Call it Film 101, The Canon, the Golden Age of the Art Film, or The Essentials of World Cinema, this almost impossibly rich selection of classics by everyone from Renoir, Tati, and Bresson to Kurosawa, Ozu, and Mizoguchi includes many of the greatest films ever made, most of them presented in newly struck prints. The occasion for this cinephilic grande bouffe? The fiftieth anniversary of Janus Films, the independent distributor which for five decades has shaped film culture in North America by releasing nothing but the best from film history. None of the film critics, curators, academics, and historians on this continent could have properly done his or her job without Janus, nor the many directors whose love of cinema was nurtured by the classics in Janus's burgeoning library. The company's modest but memorable logo was fashioned from the image of the two-faced Janus, entirely appropriate for an enterprise that influenced the future of film by enlisting its glorious past. This venture continues with their Criterion Collection, which sets the highest standards for DVD production.
That so many of these titles in the series recall the Cinematheque's greatest retrospectives over the past seventeen years - Bresson, Ophuls, Ozu, Dreyer, Varda, Mizoguchi et al - adds historical heft to this homage. To round out our summer salute to Janus, we therefore append a few of our other favourites (by Visconti, Melville, etc.) from other distributors, as well as the Victor Erice Carte Blanche, both of which similarly mark important points of our past.
- James Quandt
We are very grateful to Sarah Finklea, Janus Films' director of distribution, for her collaboration on this important series.
Please note: In the film descriptions in this series, the Janus Films logo denotes a title that is part of the Fifty Years of Janus Films collection.
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