Inside the Box

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss The Complete Jean Vigo. This box set contains the films À propos de Nice (1930), Taris (1988), Zéro de conduite (1933), and L’Atalante (1934).

Even among cinema’s legends, Jean Vigo stands apart. The son of a notorious anarchist, Vigo had a brief but brilliant career making poetic, lightly surrealist films before his life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis at age twenty-nine. Like the daring early works of his contemporaries Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel, Vigo’s films refused to play by the rules. This set includes all of Vigo’s titles: À propos de Nice, an absurdist, rhythmic slice of life from the bustling coastal city; Taris, an inventive short portrait of a swimming champion; Zéro de conduite, a radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless filmmakers; and L’Atalante, widely regarded as one of cinema’s finest achievements, about newlyweds beginning their life together on a canal barge. These are the witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film artist.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss The Qatsi Trilogy. This box set contains the films Koyaanisqatsi (1983), Powaqqatsi (1988), and Naqoyqatsi (2002).

A singular artist and activist, Godfrey Reggio is best known for the galvanizing films of The Qatsi Trilogy. Astonishingly photographed, and featuring unforgettable, cascading scores by Philip Glass, these are immersive sensory experiences that meditate on the havoc humankind’s obsession with technological advancement has wreaked on our world. From 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi to 1988’s Powaqqatsi to 2002’s Naqoyqatsi, Reggio takes us on a journey from the ancient to the contemporary, from nature to industry, exploring life out of balance, in transformation, and as war, all the while keeping our eyes wide with wonder.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss The Infernal Affairs Trilogy. This box set contains the films Infernal Affairs (2002), Infernal Affairs II (2003), and Infernal Affairs III (2003).

The Hong Kong crime drama was jolted to new life with the release of the Infernal Affairs trilogy, a bracing, explosively stylish critical and commercial triumph that introduced a dazzling level of narrative and thematic complexity to the genre with its gripping saga of two rival moles—played by superstars Tony Leung Chiu-wai and Andy Lau Tak-wah—who navigate slippery moral choices as they move between the intersecting territories of Hong Kong’s police force and its criminal underworld. Set during the uncertainty of the city-state’s handover from Britain to China and steeped in Buddhist philosophy, these ingeniously crafted tales of self-deception and betrayal mirror Hong Kong’s own fractured identity and the psychic schisms of life in a postcolonial purgatory.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss 3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman. This untraditional box set contains the films Stromboli (1950), Europe ’51 (1952), and Journey to Italy (1954).

In the late 1940s, the incandescent Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman found herself so stirred by the revolutionary neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini that she sent the director a letter, introducing herself and offering her talents. The resulting collaboration produced a series of films that are works of both sociopolitical concern and metaphysical melodrama, each starring Bergman as a woman experiencing physical dislocation and psychic torment in postwar Italy. It also famously led to a scandalous affair and eventual marriage between filmmaker and star, and the focus on their personal lives in the press unfortunately overshadowed the extraordinary films they made together. Stromboli, Europe ’51, and Journey to Italy are intensely moving portraits that reveal the director at his most emotional and the glamorous actress at her most anguished, and that capture them and the world around them in transition.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss A Whit Stillman Trilogy. This untraditional box set contains the films Metropolitan (1990), Barcelona (1994), and The Last Days of Disco (1998).

Over the course of the 1990s, writer-director Whit Stillman made a trilogy of films about the acid tongues and broken hearts of some haplessly erudite young Americans in New York and abroad. Set in the eighties, these films trace the arc of that decade, led by Stillman’s Oscar-nominated debut, Metropolitan,which introduced moviegoers to a strange, endangered species of privileged New Yorker, the “urban haute bourgeoisie.” Chronologically, the tale continues with The Last Days of Disco, in which, with an earnest wink, Stillman mourns the close of New York’s nightclub era via the story of two young party-going women juggling day jobs in book publishing. Finally, Barcelona plunks down a pair of love-starved upper-class men in a foreign city rife with anti-American sentiment. At once effervescent and melancholy, these are comedies about the ends of cultural moments, social change as seen through the eyes of reluctant, unflaggingly sardonic romantics.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, No. 1. This is the third of three episodes focused on this set, and will focus on Ahmed El Maanouni’s Trances and Kim Ki-Young’s The Housemaid.

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from countries around the globe, including Senegal (Touki bouki), Mexico (Redes), India and Bangladesh (A River Called Titas), Turkey (Dry Summer), Morocco (Trances), and South Korea (The Housemaid). Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, No. 1. This is the second of three episodes focused on this set, and will focus on Ritwik Ghatak’s A River Called Titas and Metin Erksan’s Dry Summer.

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from countries around the globe, including Senegal (Touki bouki), Mexico (Redes), India and Bangladesh (A River Called Titas), Turkey (Dry Summer), Morocco (Trances), and South Korea (The Housemaid). Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.

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Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project, No. 1. This is the first of three episodes focused on this set, and will focus on Djibril Diop Mabéty’s Touki bouki and Emilio Gómez Muriel and Fred Zinnemann’s Redes.

Established by Martin Scorsese in 2007, the World Cinema Project expands the horizons of moviegoers everywhere. The mission of the WCP is to preserve and present marginalized and infrequently screened films from regions generally ill equipped to preserve their own cinema history. This collector’s set brings together six superb films from countries around the globe, including Senegal (Touki bouki), Mexico (Redes), India and Bangladesh (A River Called Titas), Turkey (Dry Summer), Morocco (Trances), and South Korea (The Housemaid). Each is a cinematic revelation, depicting a culture not often seen by outsiders on-screen.

Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander.

Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, and it is the legendary director’s warmest and most autobiographical film, a four-time Academy Award–winning triumph that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality. The Criterion Collection is proud to present both the theatrical release and the original five-hour television version of this great work. Also included in the box set is Bergman’s own feature-length documentary The Making of “Fanny and Alexander,” a unique glimpse into his creative process.

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Trevor Berrett and David Blakeslee are pleased to present Inside the Box, a podcast series that explores the riches in the various box sets released by The Criterion Collection. In this episode, they discuss Three Films by Luis Buñuel, which contains The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire.

More than four decades after he took a razor blade to an eyeball and shocked the world with Un chien andalou, arch-iconoclast Luis Buñuel capped his astonishing career with three final provocations—The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty, and That Obscure Object of Desire—in which his renegade, free-associating surrealism reached its audacious, self-detonating endgame. Working with such key collaborators as screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière and his own frequent on-screen alter ego Fernando Rey, Buñuel laced his scathing attacks on religion, class pretension, and moral hypocrisy with savage violence to create a trio of subversive, brutally funny masterpieces that explore the absurd randomness of existence. Among the director’s most radical works as well as some of his greatest international triumphs, these films cemented his legacy as cinema’s most incendiary revolutionary.

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