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Billy Wilder walking down a street, holding a cigarette.

Billy Wilder’s Battle With the Past

How the fabled Hollywood director confronted survivor’s guilt, the legacies of the Holocaust, and the paradoxes of Zionism.
by Ben Schwartz via The Nation on August 18, 2025
Irving Thalberg and his wife, with Louis Mayer.

The Wizard Behind Hollywood’s Golden Age

How Irving Thalberg helped turn M-G-M into the world’s most famous movie studio—and gave the film business a new sense of artistry and scale.
by Adam Gopnik via The New Yorker on June 9, 2025
Protestors hold anti-communist picket signs outside of a theatre

The Grim Timeliness of “Noir and the Blacklist”

A new Criterion series of McCarthy-era noir films is a timely collection for an era of rising government repression.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on May 4, 2025
Four men posing with a monument with the Ten Commandments engraved on it.

Thou Shalt Not

How a Hollywood marketing campaign was responsible for the Ten Commandments being displayed in public all across the country.
by Kevin M. Kruse via Campaign Trails on June 19, 2024
Spielberg and Henry Thomas in a scene on the set of E.T.

The Auteur of Fatherhood: How Steven Spielberg Recast American Masculinity

Steven Spielberg’s early films conjure all of his moviemaking magic to repair a world of lost dads.
by Phillip Maciak via The Yale Review on March 4, 2024
Maria P. Williams, 1916.

The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Act in Her Own Film

Maria P. Williams pioneered filmmaking for African American women, but her life is even more thrilling than her sole film.
by Jennie Knuppel via The Saturday Evening Post on February 29, 2024
Ink drawing of Buster Keaton's face against pale pink background

Keep Your Eye on the Kid

Buster Keaton made his own kind of sense out of the perplexities of existence in ways baffling to those among whom he found himself.
by Geoffrey O'Brien via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
Jewish actress and filmmaker Ellen Richter, striking a pose on screen while two men give her suspicious looks.

The Silences of the Silent Era

We can’t allow the impression of a historical lack of diversity in the art form to limit access to the industry today.
by Pamela Hutchinson via Current [The Criterion Collection] on November 30, 2021
Alfred Hitchcock directing

The Haunted Imagination of Alfred Hitchcock

How the master of suspense got his sadistic streak.
by John Banville via The New Republic on April 1, 2021

How Spaghetti Westerns Shaped Modern Cinema

In the realism, the set pieces, the operatic music, Sergio Leone was pointing the way towards modern filmmaking.
by Quentin Tarantino via The Spectator on June 1, 2019
Charlayne Hunter-Gault, far left, interviewing Black filmmakers Mario Van Peebles, Neema Barnette, John Singleton, Reginald Hudlin, and Warrington Hudlin (left to right).
partner

Soul of Black Identity: New Jack Cinema

A conversation with some of the hottest filmmakers on the scene: They're young, they're Black, but they're making green.
by MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on August 16, 1991
Filmmaker William Greaves at a desk with turntables, film reels, and screens.
partner

The Black Filmmaker

A look at racism in movie-making.
by Black Journal via American Archive of Public Broadcasting on September 28, 1970
Aerial view of the Warner Bros studio lot.

Whether Netflix or Paramount Buys Warner Bros., Entertainment Oligopolies are Back

Hollywood has seen this movie before. Entertainment oligopolies are bigger and more anticompetitive than ever.
by Matthew F. Jordan via The Conversation on December 12, 2025
partner

The Historians Behind Ken Burns' "The American Revolution"

Three experts discuss their behind-the-scenes experience as historical advisers to the new series.
by Kathleen DuVal, Jane Kamensky, Christopher Brown via Made By History on December 10, 2025
Clint Eastwood.

The Enigma of Clint Eastwood

Is he merely a reactionary, or do his films paint a more complicated picture?
by Adam Nayman via The Nation on September 4, 2025
The shark approaches the boat in a scene from the film Jaws.

The Undeniable Greatness of Jaws

Jaws is a landmark hit, but also a sharp 1970s film shaped by political ire, social critique, and realist cinema’s lasting influence.
by Eileen Jones via Jacobin on July 24, 2025
Movie poster for Warfare, 2025.
partner

War Stories Without the History

Films about the Iraq War prize “truth-telling,” but don’t offer many insights about the war itself.
by Jake Pitre via HNN on July 1, 2025
Still frame from a slow motion sequence in the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde shows actress grimacing inside a vehicle.

How Slow Motion Became Cinema’s Dominant Special Effect

The turbulent late sixties saw the technique’s popularity explode—and it’s been helping moviemakers engage with the unsettling tempos of modern life ever since.
by Scott W. Stern via The New Republic on June 27, 2025
A naked woman bathes.

How the Hays Code Took the Sex Out of Hollywood

A group of early 20th-century Catholics sought to impose their standards of morality onto the growing and scandal-ridden Hollywood film industry.
by Michael Koresky via Literary Hub on June 24, 2025
A still from the Sound of Fury of two men fighting.

Dangerous Work

Cy Endfield, film noir, and the blacklist.
by Imogen Sara Smith via Current [The Criterion Collection] on May 21, 2025
Julianne Moore posing in the movie "Far from Heaven."

Acting Up: A Conversation with Todd Haynes

On his films and the way they provocatively confronted the evils of the times in which they were made.
by Michael Koresky, Todd Haynes via Mubi on May 14, 2025
Film still from "Three Seasons" of a flower seller in Vietnam.

Tony Bui on the Vietnam War’s Cinematic Legacy

Films from Vietnam and Hollywood testify to the range of stories told about the war on-screen and the different memories they embody.
by Will Noah, Tony Bui via Current [The Criterion Collection] on April 29, 2025
The title card of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead.

George Romero’s Pittsburgh

City of the living dead.
by Victoria Timpanaro via The Metropole on February 20, 2025
Sam Peckinpah looks into a film camera.

The Noble Savagery of Sam Peckinpah

“Bloody Sam” was born one hundred years ago this month.
by Christopher Sandford via Modern Age on February 19, 2025
Elaine May and Walter Matthau sitting on a bench in May’s film A New Leaf.

May Days

A new biography of an elusive comic talent.
by Lizzy Harding via Bookforum on February 11, 2025
A painting of a large camera on a film set, surrounded by green screens.

Casual Viewing

Why Netflix looks like that.
by Will Tavlin via n+1 on December 16, 2024
Photograph from the film Paper Moon

Paper Moon: Partners in Crime

On the making of one of Hollywood's iconic child characters.
by Mark Harris via Current [The Criterion Collection] on November 26, 2024
A drawing of a skeletal hand erupting from the ground and separating a house with a Harris/Walz sign and a house with a Trump/Vance sign. Face masks float in the wind.

There’s a Very Specific Issue Haunting This Election. No One Is Talking About It.

You can bury it. But you can’t escape it.
by Grady Hendrix via Slate on October 31, 2024
Still from the film Medium Cool, 1969.

That Ain't Cool

Capturing the 1968 DNC.
by Sammy Feldblum via The Baffler on August 20, 2024
Black women gathered in discussion for an episode of "Black Journal."

“The Black Woman”

Black women activism within documentary films in the 1960s United States.
by Manar Ellethy via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on April 10, 2024
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