criterionforum.org

8 1/2 - B
Il posto - B
I fidanzati - B
Fists in the Pocket - C
Red Desert - A

I'm someone doing a degree in German and Italian, who has an interest in films in those languages or films that are tied to those countries. Generally I buy the Criterion because it's the best release of that film, but if someone does a better release I'll always go for that one. I don't consider myself a Criterion collector at all.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (BD) A
Stagecoach (BD) A
Oshima Eclipse C
Lola Montes (BD) C
Bigger Than Life (BD) B

Le Plaisir A
Days of Heaven B
The Leopard A
Empire of Passion A
Mayerling C

Will DEFINITELY get me the Sternberg set (B) and the Oshima Eclipse (B). And "Mayerling" was a knock-out discovery.

zedz wrote:If you asked me the same question after a B&N sale, you'd get a completely different, probably 'purer' answer.

Yes, this would be a much purer answer, as it's when I (and I assume many others) will be picking up most everything I've been really itching for lately. Though after that sale, how would I pick which of the 10-50 titles I bought constitute my "last five purchases"?

Makavejev Eclipse - A
Imamura: Pigs Pimps Battleships - B
Maddin: Brand upon the Brain - A
Mishima: Patriotism - B
Godard: Breathless - A

Oops ...

Oshima's Outlaw Sixties - A
By Brakhage 1 & 2 (blu) - B
Pierrot le fou (blu) - A
Yojimbo / Sanjuro (blu) - A
The Human Condition - A

I'm going to give you two...because the recent OOP announcement the last 5 I've bought were due only because of that...

Diary of A Chambermaid - A
Bob le Flambeur - A
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi - C
Billy Liar - A
The Milky Way - C

but just prior to those pick-ups, my purchases reflect my usual pattern....

Young Mr. Lincoln - A
Stagecoach Blu - A
M blu - A
Oshima's Outlaw 60s - C
Walkabout blu - A

Au Hasard Balthazar - B
Le Deuxieme Souffle - B
The Earrings of Madame de... - A
Le jour se lève - B
Le trou - C

The next batch will look like this:

Les Doulos - A
The Fugitive Kind - A
Lola Montès - A
Stagecoach - A
Sternberg Silents - A

Billy Liar C
Kind Hearts and Coronets C
Gommorah (S-DVD) B
The Last Metro (S-DVD) B
The Lady Vanishes A

The Complete Monterey Pop Festival - B
Pierrot le fou - B
Howards End - B
Monsoon Wedding - B
Der Himmel über Berlin - B

Vivre sa vie - B
Z - A
Paris, Texas - B
Wings Of Desire - B
Walker - B

Oshima's Outlaw Sixties - A
Pierrot le fou (Blu-Ray) - A
Grand Illusion - A
Trafic - B
Dusan Makavejev: Free Radical - B

I've also got Three Silent Classics By Josef Von Sternberg on pre-order - B

Oshima's Outlaw Sixties - C
Walkabout [Blu-ray] - A
M [Blu-ray] - A
By Brakhage [Blu-ray] - A/B/C
Letters from Fontainhas - B

M - A
Walkabout - A
Oshima's Outlaw Sixties - B
Stagecoach - A
By Brakhage Volumes One and Two - A and C

Hello,

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to respond to my last survey question. It was extremely helpful, especially the suggestions members gave me for re-formulating the question.

Many of you mentioned that there were films like I Fidanzati that you discovered through Criterion. Both Olmi releases for me were terrific discoveries that had not Criterion's label been affixed to them, I might have easily overlooked. This is what I'm really curious about. Is the Criterion brand causing audiences to consider for the first time or re-evaluate films they would have otherwise never fallen in love with?

Another good example in my case are the Suzuki films. Had a company like NoShame released them I may not have ever purchased them. But through Criterion's marketing and contextualizing of those titles, I became immediately curious. Now of course through having seen the Suzuki films on Criterion, a whole genre and style of film I thought previously I wouldn't have liked has been opened up for me.

I'm calling it The Criterion Effect.

So here's the new question:

Which Criterion films in your collection are ones that you probably would have overlooked had Criterion not released them? List as many titles as you feel apply.

Thanks

I think it's worth pointing out that Criterion serves as an "in" for many many viewers just getting their feet wet in film. If it were my project, I'd also focus on some case studies of people who started here and moved on, and also those who never seemed to progress past Criterion's output. Just a thought

domino harvey wrote:I think it's worth pointing out that Criterion serves as an "in" for many many viewers just getting their feet wet in film. If it were my project, I'd also focus on some case studies of people who started here and moved on, and also those who never seemed to progress past Criterion's output. Just a thought

I can vouch for the validity of this post, as I have only been a "cinephile" for the past year and Pierrot Le Fou was my first Criterion film as well as my first classic "art-house" film that I would have overlooked if not for the label. I was thus acquainted to associate Criterion Collection with the art-house scene of which my interest in film really began to burgeon at. I don't own many crits, but I do watch them extensively because of the brand. Films I can rattle off the top my head that I have viewed solely because of Criterion (without impetuses such as universal recognition like 8 1/2), include, Obscure Object of Desire, Double Life of Veronique, Last Year at Marienbad, Dillinger is Dead, Onibaba, Pierrot Le Fou, Contempt, In The Realm of the Senses, Winter Light, Andrei Rublev, and etc. Obviously since then, I have begun to rely less on Criterion and more on my original source that got me into Criterion; online message boards. A perhaps more interesting question to your research project (though I am doubtful how much pertinence it would bear) is where do people first discover these "boutique" labels? like Criterion? To elaborate, my first exposure was a forum board (not this one) deeply entrenched in foreign film classics. That's where my association between Criterion and cinematic quality was first learned.

domino harvey wrote:I think it's worth pointing out that Criterion serves as an "in" for many many viewers just getting their feet wet in film. If it were my project, I'd also focus on some case studies of people who started here and moved on, and also those who never seemed to progress past Criterion's output. Just a thought

That's definitely the case for me, (getting my feet wet.) Criterion makes it easy to find films worth watching because the research is already done. I didn't know where to begin to find films I thought I'd like, Criterion basically provided me with a list. I then found the forums and use everyone else's knowledge to expand on what I view.

As far as what I would've overlooked without Criterion, well, if it has a spine # I'd have probably missed it. Exceptions being the few titles we all watched in our various film classes, (The Third Man, Stagecoach, Seven Samurai, etc.)

Which Criterion films in your collection are ones that you probably would have overlooked had Criterion not released them? List as many titles as you feel apply.

I assume you want the films we discovered via Criterion and liked (as opposed to ones we found via Criterion and disliked). There are also plenty of films which I discovered via Criterion, but would only rate as decent and/or interesting, such as El Norte, The Hit, Before the Rain, etc

In any event, these are my favorites which I might not have cottoned on to without CC.

The Shop on Main Street
Fists in the Pocket
Man Bites Dog
Seduced and Abandoned
Science Is Fiction: 23 Films by Jean Painlevé

The Flowers of St. Francis (really Rossellini on the whole)
Dillinger is Dead
Harakiri
The Testament of Orpheus
Last Holiday
Raymond Bernard (Esp. Wooden Crosses)
Aki Kaurismaki (esp. Match factory Girl)
Hiroshi Shimizu (esp. Mr. Thank You)
Innocence Unprotected
Mayerling
Le Trou

domino harvey wrote:I think it's worth pointing out that Criterion serves as an "in" for many many viewers just getting their feet wet in film. If it were my project, I'd also focus on some case studies of people who started here and moved on, and also those who never seemed to progress past Criterion's output. Just a thought

That's how I got into movies- and I recognized at one point that I was stalling out on the things Criterion offered, and pushed myself to move into (for instance) silent film, which is an area Criterion doesn't really cover much.

That said, looking at my Criterions, there are a lot that I wasn't too familiar with before buying the discs, but not too many that I can confidently say I would never have found if Criterion (and Janus) hadn't pointed me towards them. Namely:

Secret Honor, which is one of my two favorite Altman movies
Charade, which is one that I've used to infect other people with Criterion love
Man Bites Dog, which I have mixed feelings about but which I am very glad to have gotten to see
Carnival of Souls, which I almost certainly would have seen- it's also out on Legend Films, with a Mike Nelson commentary, but which I wouldn't have bothered watching properly
The Fallen Idol, which is nearly on par with the Third Man for me
Trafic- I don't know that I would have ever heard of Jacques Tati without the Criterion releases
The Man Who Fell to Earth, which they seem to have decided was a classic unilaterally (although they've got me convinced)
An Angel at my Table, which I wound up writing a major paper about
Science is Fiction, which may be my single thing they've put together in the last couple years

Both of the Olmi's
La Collectionneuse
Scenes from a Marriage
My Dinner with Andre
3 Women

Hiroshi Shimizu - no others.

Arrow wrote:

domino harvey wrote:I think it's worth pointing out that Criterion serves as an "in" for many many viewers just getting their feet wet in film. If it were my project, I'd also focus on some case studies of people who started here and moved on, and also those who never seemed to progress past Criterion's output. Just a thought

That's definitely the case for me, (getting my feet wet.) Criterion makes it easy to find films worth watching because the research is already done. I didn't know where to begin to find films I thought I'd like, Criterion basically provided me with a list. I then found the forums and use everyone else's knowledge to expand on what I view.

As far as what I would've overlooked without Criterion, well, if it has a spine # I'd have probably missed it. Exceptions being the few titles we all watched in our various film classes, (The Third Man, Stagecoach, Seven Samurai, etc.)

It's the same for me.
I know that most of Criterion picks are movies that are worth being watched at least once (even if I've been sometimes disappointed).

But, for the question, I would have overlooked on :

The Hit
Hobson's Choice
Last Year At Marienbad
Dazed And Confused (which became kind of my ultimate feel-good movie)
Kind Hearts And Coronets
The Man Who Fell To Earth (which became a movie I really love)

and many, many others.

But it's also the same for me with a lot of editors I know that are doing a very good job on their releases, such as Carlotta, Masters Of Cinema, Wild Side or Potemkine.

They're eclectic for the movies they release, but not on the dedication they put in it.

I think almost every single Criterion film I have are ones I would never have cared to look at had Criterion released them. Before I became interested in Criterion, I had no experience with foreign cinema and never really took film seriously. The only directors I could probably name back in 2008, before I bought my first Criterion, were Scorsese, Lucas, Spielberg, Kubrick and a few others, but none of them were independent or foreign directors.
Since I started buying Criterion in 2008 with Classe tous risque (an odd one, I know), my collection has exploded to 26. Prior to even hearing about Criterion, the only one I had seen was Spartacus, which I just won on eBay. I had either seen it on tape or TV. Now, whenever a Criterion film is on TMC, I have to DVR it. I have just become enamored with cinema and it really makes me appreciate films I had already seen because I know how important some of them are now.

I had also no knowledge of these boutique labels that are out there. Some of KINO's releases have caught my attention that I'd love to get and there are some Masters of Cinema releases that look interesting (if they're Region free ones...I don't have a region free player ). The only non-Criterion foreign film I have though is La Dolce Vita and I'd love for a chance to do that.

All that probably veered off from your question. Anyway, here is a short list of ones I have that had Criterion not released them there would be no shot of me being interested:

Aplphaville (definitely all the Godard's I have)
Grand Illusion
L'Avventura
The Third Man
Le Samourai (I got that one based on the cover alone!)
M
8 1/2
Make Way For Tomorrow

I think I would be comfortable probably listing my whole Criterion collection there, but those are ones I don't think I could live without now.