The Sunday Read: ‘Sure, It Won an Oscar. But Is It Criterion?’

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.5 • 97.8K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

In October 2022, amid a flurry of media appearances promoting their film “Tàr,” the director Todd Field and the star Cate Blanchett made time to visit a cramped closet in Manhattan. This closet, which has become a sacred space for movie buffs, was once a disused bathroom at the headquarters of the Criterion Collection, a 40-year-old company dedicated to “gathering the greatest films from around the world” and making high-quality editions available to the public on DVD and Blu-ray and, more recently, through its streaming service, the Criterion Channel. Today Criterion uses the closet as its stockroom, housing films by some 600 directors from more than 50 countries — a catalog so synonymous with cinematic achievement that it has come to function as a kind of film Hall of Fame. Through a combination of luck, obsession and good taste, this 55-person company has become the arbiter of what makes a great movie, more so than any Hollywood studio or awards ceremony.

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0:00.0	My name is Joshua Hunt and I'm a contributor to the New York Times magazine.
0:07.0	This week's Sunday Reed is my story for the magazine about the history and enduring cultural influence of the Criterion Collection,
0:16.8	a home video company that's been around for 40 years.
0:22.3	It started out selling laser discs in the early 1980s. These days, its mission
0:27.7	to highlight what it calls important classic and contemporary films from around the world is mostly carried out through
0:34.9	sales of DVD and Blu-ray discs. Criteria not only survived all these technological
0:42.0	shifts in the business of how movies get made and
0:45.0	distributed, but it's prospered. Five years ago, it launched a streaming service of its own. But in an age when our tastes are so algorithmically determined,
0:57.0	the Criterion Channel stands out for its reliance on human curation. Every film is hand-picked. Nothing gets recommended based on what others are watching or what you've watched before.
1:10.0	I first came across criterion in the late 90s when I became obsessed with its DVD release
1:17.8	of the Kira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.
1:21.2	Eventually, I bought every Kurosawa film Criterion released on DVD and over time I developed
1:28.5	distrust in the Criterion brand where I would occasionally buy movies that I knew nothing about.
1:35.3	I think it's how a lot of people's relationship with criterion goes.
1:39.8	It starts with movies they know, but eventually they're taking a leap of faith based on the
1:45.2	brand and not the filmmaker. Criterion is who they trust to tell them what is good cinema.
1:55.0	So here's my article.
1:58.0	Sure, it won an Oscar, but is it criterion?
2:02.0	Read by Sean Taylor Corbett.
2:05.0	This week's audio was produced by Jack Desidero.
2:08.0	The music you'll hear was written and performed by Aaron Esposito.
2:15.8	In October 2022, amid a flurry of media appearances promoting their film TAR, the director
	...

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