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1. Jacques Rivette -- Jean-Luc Godard
   For the past five decades, Jacques Rivette has produced an incredibly rich and prolific body of work cementing his reputation as one of the masters of the French New Wave. His name is often uttered in reverence along with Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer, his comrades in the New Wave’s Gang of Four. His films have not been screened as widely as his peers ... largely due to a perceived inaccessibility attributed to their extended running times; many of these works run well over two hours, most notably the over twelve hour long Out One: Noli Me Tangere (sadly this version is currently unavailable with English subtitles). Yet these larger canvases afford Rivette the space to develop a complex interplay between fiction and reality in which his layering of a world within the larger world of his films is both reflexive and magical.
2. Jean Renoir -- French Cancan
   Synopsis: Noted French director Jean Renoir made his American debut with this 1941 film. Walter Brennan plays Tom Keefer, a man who is falsely convicted of a murder and sentenced to death by hanging. He has escapeRead More
3. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) -- Warren Beatty
   "Bonnie and Clyde,'' made in 1967, was called "the first modern American film'' by critic Patrick Goldstein, in an essay on its 30th anniversary. Certainly it felt like that at the time. The movie opened like a slap in the face. American filmgoers had never seen anything like it. In tone and freedom it descended from the French new wave, particularly Francois Truffaut's own film about doomed lovers, "Jules and Jim.'' Indeed, it was Truffaut who first embraced the original screenplay by David Newman and Robert Benton, and called it to the attention of Warren Beatty, who was determined to produce it.
4. Louis Malle -- Au Revoir
   The Murphy Brown star was, of course, married to Malle for the last fifteen years of his life. This interview, then, if far more personal than Billiard's. Bergen's focus is on Malle's restless, vital intellect. Highlights of the talk include the frustration of going to a Cineplex with Malle: He treated the twenty-theater monstrosities as sampler plate, catching fifteen or so minutes of each movie. She ... talks about the genesis of Au revoir les infants. Once again, this interview was recorded by Criterion exclusively for this release.
5. Roberto Rossellini -- History
   Rossellini's continuing investigation of the nature of history and myth in the re-telling of the story of St. Francis of Assisi and his band of friars, as they attain perfect harmony with nature. "The most beautiful film in the world" (Francois Truffaut). The DVD is a Criterion Collection Edition, and includes video interviews with actress Isabella Rossellini, film critic Father Virgilio Fantuzzi, and film historian Adriano Apra, essay by film scholar Peter Brunette, and more. In Italian with English subtitles. Italy, 1950, 75 mins.
6. Oskar Werner -- Life
   Universally regarded as one of Western Europe's foremost stage actors, Oskar Werner was 18 years old when he made his stage bow at the Burgtheater in his native Vienna. A lifelong pacifist, Werner did everything he could to avoid conscription in the Axis army during World War II; when he finally was forced into a uniform, he deserted at the earliest opportunity.
7. Jean-Pierre Aumont
   French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, 90, who played romantic roles in Hollywood (including opposite Leslie Caron in 1953's "Lili") and on stage both on Broadway and in Paris, died at his home on the French Riviera Tuesday. Among his better roles was that in Francois Truffaut's "Day for Night," in the '70s. More recently, he appeared in the Merchant-Ivory production of "Jefferson in Paris," and his final performance was in the 1998 TV mini-series "The Count of Monte Christo." French President Jacques Chirac, in a statement released after Aumont's death, said the leading man "conquered Hollywood and Broadway with panache."
8. French Cinema -- Jean-Luc Godard
   The "new wave" in French cinema began in 1958, when a young film critic, Claude Chabrol, directed Le Beau Serge, a study of two young men in a provincial town. Two friends of Chabrol's... film critics, followed him into film-making the following year — Jean-Luc Godard, with À Bout de souffle, reminiscent of American gangster films in its treatment of a French criminal; and François Truffaut, with Les Quatre cent coups, about a schoolboy in trouble. While Godard was the most prolific, it is probably Truffaut who accomplished most, with his lively films Tirez sur le pianiste (1960) and Jules et Jim (1961). Other new wave directors include Alain Resnais (Hiroshima, mon amour, 1959), Agnès Varda (Cléo de 5 à 7, 1962), and Louis Malle (Vie privée, 1961).
9. Jean Renoir -- Works
   This review of Jean Renoir’s masterpiece "Rules of the Game" highlights the less-than-favorable circumstances surrounding the release of the film. Apparently, censors insisted on editing out most of the controversial scenes, rendering the work almost incomprehensible. Now, with the original version restored, audiences can appreciate Renoir’s mastery.
10. Jean-Paul Belmondo -- Jean-Luc Godard
    Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard's tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, "the last romantic couple." With blissful color imagery by cinematographer Raoul Coutard and Belmondo and Karina at their most animated, Pierrot le fou is one of the high points of the French new wave, and was Godard's last frolic before he moved ever further into radical cinema.

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