The Criterion Collection's Eclipse Series

In this evocative, atmospheric biography, Roberto Rossellini brings to life philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who, amid religious persecution and ignorance, believed in a harmony between God and science.

Descartes left the Jesuit college where he had spent his childhood. He doubted the knowledge that had been instilled in him, with the exception of mathematics and geometry. He enlisted in the army of the Prince of Nassau in Breda. Upon his return, he wanted to escape the worldly atmosphere and devote himself to his studies. During an intense nig...

Set in the port city of Yokohama, two girls, Sunako and Dora who attend a Christian school, pledge to be friends. But when a youth named Henry appears on his motorcycle and offers to take Sunako for a ride, we know that this friendship won't last and that the lives of both girls will change in ways they are barely able to comprehend, and can do ...

A pair of blind masseurs, an enigmatic city woman, a lonely man and his ill-behaved nephew—The Masseurs and a Woman is made up of crisscrossing miniature studies of love and family at a remote resort in the mountains. With delicate and surprising humor, Hiroshi Shimizu paints a timeless portrait of loneliness and the human need to connect.

Japanese film about a friendly bus driver and his passengers over the duration of one journey through the mountains to the nearest train station.

A Japanese mountain inn patron's foot is cut by an ornamental hairpin accidentally left behind by a former patron, leading to much curiosity among the other patrons regarding her identity.

Renowned for his excess, King Henry VIII goes through a series of wives during his rule. With Anne Boleyn, his second betrothed, executed on charges of treason, Henry weds maid Jane Seymour, but that wedded bliss also ends in tragedy. Not one to be single for long, the tyrannical king chooses German-born Anne of Cleves, but their union lasts onl...

The woman who will become Catherine the Great marries into the Russian royal family when she weds Grand Duke Peter, the nephew of Empress Elizabeth. Although the couple has moments of contentment, Peter's cruel and erratic behavior causes a rift between him and Catherine. Mere months after Peter succeeds his aunt as the ruler of Russia, a revolt...

What do women want? Don Juan is aging. He's arrived secretly in Seville after a 20 year absence. His wife Dolores, whom he hasn't lived with in five years, still loves him. He refuses to see her; he fears the life of a husband. She has bought his debts and will remand him to jail for two years if he won't come to her. Meanwhile, an impostor is c...

The respected painter takes to drink and faces down scandal after his wife dies.

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.

Two friends who witnessed an organized crime murder are threatened by the local mob into keeping quiet.

A prison truck is assaulted and the two convicts inside are murdered. The prison guard on duty gets suspended for negligence and takes it upon himself to track down the killers.

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's sister, Rie, to a wheelchair. They want Togawa to hijack an armored truck loaded with 120 million yen; their leverage is to promise him money for surgery for Rie. Togawa consents and plans the heis...

The melancholy, homely Kamimura is a hit man who takes a job to kill a mob boss who's gotten greedy..

A Serbian engineer falls for a younger woman, but he is inept at courtship.

After many adventures, young female switchboard operator starts a love relationship with a serious young man. But while he's away on business, she gets lonely and succumbs to her colleague's passes. When the boyfriend returns, he gets into fight with the impregnated girl that ends up tragically with a killing.

A documentary about the famous athlete and movie enthusiast who made Serbia's first sound film, Innocence Unprotected. The Nazi occupation of Belgrade prevented the film from gaining wider acclaim. Director Makavejev intersperses clips of the original film with interviews of surviving cast and crew members, as well as newsreel and archival footage.

Furniture and clutter of one small apartment room become the subject of a moving still life—with Akerman herself staring back. This breakthrough formal experiment is Akerman's first film made in New York.

Hotel Monterey is a cheap hotel in New York reserved for the outcasts of American society. Chantal Akerman invites viewers to visit this unusual place as well as the people who live there, from the reception up to the last story.

Belgian filmmaker Chantal Akerman lives in New York. Filmed images of the City accompany texts of Akerman's loving mother back home in Brussels. The City comes more and more to the front while the words of the mother, read by Akerman herself, gradually fade away.

A woman suffers a subdued psychological breakdown in the wake of a devastating breakup.

Director Anna traverses Europe for film events, encountering strangers, family, and a Polish Jewish refugee friend, listening to their personal stories. The aftermath of war persists throughout her journey across the continent.

Idealistic young Barbara is the daughter of rich weapons manufacturer Andrew Undershaft. She rebels against her estranged father by joining the Salvation Army. Wooed by professor-turned-preacher Adolphus Cusins, Barbara eventually grows disillusioned with her causes and begins to see things from her father's perspective.

At the height of the Roman Civil War, an aging Julius Caesar finds himself intrigued by the young Egyptian queen Cleopatra, whom he teaches how to rule Egypt.

George Bernard Shaw’s breezy, delightful dramatization of this classic fable—about a Christian slave who pulls a thorn from a lion’s paw and is spared from death in the Colosseum as a result of his kind act—was written as a meditation on modern Christian values. Pascal’s final Shaw production is played broadly, with comic character actor Alan Yo...

A film by Nagisa Oshima from the Criterion Eclipse set.

Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.

This movie is about four male high school students who took their university entrance exams and are just hanging around mostly.

A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.

Three students spend their holidays at the seaside where they are mistaken for Koreans, a minority which is looked down on in Japan. The action develops into a crime story.

Un homme, depuis son enfance, n'a qu'une seule ambition, devenir riche. Pour cela il a decide de devenir tricheur et voleur professionnel. A douze ans, il survit a l'empoisonnement collectif dans lequel perit sa famille: pour avoir vole des champignons, il avait ete puni et n'avait pas pu en manger...

Three narrators (French writer Jean Martin, an English royal equerry, and a papal chamberlain) tell the story of seven matched pearls, four of them now in the British Crown.

Shavian social satire. Odette is an actress who's now the mistress of a government minister. Her household of cook, maid, and chauffeur needs a valet. On the eve of going with the minister to Deauville, she engages Désiré, a robust and talkative man, even through his most recent employer, a countess, intimates improprieties. Things go well for a...

The battle of the sexes as drawing room social satire. Philippe, a middle-aged newspaper editor, has lived for six years with Paulette, a successful stage actress. He tells her friend Claudine, a realistic and enterprising reporter, that he's thinking of proposing. Into the mix steps Carl Erickson, a charming Hollywood matinée idol in Paris brie...

The story of Sanshiro, a strong stubborn youth, who travels into the city in order to learn Jujutsu. However, upon his arrival he discovers a new form of self-defence: Judo. The main character is based on Shiro Saigo, a legendary judoka.

The stories of several young women who work in a 'precision optical instruments' factory during the second World War. Despite illness, injury, and tremendous personal hardship, the women persevere in their tasks, devoted to their work and their country's cause.

In this government-suggested sequel, Sugata again grows as a judo master, and demonstrates his (and by extension, all Japanese) superiority to the foreign warrior.

Yoshitsune Minamoto, disguised with his retinue as monks, must make do with a comical porter as their guide through hostile territory en route to safety.

Filmed over five weeks at the Warrendale residential treatment center near Toronto, "Warrendale" observes twelve emotionally disturbed children and the staff who care for them. Working without narration, interviews, or direction, Allan King records daily life as it unfolds, establishing what he later described as “actuality drama.”

In this classic exploration of marriage in conflict, Billy and Antoinette Edwards—as well as their son Bogart and dog Merton—live out their daily lives. Hoping to discover the heart of the trouble in their marriage, Billy and Antoinette offer up their day to day lives to documentary filmmaker Allan King, as laughter, tears, wit, tenderness, ange...

Five boys and five girls ages 13 to 19 live on a farm for ten weeks, to be filmed, and to see what might emerge for each of them personally.

This film is about the experience of dying. Five terminal patients in a Palliative Care Unit share the last days of their lives and deaths with a film crew.

At Baycrest, an old-age home in Toronto, we follow a social worker as she talks to residents, particularly Max, Claire, Ida, and Rachel. The film opens on Claire's birthday, she's 89; Max, a tiny cheerful man, is her close friend. Rachel is lonesome, missing her son, complaining he rarely visits. Ida relies on memory for her solace. Helen has no...

Two Scotland Yard detectives investigate the murder of a young woman of mixed race who had been passing for white. As they interview a spate of suspects -- including the girl's white boyfriend and his disapproving parents -- the detectives wade through a stubbornly entrenched sludge of racism and bigotry.

Involuntarily-retired Colonel Hyde recruits seven other dissatisfied ex-servicemen for a special project. Each of the men has a skeleton in the cupboard, is short of money, and is a service-trained expert in his field. The job is a bank robbery, and military discipline and planning are imposed by Hyde and second-in-command Race on the team, alth...

A closeted lawyer risks his career to bring a blackmailer to justice.

Over the course of one eventful evening, the anniversary celebration of the musical and romantic partners Aurelius Rex and Delia Lane, a jealous, ambitious drummer, Johnny Cousin, attempts to tear the interracial couple apart.

A short concerning an impoverished insurance salesman and his scrappy son, whose fisticuffs with the other boys of their village put his father’s livelihood in jeopardy.

In No Blood Relation, a gripping early example of Mikio Naruse’s cinematic boldness, featuring a screenplay by Ozu’s famed collaborator Kogo Noda, an actress returns to Tokyo after a successful stint in Hollywood to reclaim—with the help of her gangster brother—the daughter she abandoned years before.