supporting Actor winners, and French Poetic Relaism. Welles’ The Trial gets a Criterion Edition alongside Demon Pond; Horace Ové’s newly restored Pressure makes a streaming premiere alongside spruced-up copies of Amadeus, Love Is the Devil, Port of Shadows, and Burning an Illusion, as...

Take a refreshing plunge into classic French Poetic Realism — pre-noir drama with softer edges and a touch of romantic fatalism. A low-rent hotel on a barge canal is the gathering point for a cross-section of quasi- undesirables. Scandals and crimes aside, they’re a touching, human bunch, as performed to perfection by Louis Jouvet, Annabella, Arletty, Jane Marken, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Paulette Dubost and Bernard Blier. Marcel Carné’s show is also a beautiful production, with Alexandre Trauner designs that recreate ‘reality’ on an enormous scale.

Hôtel du Nord

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1139

1938 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 23, 2022 / 39.95

Starring: Annabella, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Louis Jouvet, Arletty, Paulette Dubost, Andrex, André Brunot, Henri Bosc, Marcel André, Bernard Blier, Jane Marken, François Périer, Dora Doll, Raymone.

Cinematography: Louis Née, Armand Thirard

Production Designer and Art Director: Alexandre Trauner

Film Editor: Marthe Gottie

Original Music: Maurice Jaubert

Written by Henri Jeanson,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options — not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves — we’ve taken it upon ourselves to highlight the titles that have recently hit platforms. Every week, one will be able to see the cream of the crop (or perhaps some simply interesting picks) of streaming titles (new and old) across platforms such as Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, and more (note: U.S. only). Check out our rundown for this week’s selections below.

Beauty and the Beast (Bill Condon)

The near-ubiquitous familiarity with the majority of Disney animations make the financial proposition of a live-action remake a no-brainer greenlight. In aiming to appeal to those experiencing these stories for the first time, the generation prior, and the generation that brought that generation to the theater, it can also be as creatively risk-averse as one might imagine. As these cultural touchstones get dusted...

Two films by Marcel Carné are playing on Mubi in the United States as part of the series Marcel Carné, Arletty, Jean Gabin: Le jour se lève (1939), from June 7 - July 7, and Air of Paris (1954), from June 8 - July 8, 2017.Marcel Carné’s 1937 film Drôle de drame (Bizarre, Bizarre) feels anomalous when placed next to his classic dramas. Unlike the sincere emotion, heartbreak, and despair which characterize his poetic realist works, Drôle de drame is a lighthearted and rather frivolous comedy of manners. The film depicts a series of absurd events caused by a need to maintain appearances, following meek botanist Irwin Molyneux (Michel Simon) as he lives a double life, writing crime novels in secret. When his cousin, the bishop Bedford (Louis Jouvet), accuses Molyneux of having killed his wife, the married couple go into hiding rather than rectify the mistake. Molyneux emerges with his novelist persona in order...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine' 1938: Jean Renoir's film noir (photo: Jean Gabin and Simone Simon in 'La Bête Humaine') (See previous post: "'Cat People' 1942 Actress Simone Simon Remembered.") In the late 1930s, with her Hollywood career stalled while facing competition at 20th Century-Fox from another French import, Annabella (later Tyrone Power's wife), Simone Simon returned to France. Once there, she reestablished herself as an actress to be reckoned with in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine. An updated version of Émile Zola's 1890 novel, La Bête Humaine is enveloped in a dark, brooding atmosphere not uncommon in pre-World War II French films. Known for their "poetic realism," examples from that era include Renoir's own The Lower Depths (1936), Julien Duvivier's La Belle Équipe (1936) and Pépé le Moko (1937), and particularly Marcel Carné's Port of Shadows (1938) and Daybreak (1939).[11] This thematic and...

Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the second of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.

Passion...

Translators introduction: This article by Mireille Latil Le Dantec, the first of two parts, was originally published in issue 40 of Cinématographe, September 1978. The previous issue of the magazine had included a dossier on "La qualité française" and a book of a never-shot script by Jean Grémillon (Le Printemps de la Liberté or The Spring of Freedom) had recently been published. The time was ripe for a re-evaluation of Grémillon's films and a resuscitation of his undervalued career. As this re-evaluation appears to still be happening nearly 40 years later—Grémillon's films have only recently seen DVD releases and a 35mm retrospective begins this week at Museum of the Moving Image in Queens—this article and its follow-up gives us an important view of a French perspective on Grémillon's work by a very perceptive critic doing the initial heavy-lifting in bringing the proper attention to the filmmaker's work.

Filmmaker maudit?...

In 1946, the French animator Paul Grimault and poet/screenwriter Jacques Prévert set out to make what they hoped would be the first French animated feature film, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Shepherdess and the Chimneysweep.” Prévert was already a legend, having written Le jour se lève and Children of Paradise for director Marcel Carné. Meanwhile, Grimault’s wonderfully iconoclastic fables had won favor both during and after the war. You wouldn’t think two such heavy-duty names would meet much resistance, but within a couple of years, Grimault and Prévert had lost control of the project, and an incomplete, 63-minute version was released without their approval in 1953. That also made its way to U.S. shores in a dubbed version as The Curious Case of Mr. Wonderbird.A couple of decades later, the duo set out to complete the film. Prévert worked on the new script until...

This weekend’s onslaught of smaller new films will have awards contenders and big names to jostle with at the box office. Awards hopefuls Foxcatcher and The Homesman begin their theatrical runs in limited New York and L.A. rollouts, with the former a likely winner in the first weekend when the numbers come in Sunday. The films from Sony Pictures Classics and Roadside Attractions, respectively, tell particularly American stories, though from very different eras. The Daily Show‘s Jon Stewart took time off in 2013 to work on his directorial debut. Open Road’s Rosewater, starring Gael García Bernal, will begin its theatrical rollout this weekend. It will be the biggest opener of this weekend’s cadre of specialty newcomers, playing in several hundred locations in the U.S. and Canada. Actor Chris Lowell also makes his filmmaking launch with Beside Still Waters. The project had smooth sailing until it came time for distribution,...

Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...

Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's Le jour se lève (1939) "tracks the inevitable unraveling of factory worker François (Jean Gabin) after he kills the absurd vaudeville entertainer Valentin (Jules Berry), his romantic rival for the affections of Françoise (Jacqueline Laurent) and Clara (Arletty)," writes Anna King for Time Out. The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw finds it "bristling with energy and shaped with incomparable artistry and flair." We're collecting reviews and the trailer for the new restoration opening at New York's Film Forum. » - David Hudson...

It's one thing to watch sturdy, dexterously charming Jean Gabin as a working-class joe who doesn't mind dangerous manual labor, figuring that's his lot in life. But to see him as a man undone by his love for a noncommittal woman? That's nearly unbearable, and it's the linchpin of Marcel Carné's extraordinary, long-unseen 1939 crime drama Le Jour Se Lève (Daybreak), playing at Film Forum in a glistening restoration that includes footage removed by Vichy censors 75 years ago. Gabin plays François, who works all day with hardcore sandblasting equipment. Sand particles drift into his lungs, causing a wretched cough, but he doesn't complain: He's too much in love with Françoise (the comely Jacqueline Laurent), who lifts his spirits with litt...

Serious film fans will appreciate the 4K restoration of this 1939 French melodrama, which has been all but unseen for 75 years. I’m “biast” (pro): nothing

I’m “biast” (con): nothing

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

I don’t think I’d ever seen a French film from the 1930s before this one, and to say that I was shocked would be an understatement. While the Hays Code was newly censoring American films at that time, here we have nudity; implied extramarital sex (including one scene in which the couple lies together in bed talking; they’re fully clothed, but this is still nothing like what a Hollywood movie at the time could have gotten away with); and frank — not explicit but not at all coded or merely suggestive — talk about sex and, even more notably, about women’s desires.

The nudity was cut, as were some other bits,...

★★★★★There's bleak and then there's Le Jour Se Lève (1939). To celebrate the film's 75th anniversary, this week sees the release of an immaculate 4K restoration along with what the Independent Cinema Office are calling "new previously censored scenes that will be seen by audiences for the very first time." Easily director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert's most accomplished film together, Le Jour Se Lève is packed to the gills with actors who embodied both cinema and Frenchness that would hold until the iconography changed when the Nouvelle Vague stormed the barricades in the late fifties. This bastion of poetic realism stands as an entry point for French cinema that spread across to Britain and beyond.

From October 8 to 19, the 43rd edition of the Festival du nouveau cinéma will run. This year’s lineup of 380 films (152 features and 228 shorts from 55 countries) includes 40 world premieres, 51 North American premieres and 41 Canadian premieres. The festival opens with the English language debut of Philippe Falardeau, The Good Lie and closes with the feature documentary The Salt of the Earth co-directed by Wim Wenders and Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.

Always balancing the best of local and world cinema, this year’s line-up features favourites of the festival circuit including a number of key world premieres. Some key releases include, Félix and Meira (winner of best Canadian feature at Tiff), Adieu au langage (Jean- Luc Godard), Horse Money (Pedro Costa), Hard to Be a God (Aleksey German), Jauja (Lisandro Alonso), Maps to the Stars (David Cronenberg), P’tit Quinquin (Bruno Dumont), Wild (Jean-Marc Vallee), A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (Ana Lily Amirpour...

Curtis Bernhardt followed the route of his fellow directors Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak: Germany, France, America, but unlike them he never went back to film in Germany at the end of his career. I looked at his Marlene Dietrich vehicle here. Now let's consider one from his French period.

Carrefour (Crossroads) is an amnesia thriller. Je t'aime amnesia thrillers. They're particularly interesting since the kind of movie amnesia where you forget who you are appears not to exist in real life: if you lost your identity, you would have lost so many other brain functions it's doubtful you would be abe to talk about it. The device remains popular not just because it's so useful for crazy plots, but because questions of identity fascinate us.

(Speaking of crazy plots: French novelist Sebastien Japrisot, whose name itself was an anagram, wrote one of the best, the twice-filmed A Trap For Cinderella.

Above: Sophia Loren, this year's Guest of Honor, in Vittorio De Sica's Marriage Italian Style

The following films comprise this year's slate of Cannes Classics:

Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica)

A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone)

Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders)

Regards sur une revolution: Comment Yukong déplaça les montagnes (Marceline Loridan & Joris Ivens)

Cruel Story of Youth (Nagisa Oshima)

Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard)

Overlord (Stuart Cooper)

Fear (Roberto Rossellini)

Blind Chance (Krzysztof Kieslowski)

The Last Metro (François Truffaut)

Dragon Inn (King Hu)

Daybreak (Marcel Carné)

The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov)

Gracious Living (Jean-Paul Rappeneau)

Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock)

Les violons du bal (Michel Drach)

Blue Mountains (Eldar Shengelaia)

Lost Horizon (Frank Capra)

La chienne (Jean Renoir)

Tokyo Olympiad (Kon Ichikawa)

8½ (Federico Fellini)

Two Documentaries about Cinema:

Life Itself (Steve James)

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (Hilla Medalia)

None of these films will be presented on film.

Sophia Loren named guest of honour and Kieslowski returns to Cannes Film Festival. No 35mm prints to be screened for the first time.

The Cannes Classics line-up of film masterpieces, presented in restored prints, has been announced. The programme comprises 22 features and two documentaries, screened in either 2K or 4K. But for the first time no 35mm print will be screened at Cannes Classics “with regret for some or with celebration for others”, according to a statement.

Guest of honour will be Sophia Loren, who won the award for Best Actress at Cannes in 1961 and was president of the jury in 1966. She will be present at the screening of La Voce Humana (2014), directed by Edoardo Ponti, which marks her return to movies.

That same evening, a 4K restoration of 1964 film Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’italiana) by Vittorio De Sica will be screened.

Loren has also accepted to give a masterclass - a conversation which will take...

A review of "The Devil, Probably" by Mireille Latil-Le-Dantec. Originally published in Issue 77, July-August 1977, of Cinématographe. Translation by Ted Fendt. Thanks to Marie-Pierre Duhamel.

"I challenge you all now, all you atheists. With what will you save the world, and where have you found a normal line of progress for it, you men of science, of co-operation, of labour-wage, and all the rest of it?

With credit? What's credit? Where will credit take you? [...] Without recognizing any moral basis except the satisfaction of individual egoism and material necessity! [...] It's a law, that's true; but it's no more normal than the law of destruction, or even self-destruction. [...] Yes, sir, the law of self-destruction and the law of self-preservation are equally strong in humanity! The devil has equal dominion over humanity till the limit of time which we know not. You laugh? You don't believe in the devil? Disbelief in the devil is a French idea,...

Every time I watch a Jean Grémillon film I feel compelled to write about the experience here. Either the films are excellent, like Gueule d'amour, or they're something more than that, like Maldone or La petite Lise—attempts to reinvent cinema or to send the talking picture spinning off into a new direction.

Daïnah la métisse (1932) shows Gremillon still pushing the expressive possibilities of sound cinema that he had opened up in the poorly-received La petite Lise. If the rejection of that first talkie, regarded as both too seedy and downbeat and too experimental and strange, caused him to rethink his approach, there's little evidence here, since Daïnah is a tragic tale delivered with a similarly somnambular pace, making free use of unexpected angles and a bold approach to both sound effects and narrative. It's as if Grémillon  trusted the world to come around to his way of looking at things.

I fondly remember the glee I had at xeroxing from library archives a good chunk of Sight & Sound’s top favorite list back in 92′ when cinephilia officially took over me and with further research I learned that any year that ends in a “2″ meant that it was time to revisit the official order. Over the past three polls (80′s, 90′s and 00′s) Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 classic progressively moved up the rankings making its way as announced today to the number one spot dislodging Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. My prediction for 2022: Another Brit filmmaker will continue to make strides in the top ten list – Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey should move up several spots.

Based on 846 critics’ top-ten lists and a Directors’ poll of 358 entries it is Vertigo who ends a five decade reign of the iconic snow globe and the name “Rosebud”. If anythin the list inspires a long-lasting debate,...

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Sept. 18, 2012

Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95

Studio: Criterion

Jean-Louis Barrault stars in Marcel Carne's Children of Paradise.

Poetic realism reached sublime heights with Marcel Carné’s 1945 romantic drama Children of Paradise, which is widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time.

A classic depiction of 19th century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, Les enfants du paradis follows a mysterious woman (Arletty, The Pearls of the Crown’s) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a street mime (Jean-Louis Barrault, La ronde).

Directed with sensitivity and dramatic élan (during World War II, no less!) director Carné (Port of Shadows) and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le jour se lève) bring to life a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers, and, of course, love and sorrow.

Released previously by Criterion in...

Acre After Acre, Mile After Mile, London

If you've had the feeling in recent years that British cinema has become a story of steadily eroding national identity, then here's where you need to be looking. The season's subtitle – Tradition, Memory & Journey In British Folk Cinema – tells you what you need to know: that there's a solid, albeit underfunded, core of film-makers still out there looking for the soul of Britain, and many of them crop up here. Like Chris Petit, who this Thursday accompanies his seminal late-70s road trip Radio On. Or Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair, who'll be previewing their pedalo-powered journey to the Olympics later. Or, fresh to their ranks, Ben Rivers, here with his Scottish wilderness film Two Years At Sea. Look out too for more commercial fare such as The Long Good Friday and The Elephant Man.

Sugar House Studios, E15, Thu to 28 Jun

Jean Gabin,...

They outraged the authorities on release. But the two films, made before and during the second world war, are now considered classics – and will be re-released this month. Our critics consider their impact

Ryan Gilbey on Le Quai des Brumes

It's easy now to call Marcel Carné's Le Quai des Brumes a masterpiece. When the film was released in 1938, such a view was more contentious. In the wake of the collapse of France's Popular Front government, the film was seen as exacerbating the mood of despair creeping into the left. Jean Renoir labelled it "counter-revolutionary". The Motion Picture Herald concluded: "One will be sorry that such art and talents have been used for such a trite and sordid story, which includes not a decent or healthy character." The Vichy government denounced it as "immoral, depressing and detrimental to young people", and declared that if the war was lost, Le Quai des Brumes...

Long-suffering readers will have read many times about my dislike of lists, especially lists of the best or worst movies in this or that category. For years they had value only in the minds of feature editors fretting that their movie critics had too much free time. ("For Thursday's food section, can you list the 10 funniest movies about pumpkin pie?") Now their value has shot way up with the use of slide shows, a diabolical time-waster designed to boost a web site's page visits.

In a field with much competition, Number One on my list of Most Shameless Lists has got to be Time mag's recent list of the "Best 140 Tweeters." How did the magazine present this? That's right, on 140 pages of a slideshow. Considering that the list had no meaning at all except as some hapless intern's grindwork, I'd say that was a bold masterstroke. I say so even though I was on it.

Jean Gabin, Simone Simon, La Bête Humaine Jean Gabin on TCM: Grand Illusion, Pepe Le Moko, Touchez Pas Au Grisbi Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Gueule D'Amour (1937) A retired cavalry officer discovers the woman who won his heart was in love with the uniform. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Mireille Balin. Bw-88 mins. 8:00 Am Remorques (1941) A married tugboat captain falls for a woman he rescues from a sinking ship. Dir: Jean Grémillon. Cast: Jean Gabin, Alain Cuny, Bw-83 mins. 9:30 Am Le Jour Se Leve (1939) A young factory worker loses the woman he loves to a vicious schemer. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Jean Gabin, Jacqueline Laurent, Arletty. Bw-90 mins. 11:00 Am L'air De Paris (1954) An over-the-hill boxer stakes his fortune on training a young railroad-worker. Dir: Marcel Carne. Cast: Arletty, Jean Gabin, Roland Lesaffre. Bw-100 mins. 1:00 Pm Leur Derniere Nuit (1953) A schoolteacher...

Among the most fruitful collaborations between director and screenwriter in the history of cinema is the one between Marcel Carne and Jacques Prevert. Prevert’s supremely literate approach to screenwriting was summarized by critic John Simon in this way: let the camera do what it will but the literature will remain. The finest of the films in which the two collaborated may have been The Children of Paradise (1945) – which was reviewed in this column – but Le Jour Se Leve (1939) or Daybreak comes a close second. Between them, Carne and Prevert were responsible for much of the poetic realism in the French cinema of the period – films largely about the working class but giving their working-class heroes a rounded presence generally lacking in later European cinema, notably from Italy. The actor Jean Gabin contributed strongly to many of these films through his presence and the highpoint of his working-class performances is...

Everett Jean-Paul Belmondo in Jean-Luc Goddard’s film “Breathless” (1960)

Since the competing claims of Edison and the Lumières to have invented the cinema, France and America have amassed two immensely rich but so often opposed film heritages. The attitude that has driven the American cinema was expressed by Sam Goldwyn when he observed, “Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” The well-crafted narrative rules in Hollywood, which has had little time for Jean-Luc Godard’s comment...

From the pioneers of the silver screen to today's new realism, French directors have shaped film-making around the world

France can, with some justification, claim to have invented the whole concept of cinema. Film historians call The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station, the 50-second film by the Lumière brothers first screened in 1895, the birth of the medium.

But the best-known early pioneer, who made films with some kind of cherishable narrative value, was Georges Méliès, whose 1902 short A Trip to the Moon is generally heralded as the first science-fiction film, and a landmark in cinematic special effects. Meanwhile, Alice Guy-Blaché, Léon Gaumont's one-time secretary, is largely forgotten now, but with films such as L'enfant de la barricade trails the status of being the first female film-maker.

The towering achievement of French cinema in the silent era was undoubtedly Abel Gance's six-hour biopic of Napoleon (1927), which...

We've picked out the 25 best crime movies ever, but no doubt there are masterpieces we failed to nab. Which are your most wanted classics of the genre?

• Datablog: download the full list

"Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown," says the cop to Jack Nicholson in the closing scene of Roman Polanski's La noir. What the cop means, I think, is that they are in a bad part of town where the law is largely powerless, although the implicit suggestion may also be that the whole world has become like Chinatown and that its crimes are too vast and sprawling to get a hold of. Far safer to wash your hands, walk away and forget the whole thing ever happened. It's Chinatown.

It could be argued that most films are crime films, if only because most drama needs crime, or conflict, or at least transgression in order for it to spark into life.

Above: Alexandre Trauner's sketch for Canal Saint-Martin and Hotel (second building from right).

Besides classical Hollywood, one of the other periods of film history in which studio production design has been so highly noted is the French poetic realist cinema of the 1930s. That period was the peak of creativity and influence of set designers in French film industry since the magical two-dimensional background paintings of Georges Méliès. The achievements of the era saw the making and consolidation of the reputations of designers in France, and growing critical and public interest in the nature of film design. Collaborations between director René Clair and art director Lazare Meerson had been widely seen in Europe and in even North America, where factory’s sets from À nous la liberté (1931) became a source of inspiration for Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936).

Among the architects of poetic realist cinema, one of the most skillful,...

My sixth birthday was celebrated in August 1939, five days before the outbreak of war. By that time, I'd begun to make weekly visit to the pictures and embarked on what was to be a lifelong obsession with the cinema. I'd also committed to memory all 50 of that year's Wills series of 50 Great Film Stars cigarette cards (God knows how many packets of cigarettes my father smoked to complete my collection) and so could reel off the names and birth places of the leading movie actors and actresses of the English-speaking world.

On my birthday I'd seen Shirley Temple's first Technicolor film, The Little Princess, and that same week I saw my first Technicolor western, Jesse James, both equally unforgettable. I'd also recently seen and loved two earlier films that were still on release, Alfred Hitchcock's two greatest British pictures, The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, which I have...

Hey Gang! Comic-Con International has unveiled the full schedule for Saturday July 24th! If you thought Thursday and Friday were insanely awesome and crazy, wait until you see what's planned for Saturday! There is a ton of great stuff going on that you're going to want to see! We've got all Marvel film panel with Thor, Captain America and The Avengers. There's also Green Lantern, Cowboys & Aliens, Sucker Punch, Harry Potter, Paul, and a ton of other great stuff! And if you aren't able to make it out to Comic-Con this year don't worry we got your back, and will be covering everything we possibly can. I've highlighted all the events we hope to cover. If you're going to comic-con we will be having a little meet up. The details for that will be revealed soon. Now check out the full schedule below and start planning out your Comic-Con geekdom.

Maybe the French crime drama "A Prophet" is actually fulfilling some prophecy, having won the Grand Prix at last year's Cannes, two BAFTAs last weekend, and a most deserved Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. Co-written and directed by Paris-born auteur Jacques Audiard ("The Beat That My Heart Skipped," "Read My Lips"), this ambitious epic tracks the trial-by-fire experienced by Malik El Djebena (talented newcomer Tahar Rahim), an illiterate but clever 19-year-old Arab who, at the start of the film, has just been sentenced to six years in prison. Quickly seduced into carrying out seedy jobs for an old Corsican mobster (Niels Arestrup) who owns most of the guards, Malik learns the rewards of humility, sneakiness, shifting alliances and having a haunted conscience, ultimately growing in ways prison wasn't intended for. While Audiard and Rahim were at the Sundance Film Festival, I spoke with them via translator about their mutual fears,...

This morning, Criterion announced they are losing the rights to a number of StudioCanal films. According to the email, at the end of March over 20 films will no longer be offered on DVD or Blu-ray (if available). The rights are going to Lionsgate, so they’ll be on DVD in the future, just not on the Criterion label. Therefore, if you’re a Criterion collector, or just someone that wants to own a great edition of these films, you might want to buy them Asap or you’ll have to pay a collector price.

But the best part of the email is Criterion saying, “we will be offering these titles at an additional $5 off on our website.” Hit the jump for the list of movies and more info:

Here’s what they sent me:

Dear Criterion collectors,

Our three least favorite initials: Oop. Since we launched the Criterion Collection more than twenty-five years ago,...

I'm not a constant reader of Landon Palmer's Culture Warrior column for various reasons. For one thing, there's not enough time in the day to parse my way through his weekly post and have it make even the slightest bit of sense. (There's a whole world outside and I'd rather be out there enjoying the sunshine!) Believe me I try, but I simply can't stay focused long enough to find his cleverly hidden thesis and watch it play out throughout the seventy-four paragraphs that follow... and I kid obviously, but it's no joke to say Palmer's columns are an education unto themselves and have a lot more to say about film than my usual posts about hot Asian chicks taking baths and fighting the Yakuza. Once in a while though, Palmer chooses a Culture Warrior topic that's compelling enough for me to force myself to slog through his dense prose from beginning to end, and...

The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir Film Gone with the Wind d: Victor Fleming; scr: Sidney Howard Le Jour se lève / Daybreak d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Viot, Jacques Prévert Midnight d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett Mr. Smith Goes to Washington d: Frank Capra; scr: Sidney Buchman Ninotchka d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch The Old Maid d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Casey Robinson The Rains Came d: Clarence Brown; scr: Philip Dunne, Julien Josephson La Règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game d: Jean Renoir; scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch The Women d: George Cukor; scr: Anita Loos, Jane Murfin Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon in Wuthering Heights Check These Out Bachelor Mother d: Garson Kanin; scr: Norman Krasna Beau Geste d: William A. Wellman; scr: Robert Carson Hello Janine d: Carl Boese; scr: Hans Fritz Beckmann, Karl Georg Külb The...