Michael Barrett

Cruel Story of Youth Criterion In 1960, Nagisa Ōshima made three radical films for Japan’s Shochiku Studio, and they fired him. One of those three, Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun Zankoku Monogatari) is now on Criterion. In a bonus as important as the main feature, and in some ways more satisfying, Ōshima’s one-hour debut is thrown in: A Town of Love and Hope (Ai to kibō no machi, 1959). Since his directorial career really begins there, we will too.

The Arrival from the Darkness and St. Wenceslas Deaf Crocodile Jan Stanislav Kolár is a pioneering filmmaker in Czech silent films who became an actor primarily during the talkies. Deaf Crocodile’s new Blu-ray package of silent films, The Arrival from the Darkness + St. Wenceslas, will do much to redress his obscurity while introducing fans to previously unknown examples of silent spookiness.

The Museum of Modern Art’s fourth annual Silent Film Week will present seven programs from 29 July through 4 August 2026, featuring major films by major filmmakers. Aside from the chance to see these films in a theatre with live music, the special treat for many silent film buffs will be the chance to see MoMA’s own restorations of two dazzling films that aren’t currently on home video, Raoul Walsh’s What Price Glory (1926) and Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927).