Tokyo Story to Seven Samurai to In the Mood for Love. The films that the Criterion Collection has, since 1984, established as the canonical serious cinema canon.
The Criterion Collection has, since its 1984 laserdisc launch, become the most-influential curator of serious cinema in the English-speaking world. The catalogue now includes over 1,200 titles; almost every working serious-cinema fan has, at some point, used the Criterion catalogue as their working canon. See our Criterion history essay for the broader context.
Our picks of the Criterion films that are, by general critical consensus, the most-canonically-essential. The list is, as with any canon, contestable; we have weighted heavily toward films whose Criterion releases have shaped subsequent critical reception.
The Criterion Collection's specific influence is partly that the editorial selection itself functions as canon-shaping. A film's Criterion release is, in working-cinephile terms, a recognition that the film belongs in the canonical serious-cinema conversation. Films that do not have Criterion releases can struggle to maintain critical attention across decades; films that do have releases gain a kind of institutional support that sustains their cultural standing.
The selection is, of course, contested. Significant national cinemas remain underrepresented in the Criterion catalogue — most contemporary African cinema, much of contemporary Indian art cinema, large parts of Latin American post-2000 production. The Criterion Closet selections by working filmmakers have, in recent years, become a kind of meta-curation that surfaces titles the formal collection has not yet selected. The canon is, in some sense, still being built.