On social media, The Criterion Collection highlights videos showing celebrated people who work in the film industry entering a small room at Criterion’s offices in Manhattan. The room, which is called the Criterion Closet, is crammed with shelves holding thousands of movies that have been released by the popular company. Criterion is dedicated to what’s often called legacy – or old – media, the DVD and Blu-ray discs to which its fans are devoted.
In the Instagram and Facebook videos, you watch actors, actresses, directors, producers, and others connected to the motion picture business choose some of their favorite Criterion releases (usually up to eight), pop them into a complimentary tote bag, and take them home for free. What’s especially pleasurable about these videos are the stories told by those who are making the selections. The best videos involve the chooser revealing details about their early experience — especially their first time — with a film, or how it influenced their career, or offering a wonderful memory regarding their personal connection to some of the greatest movies ever made. The better the stories, the better the video.
There is even a Criterion Closet on wheels. A large truck travels to film festivals and other events and the public lines up for their turn to go into the mobile closet and buy three films at a discount. The only caveat is that once you enter, you’ve got three minutes to make your selections. Groups of five film fanatic friends can be allowed in at one time. At last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, the line to enter was long and steady.
One of the most interesting things about the actors and actresses who appear in Criterion’s Closet is how many choose “A Woman Under The Influence.” The landmark movie is one of a number of new Criterion releases, including 4K and Blu-ray discs filled with extras. The others include “Network,” “PlayTime,” “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” and a box set of four musicals directed by the legendary Ernst Lubitsch.
“A Woman Under The Influence,” from 1974, stars Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk and is written and directed by Rowlands’ real-life husband, actor-director John Cassavetes. Rowlands and Falk play Mabel and Nick, a married couple with three young children. The household’s domestic life is in turmoil because of Mabel’s emotional breakdown, which is a gathering storm with bleak consequences. She and Nick love each other, but are incapable of communicating that love because of Mabel’s descent into a deeply personal miasma. Rowlands, who was nominated for a best actress Academy Award, and Falk are brilliant. Cassavetes was nominated for a directing Oscar. In 1990, the extraordinary American film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry of the United States for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
At the time of its release in 1976, “Network” was a media satire unlike any other. When you examine today’s network television and cable choices, you recognize immediately how prescient the movie was. It’s not overstating the fact that it predicted today’s TV landscape with extraordinary insight. Directed by Sidney Lumet from a razor-sharp screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, the acclaimed motion picture is a stunning examination of the corrupt soul of a media world dominated by corporate America.
In “Network,” at a money-losing television network, executive Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway) finds herself with a major programming hit on her hands after her disgruntled anchorman, Howard Beale (Peter Finch), goes way off script and transitions into a mad-as-hell prophet of the airwaves, angry about the ills of contemporary society. The wickedly funny film earned four Oscars, including best actress for Dunaway, best actor for Finch, Chayefsky for screenplay, and, in a shocking surprise, Beatrice Straight for supporting actress in a record-breaking appearance that ran five minutes and two seconds on-screen and lasted only one scene.
Regarding “PlayTime,” France’s Jacques Tati is one of my favorite directors, and he also acts in his own features. In his beautifully filmed, perfectly staged, and nearly wordless comedies, he examines the many perplexing changes coming to French society. Shot in 70mm, Tati’s “PlayTime,” from 1967, is about the modern world’s fast-moving technology and how it overwhelms people, especially his own wonderful character, known as Monsieur Hulot. The imaginative movie is filled with inventiveness and delightful comic verve.
The Coen brothers — Joel and Ethan — take a film noir-like walk on the wild side in “The Man Who Wasn’t There,” an existential thriller that opens in 1949 and, like fallout from the atomic age, insidiously drifts into a world of sexual betrayal, avaricious blackmail, and ugly murder. The black and white movie looks at an America that is either on the edge of greatness or preparing to walk the plank of paranoia. Duplicitous characters abound. In an understated performance that is utterly riveting, Billy Bob Thornton stars as a discontented barber in California, whose suspicions that his wife (Frances McDormand) is cheating on him take him down a path of risky revelations and sinister goings-on. James Gandolfini and a teenage Scarlett Johansson co-star.
Director Ernst Lubitsch was an accomplished pioneer of silent films in Germany when he went to Hollywood and established himself as a master of on-screen comedy. His hilarious, but wonderfully elegant, movies include “Trouble In Paradise,” which is one of my favorite films, “Ninotchka,” and “To Be Or Not To Be.” Lubitsch’s other claim to fame is that he helped invent the modern movie musical. The new Criterion Blu-ray set includes four of his best from the 1930s: “The Love Parade,” “Monte Carlo,” “The Smiling Lieutenant,” and “One Hour With You.” Lubitsch adored European operettas, and he delighted in blending music into Hollywood’s very bawdy comedic romps. Some of the most popular studio stars appear, including Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, and Miriam Hopkins. It’s no surprise then that these hit musical comedies were described as having “the Lubitsch touch.”