Criterion to Release 40-Film Box to Celebrate 40th Anniversary

The Criterion Collection is turning 40 years old, and it’s celebrating in an extremely Criterion Collection way: By releasing a 40-film box set culled from their archive of great films.

Officially titled CC40, the set includes films from around the world and through history, dating back to 1940 and going all the way up to 2001. According to Criterion’s announcement of the set, the titles chosen “includes the releases most frequently chosen by the hundreds of filmmakers, actors, writers, and other movie-loving luminaries who have visited Criterion over the years, as documented in our popular Closet Picks video series.”

(Criterion’s Closet Picks are social media clips where famous filmmakers and celebrities visit the Criterion offices, and the closet where they keep all their DVDs and Blu-rays, and pick a few titles to take home.)

The 40 films included in the set are: 8½ (1963), Tokyo Story (1953), All That Jazz (1979), Bicycle Thieves (1948), Repo Man (1984), Naked (1993), Jules and Jim (1962), Being There (1979), Weekend (1967), Yi Yi (2000), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Pickpocket (1959), Sweet Smell of Success (1957), On the Waterfront (1954), Do the Right Thing (1989), Ratcatcher (1999), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Mirror (1975), Barry Lyndon (1975), Safe (1995), Seconds (1966), His Girl Friday (1940), Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985), Y tu mamá también (2001), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Love & Basketball (2000), Night of the Living Dead (1968), Ace in the Hole (1951), 3 Women (1977), The Red Shoes (1948), Down by Law (1986), La Ciénaga (2001), Wanda (1970), House (1977), Sullivan’s Travels (1941), The Battle of Algiers (1966), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962), Persona (1966), and In the Mood for Love (2000).

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In addition to the 40 films, you are getting a full assortment of Criterion Collection extras, including “hundreds of hours of supplemental features” plus audio commentaries, making-of documentaries, interviews, a selection of Criterion Closet Picks videos, along with a 216-page book “featuring essays on the films by critics, scholars, and authors.”

In the introductory essay to the box set, Criterion’s Peter Becker explains how the Close Picks videos became the theme of the set…

When it came time to choose a theme for this commemorative collection in honor of our fortieth anniversary, in 2024, we struggled. How could we choose forty editions from among the 1,200 we had so carefully selected, each on its own terms, each for the story it had to tell? Gradually we realized that the answer was in the closet itself and all the passionate choices that had been made in that space. In a sense, the closet is the heart of the collection in the world, the sum of our work in all departments for forty years, gathered in one place—with all its potential energy intact and ready to be unleashed. No single curator could make this choice, but what if we were guided by the passions of all those inspiring visitors, by their curiosity and hunger to choose new film experiences or to tell the world about the films they love most?

CC40 will be available on November 19, 2024. For more information on the set, check out the Criterion Collection website.