Amanda's Criterion Top 5

If you're just tuning in now, Laura and I have been detailing our favourite Criterion flicks. Well, she did hers, and now I'm doing mine.

I wanted to add that I really love Criterion for their respect for movies—I'm a big fan of their packaging, and the care taken to design a breathtaking cover, the finely-tuned copy on all cases and booklets, and the cleverly-designed menus and website. These guys LOVE movies, and it gives me great pleasure to support a shop that takes pride in their work.

Two things I realized compiling this list:
1. I like big photography, colourful, cinematic kind of films. The more sumptuous the pictures, the stronger I'm on board. Ditto that with anything slightly fairytale-esque.
2. I really wanted to pick Charade, but Laura already did, so you should watch that doubly.

On with the show!

Days of Heaven (1978)
A beautiful, understated piece of cinema, and easily Terrence Malick's best film. A steelworker accidentally kills his supervisor, and runs away with his girlfriend and kid sister to the fields of Texas, where they harvest wheat for a wealthy but good man – but naturally, things can never remain that simple.

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Narrated by the young sister, the vast, gorgeous fields set the stage for this American tragedy, the swaying wheat a sea of emotion the girl feels changing the world around her but does not understand. I love how quiet and dreamlike this film is, how little dialogue there is, and how wholly it overwhelms you. The whole thing is shot at magic hour – that precious half hour or so of soft light as the sun has set but the sky is watercoloured. It feels like a fable for the American dream, although the moral isn't something that can be understood in words – it's the emotional subtext here that is so compelling.

I remember I wrote about this one a while go, and on looking it up, I did a much better job then. You can check that out on my tumblr, if you'd like.

In the Mood for Love (2000)

I wrote about this one a while back too, so it might as well be number two on the list. It's Hong Kong in 1962, and two neighbours feel drawn to each other, intimately connected by a discovery about their partners, and at once bound to their traditional roles. This movie is all about heat, concealed and restrained, but its sensuality perfuming everything it touches, from the hyper-saturated palette to the languid camera movements. Such a beautiful, bold film, and if you can, see it on a big screen. I promise, you won't regret it.

(The video below is a little dark, but the theme music alone is worth a play.)

The Red Shoes (1948)
I'll continue down this path of visually arresting and colourful picks with one of the most vivid—and most painstakingly restored—prints in the whole collection. A young ballerina is the rising star in a ballet company, torn between her love of dance (and her demanding director) and her love for a young composer. It’s Powell and Pressburger’s best known film, for sure, and is the mother of all backstage drama films.

Martin Scorsese calls this one of cinema’s best uses of Technicolor, and with good reason—the sets are kaleidoscopes of hues, from Vicky’s flame red hair to the gorgeous locations and of course, the titular pointe shoes. Scorsese was a major force behind the restoration of this print too, which required seven years worth of restoration on each of the three Technicolor prints to make up the final version. This is one that you’ll need to make sure is the Criterion edition before you watch it, as previous versions were very washed out.

The Night of the Hunter (1955)
I’ve loved this movie since I first watched it in film class many moons ago, so I was really happy when it became part of the collection last year. Dreamlike and haunting, this is like a Grimm’s fairytale in stark black and white. The use of black and white film is really impressive too—so much to create the tension and mood is done with hard shadows and silhouettes. And Robert Mitchum is such a joy to watch here, so menacing and playful at once, and gives what strikes me as a very modern performance.

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Actually, the whole film feels very modern, very Leave It to Beaver gone bad, which is think largely why it wasn’t well-received by movie goers at the time of its release. It makes me so sad to think that the poor director, Charles Laughton, was widely panned for it, and it became his first and only attempt directing (he had a long career as an actor).

The Adventures of Antoine Doinel (1959, 1968, 1970, 1979)
Is it cheating to add a set of four? These picks do sit under one spine number, so I’m not going to apologize for it, but I am only going to suggest two of the set.

Antoine is one of my favourite characters in film history: a classic rapscallion, good-natured and a little goofy, which I’m such a sucker for. The first film, The 400 Blows, is an origin story, and not nearly so lighthearted as the later films. It depicts a young Antoine’s adolescence, his home life, his troubles in school, his desire for freedom. As one of the defining films of the French New Wave, it introduced Truffaut to the world and made him a household name. The actor behind Antoine, Jean-Pierre Leaud, is actually at his best in this one, at age fourteen, where he seems so effortlessly charming.

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My favourite of the set is the next feature, Stolen Kisses. Antoine is a young man, working as a (not so good) private detective, and pursues Christine, a violinist he has felt sweet on for some time. This entry in the series is much funnier, much sillier, but still rings so painfully true. I think Antoine’s so successful because he speaks to that part in everyone who feels awkward, a little outside the norm, a little too earnest to be cool.

Happy viewing!