The Criterion Channel’s June 2023 Lineup
The Criterion Channel’s June 2023 Lineup
This June on the Criterion Channel, get in character for a journey through the movement that transformed screen acting. From Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando to Barbara Loden and Ellen Burstyn, our Method Acting series collects some of the all-time great film performances. And don’t neglect the Actors Studio–trained Marilyn Monroe, whose comic turns and dramatic showcases are brought together in this month’s retrospective. There’s plenty more to choose from, including a wide variety of LGBTQ+ offerings: rediscovered queer classics from Gregg Araki and Stanley Kwan, an insightful survey of the “gay best friend” trope, and a groundbreaking collection of films that celebrate trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes.
* indicates programming available only in the U.S.
TOP STORIES
Method Acting
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Featuring a new conversation between author Isaac Butler and actors Ethan Hawke and Vincent D’Onofrio
Arguably the greatest stylistic revolution to hit Hollywood since the invention of sound, the Method forever changed the way that both performers and audiences related to the art and craft of screen acting. Born out of the pioneering work of Konstantin Stanislavski and the Moscow Art Theatre, the community-fostered traditions of Yiddish theater, and the influence of legendary acting coaches like Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler, Method acting gave rise to a new kind of postwar movie star: one who eschewed glamour in favor of an intensely personal, internalized, and naturalistic approach to performance. Curated by Livia Bloom Ingram and Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, this program spotlights key performances by Method-influenced artists like Montgomery Clift, Sidney Poitier, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, John Garfield, Kim Stanley, Warren Beatty, and Barbara Loden, for whom acting was a fearless journey into the deepest and most vulnerable parts of the themselves.
FEATURING: Humoresque (1946), A Place in the Sun (1951), On the Waterfront (1954), Bus Stop (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Strange One (1957), The Goddess (1958), The Misfits (1961), Something Wild (1961), Splendor in the Grass (1961), The Haunting (1963), The Pawnbroker (1964), Meet Marlon Brando (1966), Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Graduate (1967), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968), Five Easy Pieces (1970), Wanda (1970), Carnal Knowledge (1971), The French Connection (1971), Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), Resurrection (1980)*, Reds (1981)*
COMING JULY 1
Mean Streets (1973)
COMING AUGUST 1
Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
Starring Marilyn Monroe
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An era-defining star whose pop-culture mythos has grown so immense it often eclipses the work she did as an actor, Marilyn Monroe deserves to be remembered as more than just an emblem of 1950s sexuality or tragic beauty. She was, first and foremost, an artist, a dedicated perfectionist who combined natural screen magnetism with a serious commitment to her craft that she honed through her work with Method acting pioneers Lee and Paula Strasberg. Though classic turns in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch immortalized her brilliant comic timing, Monroe was equally effective in dramatic showcases like Bus Stop and The Misfits, in which she tapped into the deep well of vulnerability that lay beneath her glamorous image.
FEATURING: All About Eve (1950), Clash by Night (1952), Don’t Bother to Knock (1952), Monkey Business (1952), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), Niagara (1953), River of No Return (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Bus Stop (1956), The Misfits (1961)
Masc
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Spotlighting the rich stories and courageous lives of trans men, butch lesbians, and gender-nonconforming heroes, this collection—curated by writer-archivist-filmmaker Jenni Olson and critic Caden Mark Gardner—journeys through nearly four decades of cinema history in search of authentic, complex representations of masculine identity as it exists outside the realm of cisgender men. From nuanced explorations of gender-nonconforming youth (Vera, Tomboy) to powerfully moving documentary portraits (Shinjuku Boys, Southern Comfort) to innovative narratives that deconstruct both gender and genre (By Hook or By Crook, Maggots and Men), these films celebrate the courageous queer visionaries who have blazed these trails and who continue to show the way forward and inspire us all.
FEATURES: Vera (1986), Shinjuku Boys (1995), By Hook or By Crook (2001), Lifetime Guarantee: Phranc’s Adventure in Plastic (2001), Southern Comfort (2001), The Aggressives (2005), Tomboy (2011), Stud Life (2012), Chavela (2017), No Ordinary Man (2021)
SHORTS: Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box (1987), Max (1992), Stafford’s Story (1992), Ifé (1993), Trans (1994), Maggots and Men (2009), Vamónos (2016), Monsieur Le Butch (2022), Pete (2022)
Queersighted: The Gay Best Friend
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Featuring a new conversation between series curator Michael Koresky and author Mark Harris
The Gay Best Friend can be helpful. The Gay Best Friend can be catty. They can be unconditionally loving or secretly sinister. Yet they all have something in common: we never learn very much about their lives, existing as they do to support, elucidate, or put into relief something about their films’ straight main characters. This persistent stereotype provides a lens through which we can understand queer film history and the legacies of characters who have been, almost by definition, marginalized. In this latest edition of Queersighted, series curator Michael Koresky and his special guest, author Mark Harris (Mike Nichols: A Life), discuss a selection of titles stretching from Production Code–era Hollywood to the “out” nineties, featuring fascinating characters who may gaze from the sidelines but bring vivid life and depth to their films.
FEATURING: Easy Living (1937)*, Adam’s Rib (1949), The Strange One (1957), A Taste of Honey (1961), Rachel, Rachel (1968), Knightriders (1981), The Fisher King (1991), Single White Female (1992), Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Irma Vep (1996)
Screwball Comedy Classics
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First comes love, then comes anarchy—at least that’s how it works in the wild, upside-down world of classic screwball. Like a romcom on speed, the screwball comedy supercharges the genre with fizzy battle-of-the-sexes mayhem; fast-talking, diamond-cut dialogue; and a perfectly calibrated combination of escapist elegance and slapstick chaos. The result is golden-age Hollywood at its most exuberantly inventive and playfully subversive, flipping social, class, and gender norms on their head with gleeful, lunatic abandon. Bringing together favorites by masters of the genre such as Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby) and George Cukor (Adam’s Rib), ripe-for-discovery gems (Fifth Avenue Girl, The Mad Miss Manton), and a brilliant 1970s update to the formula (What’s Up, Doc?), this selection runs riot with the sparkling wit, virtuoso performances, and sense of unstoppable fun that make screwball such a blast.
FEATURING: The Front Page (1931), Sing and Like It (1934), Breakfast for Two (1937), Easy Living (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938)*, The Mad Miss Manton (1938), Fifth Avenue Girl (1939), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Adam’s Rib (1949), What’s Up, Doc? (1972)
LGBTQ+ Favorites
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Proud, rebellious, colorful, intimate, and frank, these visions of LGBTQ+ life include beloved modern classics as well as hidden gems. From staples of the art-house canon (Je tu il elle, Querelle) to highlights of the New Queer Cinema explosion (Paris Is Burning) and contemporary showstoppers from emerging talents (Pier Kids, Shakedown), these films represent just a sample of the wide world of queer cinema, but they offer a taste of its breadth, creativity, and defiance in the face of adversity.
FEATURING: Portrait of Jason (1967), Je tu il elle (1975), Jubilee (1978), Greetings from Washington, D.C. (1981), Querelle (1982), Dressed in Blue (1983), The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), Desert Hearts (1985), Mala Noche (1985), I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989), Tongues Untied (1989), Paris Is Burning (1990), Fresh Kill (1994), The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Weekend (2011), Shakedown (2018), Pier Kids (2019), Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth (2019), So Pretty (2019)
EXCLUSIVE PREMIERES
The Innocent*
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Featuring a new introduction by director Louis Garrel
Part crime thriller, part family farce, Louis Garrel’s The Innocent shows the dangerous lengths two men go to, and the outlandish lies they tell, for the women they love. Garrel stars as Abel, a museum educator and widower whose mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), marries Michel (Roschdy Zem), one of her drama pupils in the local penitentiary. Once on parole, Michel attempts to start a legitimate life for Sylvie’s sake but soon reverts to his old ways, with the suspicious Abel continually—and ineptly—spying on his stepfather until roped into one of the ex-con’s schemes. Complicating matters is Clémence (Noémie Merlant), the brazen coworker who convinces Abel to break out of his emotional and romantic shell by taking part in Michel’s planned heist. Directing from his own screenplay (as cowritten by Tanguy Viel and Naïla Guiguet), Garrel explores the comedic results of playacting’s intrusion into real life, as well as real life’s comedic tendency to transform us into what we never thought we could be, but perhaps always were.
CRITERION COLLECTION EDITIONS
Jack Nicholson takes on one of his most powerful roles as a shiftless thirtysomething oil rigger and former piano prodigy in this moving portrait of alienation.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Bob Rafelson and interior designer Toby Rafelson, a documentary about the legendary film company BBS Productions, an audio interview with Rafelson, and more.
On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)
Criterion Collection Edition #647
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Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as a longshoreman questioning his loyalty to a mob-connected union in this masterpiece of urban poetry.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: A conversation between Martin Scorsese and critic Kent Jones, interviews with director Elia Kazan and actor Eva Marie Saint, the documentary Elia Kazan: Outsider, audio commentary by authors Richard Schickel and Jeff Young, and more.
Screwball sparks fly and manic misadventures pile up when a hapless paleontologist (Cary Grant) finds himself entangled with a dizzy heiress (Katharine Hepburn) in one of the fastest and funniest films ever made.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich, a documentary on director Howard Hawks, a video essay on Grant, and more.
A multigenerational love triangle, a Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack, and a young actor named Dustin Hoffman: The Graduate had the kind of cultural impact that comes along only once in a generation.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Audio commentary by director Mike Nichols and filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, an interview with Hoffman, documentaries on the making of the film and its influence, and more.
In this startlingly modern work of psychological realism, a college student (Carroll Baker) attempts suicide after a brutal sexual assault but is stopped by a mechanic (Ralph Meeker)—whose kindness, however, soon takes an unsettling turn.
SUPPLEMENTAL FEATURES: Interviews with Baker and scholar Foster Hirsch, a conversation between director Jack Garfein and critic Kim Morgan, and more.
REDISCOVERIES AND RESTORATIONS
The Doom Generation
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Newly restored to its audacious, uncut glory, the blistering second installment in Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy is a wild, meth- and fast-food-fueled joyride through the fringes of a menacing, weirdo America. Shortly after picking up the dangerously alluring drifter Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech), teenage lovers Jordan White (James Duval) and Amy Blue (Rose McGowan) embark on a violent, kinky, black-comic road trip through a wasteland of convenience stores and motels populated by neo-Nazis and Amy’s ex-lovers. Swirling Godardian cool with a queer, punk defiance, Araki issues a sexy and shocking vision of Gen X nihilism careening toward oblivion.
Lan Yu
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Filmed in secret in Beijing, this tender gay romance by Stanley Kwan combines the timeless conventions of classic melodrama with a radically frank depiction of queer intimacy as it traces, over the course of years, the relationship between a wealthy businessman (Hu Jun) and a young architecture student (Liu Ye) as they come together, fall apart over the former’s fear of commitment, and gradually realize that they are fated to be together. Kwan’s expressive visuals and the sensitive lead performances yield a daring, deeply affecting love story that doubles as a haunting reflection on life in post-Mao China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
THREE DIMENSIONS
Three by Gregg Araki
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Featuring an introduction by the filmmaker
Fearlessly raw, angry, and unrestrained, the films of underground auteur Gregg Araki give voice to the angst and alienation of queer youth everywhere. Emerging as one of the edgiest and most vital voices of 1990s New Queer Cinema movement with radical provocations like Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation, Araki channeled the disillusionment and despair of the AIDS era into transgressive, stylistically explosive howls of rage in the face of a homophobic society. With his haunting drama Mysterious Skin, Araki won widespread acclaim and cemented his status as one of independent cinema’s most uncompromising chroniclers of the outsider experience.
FEATURING: Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995), Mysterious Skin (2004)
TRUE STORIES
People Person: Documentaries by Jeanie Finlay
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Graced with immense empathy and respect for those who go their own way, Jeanie Finlay’s intimate documentaries tell richly emotional stories of outsiders, artists, and everyday eccentrics who defy convention. Refusing to exploit her subjects, she finds tender human comedy and drama in stories of personal transformation, from the legend of the masked singer who may have been the second coming of Elvis (Orion: The Man Who Would Be King) to the journey of a pregnant transgender man (Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth).
FEATURING: Sound It Out (2011), The Great Hip Hop Hoax (2013), Orion: The Man Who Would Be King (2015), Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth (2019)
I Called Him Morgan*
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On a snowy night in 1972, celebrated jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot to death by his common-law wife, Helen, at a club in New York City. This deeply poignant, evocatively filmed documentary explores two unique personalities and the music that brought them together.
SHORT FILMS
A Wild Patience Has Taken Me Here
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This formally innovative, euphorically sexy short travels through the queer Brazil of past, present, and future as it traces an encounter between an older butch biker and a band of young polyamorous lesbians who share an ecstatic weekend together.
Tricia’s Wedding
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Revel in the psychedelic debauchery as underground “acid drag” theater troupe the Cockettes orchestrate a decidedly queer, hysterically funny send-up of the televised wedding of First Daughter Tricia Nixon.
NEW ADDITIONS TO PREVIOUS PROGRAMS
Now Playing in Erotic Thrillers: Basic Instinct*
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Michael Douglas and an ice-cool Sharon Stone play dangerously seductive mind games in Paul Verhoeven’s sleek, sexually daring thriller.
Now Playing in Anthony Mann Directs James Stewart: The Naked Spur
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James Stewart sheds his nice-guy image with a dark, complex turn as a bitter Civil War veteran seeking the bounty for a crafty outlaw (Robert Ryan).
ENCORES
Back by Popular Demand
Don’t miss these viewer favorites, returning to the Channel in June!
FEATURING: Night Moves (1975), Safe (1995), To Die For (1995)
