Best of Criterion’s New Releases: June 2023
Each month, Paste brings you a look at the best new selections from the Criterion Collection. Much beloved by casual fans and cinephiles alike, Criterion has presented special editions of important classic and contemporary films for over three decades. You can explore the complete collection here.
In the meantime, because chances are you may be looking for something, anything, to discover, find all of our Criterion picks here, and if you’d rather dig into things on the streaming side (because who’s got the money to invest in all these beautiful physical editions?) we’ve got our list of the best films on the Criterion Channel. But you’re here for what’s new, and we’ve got you covered.
Here are all the new releases from Criterion, June 2023:
The Rules of the GameYear: 1939
Director: Jean Renoir
Stars: Nora Gregor, Paulette Dubost, Mila Parély, Marcel Dalio, Julien Carette, Roland Toutain, Gaston Modot, Pierre Magnier, Jean Renoir
Rating: NR
Runtime: 106 minutes
When Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir’s angry satire against the disregard and contempt the bourgeoisie displays for the working class, was first shown to an audience, a man who heard of the film’s supposed communist message tried to light a fire. Later, Renoir said that if someone is willing to burn down a theater to destroy your work, you must have done something right. Renoir brilliantly hid his brutally honest takedown of ruling class sociopathy under a thin veneer of a soap opera romance between the rich. Under this gaudy gold-plated surface of civilized behavior, expensive dinners and manly quail hunts, lies a moral rot that abandons all human dignity in favor of crude hedonism. If you’re looking for an artistic guide to understanding how we got to this abysmal point of income inequality, look no further. —Oktay Ege Kozak
The ServantYear: 1963
Director: Joseph Losey
Stars: Dirk Bogarde, Sarah Miles, Wendy Craig, James Fox
Rating: NR
Runtime: 116 minutes
A class collision hellbent on dragging its entitled rich boy down into the hedonistic gutter, The Servant is a sexy, unsettling thriller of loosely held identities. That could mean sexual identity: Dirk Bogarde’s handsome manservant Barrett has a physical, tightly-framed tension with James Fox’s posh snot Tony, and a certain jealous venom is spit between Barrett and Tony’s fiancée Susan (Wendy Craig). It could also mean personal identity: As the psychological drama descends into its darkest corners, boozehound Tony and grifter Barrett engage in a battle of willpower, grappling for control over the easy life. Joseph Losey’s sharp, chilly direction stabs like an icicle, though it can all melt in an instant thanks to Douglas Slocombe’s steamy compositions and John Dankworth’s rollicking score. The Servant‘s melodramatic plotting may not entirely convince, but the committed and increasingly desperate performances arm the satire to the teeth—and the arsenal deploys every megaton at its disposal. A vicious manslaughter of Britain’s stiff-lipped upper crust, with no sign of forced entry, meaning it was likely committed by a loved one.—Jacob Oller
AccattoneYear: 1961
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Stars: Franco Citti, Franca Pasut, Silvana Corsini
Rating: NR
Runtime: 117 minutes
Accattone opens with a quote from Dante’s Purgatorio, the middle journey of The Divine Comedy from Inferno to Paradiso. Accattone is also caught between worlds. A pimp and a father, he has trouble making ends meet. A dejected member of society, Accattone has trouble motivating himself, even when he is able to land a job at a factory. Trapped in this world between death and living, Accattone’s tragic fate feels predestined. Pasolini was 39 when he made Accattone, his first film. Already a celebrated literary figure, having written several novels, short stories, plays and screenplays (notably parts of La Dolce Vita and Nights of Cabiria for countryman Frederico Fellini), Pasolini was also between artistic worlds. Watching Accattone today, it feels like a near-textbook work of Italian neorealism. It is full of close, steady, verite shots that define the cinematic mode along with classic subjects like poverty, sex work and failing social systems. Yet there’s something else working from the periphery that reveres the characters. They are filmed in light. At times it feels like we’re at their feet. What happens to them is piteous and makes them martyrs of violent gender and economic systems. For Pasolini, these tragic archetypes are worthy of sainthood.—B.L. Panther
Mamma RomaYear: 1962
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Stars: Anna Magnani, Ettore Garofolo, Franco Citti
Rating: NR
Runtime: 106 minutes
Pasolini crystalizes hagiographic neorealism in his Mamma Roma. Starring the magnetic Anna Magnani, this story about a desperate mother’s attempts to break the family history of crime before it consumes her son is more dynamic than Accattone. There’s more style, more camera and emotional movement. While a Pasolini film in form and content, Magnani consecrates Mamma Roma. Pasolini famously preferred working with non-professional actors because they are “fragments of reality.” A professional actor “signifies that another consciousness is added to [his] own.” An actor comes with their own ideas and methods. They are always more than ‘being.’ In the case of Mamma Roma, this mix of professional and non-acting actors works exceedingly well, primarily based on the vibrancy of Magnani. Her performance is less an imposition of consciousness on the film as it is an apparition. She walks, talks and thinks differently, with the most alluring aura. Occasionally, Pasolini lifts us out of the verite style as Mamma Roma ascends to her sublime monologues against a disorienting and twinkling urban background. In these roving single tracking shots, she fulfills her namesake: She becomes a Marian figure, a sacred mother to the entire city.—B.L. Panther
Love MeetingsYear: 1964
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Rating: NR
Runtime: 89 minutes
Love Meetings documents the myths Italians were telling themselves in the mid-1960s. Asking “point blank” questions about their sexual lives and moralities, Pasolini draws together a national dialogue from candid responses at a time when modern sexual sensibilities were starting to sprout. He captures consciousness in flux, one filled with old myths about tradition, purity and nationalism, which confronts new myths of social progress and unregulated liberty. Talking to a diverse array of people—always with a sharp eye on how poverty influences sexual mores—Pasolini’s short anthropological study is endlessly fascinating, and one of the hidden gems in his filmography.—B.L. Panther
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