The Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection
Name	The Criterion Collection
Type	Private
Industry	Home video
Founded	1984
Founder	Robert Stein, Aleen Stein, Joe Medjuck, Roger Smith
Headquarters	New York City, New York, United States
Products	Film restoration, DVD, Blu-ray, streaming
Website	criterion.com

The Criterion Collection is an American company specializing in licensing, restoring, and distributing important classic and contemporary films. Founded in 1984, it is known for producing high-quality home video editions with scholarly supplemental materials, curatorial essays, and technical restorations. The company has released editions of films by internationally recognized filmmakers and has influenced preservation practices, film studies, and cinephile culture.

History

The company was founded in 1984 by Robert Stein, Aleen Stein, Joe Medjuck, and Roger Smith, emerging from an earlier effort to release definitive editions of influential films in the home video market. Early releases included works by Akira Kurosawa, Alfred Hitchcock, Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Jean-Luc Godard, which established a reputation among collectors and scholars. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the company navigated the transition from VHS to LaserDisc and then to DVD, collaborating with distributors and cinemas to secure rights for landmark titles such as films from Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Yasujiro Ozu. Strategic decisions in the 2000s involved adapting to the rise of Blu-ray and digital platforms while maintaining a focus on restoration, supplemental scholarship, and authoritative curatorial framing.

Catalogue and editions

The catalogue encompasses a wide array of international and American cinema, including works by Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, Akira Kurosawa, François Truffaut, Luis Buñuel, Satyajit Ray, Wong Kar-wai, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni. Editions typically feature new high-definition transfers, director interviews, audio commentaries with scholars and collaborators, and booklets or essays by film historians. Special editions have been devoted to thematic series—surveys of film noir, documentary anthologies, national cinemas like Japanese cinema and Italian neorealism, and retrospectives for auteurs such as Jean Renoir, John Ford, Pedro Almodóvar, and Billy Wilder. The company has also issued multi-disc box sets for collections including acclaimed titles by Ingmar Bergman and curated releases spotlighting actors like Buster Keaton and Marlon Brando.

Restoration and preservation

Restoration projects often involve collaboration with archives and institutions such as the Library of Congress, British Film Institute, Cineteca di Bologna, and private rights holders. Technical restoration work includes color timing, cleaning of original negatives, remastering of audio elements, and reconstruction of missing frames, aiming to approximate the filmmakers' original intentions for titles like The Seventh Seal, Tokyo Story, Citizen Kane, and Breathless. The company has partnered with laboratories and preservationists who have expertise in photochemical and digital restoration processes used for titles by Ernst Lubitsch, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Max Ophüls, and Luis Buñuel. These restoration efforts contribute to film scholarship at institutions including Museum of Modern Art, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Academy Film Archive.

Distribution and Curation

The company distributes physical media—DVDs and Blu-ray—and has expanded into streaming and digital distribution, offering a subscription-based streaming service and partnering with platforms to license curated libraries. Curatorial practice emphasizes authoritative liner notes, contextual essays by scholars from institutions like Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, and University of California, Berkeley, as well as commissioned documentaries and interviews with filmmakers, critics, and historians such as Jonathan Rosenbaum, Richard Roud, and Pauline Kael. Programming includes themed series, director retrospectives, and collaborations with festivals and museums—events with institutions like the Cannes Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, and regional cinémathèques. The company’s curation influences repertory programming at art-house theaters and educational syllabi at film schools worldwide.

Reception and influence

Scholars, critics, and collectors have lauded the company for elevating standards in home video presentation, scholarship, and archival restoration, often citing releases as definitive editions used in academic settings and preservation references. Filmmakers, from Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese to Wes Anderson and Pedro Almodóvar, have acknowledged such editions as influential in their cinephilia and filmmaking education. Critics in publications like Sight & Sound, Film Comment, and Cahiers du Cinéma have discussed the cultural role of curated film editions in canon formation and the study of auteurism. The company’s approach has inspired other distributors and archives, contributing to wider industry standards in supplemental features, picture quality, and critical apparatus.

Business model and partnerships

The business model combines licensing agreements with rights holders, revenue from physical media sales and a subscription streaming service, and partnerships with film archives, laboratories, and cultural institutions for restoration and exhibition. Strategic partnerships and licensing deals have involved studios, independent producers, and international archives, enabling releases of titles from Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., MGM, Studio Ghibli (select works), and national archives across Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Collaborations with academic publishers and museums support scholarly booklets and exhibition programming. The company also engages in limited-edition runs, retail exclusives with specialty stores, and promotional partnerships for festival screenings, retrospectives, and anniversary releases.

Category:Film distributors Category:Home video companies Category:Film preservation organizations