This weekend and this weekend only, the entire world is welcome to a festival made up of what are arguably the best movies ever made when the folks at Hulu put the fabulous Criterion Collection online for free (well okay, with commercials, but still, close enough). All of the Criterion movies are regularly available on Hulu Plus, but for one extended weekend, you can experience these amazing movies on the non-Plus version of Hulu. The Criterion Collection features the greatest directors, the finest actors, the most talented cinematographers, writers, costume designers, composers, and heck even the best best boys, all coming together to create some of the greatest movies ever made. Founded in the mid-1980s as a video distributor of art house and classic foreign films, Criterion has grown to become the gold standard in production quality and packaging, going on to gather a catalog of the finest movies ever made.
Because of the immensity of the collection, there’s simply no way to watch more than a handful of the Collection. Even if you sit there for the entire time, swilling coffee, and never go to sleep, which if this is your first exposure to the Criterion Collection, you should very well consider. In a collection this large and varied, knowing where to start can be kind of hard. Also, and possibly more importantly, if there’s one thing people on the internet love, it’s a list; gather the kids, the dog and the popcorn, because here’s my Top Ten Choices for a Criterion Home Film Festival.
Breathless
Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in Breathless (1960)
Filmed in a neo-documentary style, Jean Paul Belmondo and a stunning Jean Seberg dominate the screen in this raw and exciting 1960 French New Wave classic from director Jean Luc Goddard. A petty criminal stops to fall in love along his path to self-destruction, featuring one of the most famous final speeches in film history. Breathless is hugely influential, but best of all, a really enjoyable film to watch.
Dodes ’Ka-den
Life in the abject poverty of Akira Kurosawa’s Dodes’Ka-Den (1970)
Known in the West for his historical dramas Akira Kurosawa was also deft at telling stories of regular people going about their daily lives. One of the best examples of that is the wonderfully odd, 1970s, Dodes’Ka-Den, Kurosawa’s first color film detailing the day to day life of a group of desperately poor people living on top of a garbage dump. Such a huge financial failure on its initial release that Kurosawa attempted suicide, Dodes ‘Ka-Den has slowly gained a reputation over the years as one of the directors most underestimated greats.
The Magician
Max von Sydow in the Magician (1958)
Ingmar Bergman’s 1958 film Ansiktet, known in English as The Magician, stars Max von Sydow as a nineteenth century traveling magician in a battle for his life against the forces of rational thought. Bergman is at his best moving from stark drama to sudden bursts of silliness, while von Sydow is as always, well, hypnotic as the traveling mesmerist.
The Phantom Carriage
The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Speaking of Bergman, the great director was heavily influenced by this 1921 silent classic. The Phantom Carriage is a dark and symbol laden film praised when it was released for what at the time were the stunning special effects from director Victor Sjostrom that even today hold up well, at least on an emotional level. The Phantom Carriage is a tragic little ghost story where the last person to die on New Year’s Eve is put to work by Death himself collecting all the souls for the next year. Watching this Swedish produced film with its dark imagery, morbid subject matter, and heavy symbolism, it’s no surprise that Bergman was influenced by it. Criterion’s print of this 92 year old feature is beautiful, and the soundtrack based on the original slams through with squeezebox and horns, which is wonderful to listen to and works as part of the overall feature. This is an odd film, no doubt about it, but it’s also one of my favorites in this entire collection.
The Night Porter
Charlotte Rambling in The Night Porter (1974)
Italian director Liliana Cavani’s 1974 classic, The Night Porter, is an extremely unpleasant, yet hypnotically stunning story of sexual transgression and irresistible compulsion in post-war Vienna. Dirk Bogarde plays a former SS officer, hiding in plain sight by working as an obsequious clerk at a small hotel, who is discovered by woman, played by a fragile as broken glass Charlotte Rambling. Bogarde’s character had sexually enslaved Ramblings while she was a prisoner in a concentration camp 15 years before, and their unstoppable obsession with each other plays through the film. This is a strong film dealing with serious issues of abuse, sadomasochism, and self-destruction that could easily have fallen into either parody or exploitation. In the hands of director Cavani and with the stunning performances of Bogarde and especially Rambling, The Night Porter is a film you won’t be able to look away from even though you know you probably should.
Monsieur Verdoux
Martha Raye and lady killer Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
Charlie Chaplin wrote (with an assist from Orson Welles), directed, produced, and starred in this dark and hilarious 1947 farce as Henri Verdoux, an unemployed banker with a wife and baby, who doesn’t let a lack of work slow him down, when he takes to marrying and murdering a series of widows (including a sharp Martha Raye) to makes ends meet. The Little Tramp is nowhere to be found in Chaplin’s blackhearted Verdoux, but the comedy great is just so darn likable as he goes about his evil deeds that you can’t help but hope he gets away with it all. Well, mostly.
Wings of Desire
Wings of Desire (1987)
Wim Wender’s 1987 fable stars Bruno Ganz as an angel who falls in love with a trapeze artist and becomes a human to experience life beside her in Wings of Desire. This movie is a lovely story, with great performances and, most importantly, the hidden truth about Peter Falk is revealed. Forget the American remake with Nick Cage and Meg Ryan, because it doesn’t hold a candle to this stunning original.
Eraserhead
Jack Nance in David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977)
David Lynch’s surreal nightmare about Henry (Jack Nance), his family, his horribly deformed child, and the beautiful woman across the hall is not quite a horror film, but definitely horrifying. Lynch’s first feature remains one of the most grotesque films ever to come out of the United States.
The Most Dangerous Game
Leslie Banks Menaces Fay Wray and Joel McCrea, The Most Dangerous Game (1933)
Filmed on the same sets, more or less at the same time, and using much of the same cast as King Kong, Merian Cooper’s 1933 story The Most Dangerous Game is about a mysterious Russian count hiding on a jungle island pursuing his particular hobby. Joel McCrea is heroic, Fay Wray is beautiful, and Leslie Banks oozes threat as the sinister Count Zaroff.
And God Created Woman
Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (1956)
Roger Vadim’s 1956 film presented the world with the irresistible Brigitte Bardot and also the first real sex comedy. Bright, funny, and with a stunning Bardot captivating on the screen, And God Created Woman, is a film being imitated but rarely topped more than 50 years later.
Past these 10 selected here, there’s a massive amount of amazing movies in the Criterion Collection to steal your attention away. If you plan on taking advantage of Hulu’s offer this weekend to watch as many Criterion movies as you can, you should start watching them right about…..now.
Comments are closed.