WHAT THE CRITERION COLLECTION ACTUALLY IS
The Criterion Collection is a film distribution company that has, since 1984, specialised in releasing what it describes as 'important classic and contemporary films' on home video, Blu-ray, and through the Criterion Channel streaming service. That description is accurate and insufficient. What it leaves out is the specific way Criterion treats the films it releases — as objects worth taking seriously rather than products to be moved — and the effect that treatment has had on film culture in the forty years since.
The simplest version: Criterion is the company most responsible for making the serious study of film accessible to people who aren't in film school. The editions they produce, the supplementary materials they commission, the translations they fund and the restorations they pay for — all of it has been building, since 1984, the infrastructure of a serious film education that didn't previously exist outside of university libraries and specialist archives.
WHERE IT STARTED
Criterion was founded in 1984 as the Criterion Collection by Robert Stein and Jonathan Kaplan. The original format was LaserDisc — an early home video format that predated DVD and offered more storage capacity, which Criterion used for supplementary materials alongside the film itself. The first release was Citizen Kane. The spine number was 1. It's still 1.
The LaserDisc era established the template: the best available transfer of the film, contextual supplementary materials (essays, interviews, behind-the-scenes documents), and packaging that treated the film as a cultural object rather than a commodity. When DVD replaced LaserDisc and Blu-ray replaced DVD, Criterion maintained the template while upgrading the transfers. Many of the classic Criterion releases are now available in 4K restorations that didn't exist when the editions were first produced.
The spine number system — each release gets a permanent sequential number — has become a cultural signifier. A film being 'Criterioned' carries specific meaning. It means the film has been judged by Criterion's editorial team to be worth the treatment: the restoration budget, the supplementary materials, the physical edition. Not every important film has been Criterioned. Some have been Criterioned and then lost the rights. The catalogue has gaps and the gaps are worth mapping — they tell you things about what gets preserved and what doesn't.
WHAT A CRITERION EDITION ACTUALLY CONTAINS
The transfer is the foundation. Criterion typically commissions new restorations — working from original camera negatives where they survive, cleaning frame by frame, producing transfers that are as close to the filmmaker's original intention as current technology allows. This matters more than it sounds. Most home video releases of classic films use degraded prints. A Criterion edition of a 1950s Ozu film looks like it was shot last year.
The supplementary materials are often as valuable as the film for serious watchers. A Criterion edition typically includes: a new essay by a film scholar or critic, interviews with the director or key collaborators (or archival interviews where new ones aren't possible), documentary context (making-of material, archival footage, related short films), and sometimes a companion film. The essay in the booklet that comes with the physical edition is usually the best available writing on that film in English.
The packaging treats the film as an object worth owning. The cover art — often commissioned specifically for the edition — has become a design tradition in its own right. Criterion covers are among the most visually literate objects in mass-market publishing.
THE CATALOGUE
Criterion's catalogue currently sits at over 1,000 releases and covers the major European art cinema tradition (Bergman, Fellini, Godard, Truffaut, Antonioni), the Japanese masters (Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi, Imamura), significant American independent and studio films, and an increasingly serious engagement with world cinema beyond those traditions — Korean, Iranian, Indian, African, Latin American cinema has become more represented in the recent catalogue than in the early decades.
The curation reflects specific enthusiasms and has specific blind spots. The Latin American and African cinema coverage is improving but historically thin. The Iranian cinema thread is inconsistent. The East Asian coverage — Chinese, Japanese, Korean — is strong, particularly Japanese. The collection reflects the tastes of the people who built it, which means it reflects the biases of mid-twentieth century cinephile culture more than it reflects a fully global cinema history.
IS THE REPUTATION EARNED?
For the technical quality of the releases: unambiguously yes. A Criterion edition is the gold standard for home video presentation of serious film. The restoration quality, the contextual materials, the physical presentation — nothing else comes close at the price point. If you want the best available version of a classic film, you want the Criterion edition.
For the canon it implies — the specific selection of what gets Criterioned and what doesn't — the answer is more complicated. The catalogue is better than most canons and has blind spots worth knowing. The companion piece to this guide — Required Watching's analysis of what Criterion still hasn't collected and why that matters — is the place to start on the gap mapping.
ACCESSING CRITERION IN THE UK
Physical media: Criterion ships internationally from its own website. The US and UK physical editions are often different in content and cover art; some films are only available on one regional label. Region-free Blu-ray players solve the region coding issue if you're buying US editions.
Streaming: The Criterion Channel is currently US-only and not accessible in the UK without a VPN. In the UK, MUBI carries a substantial and rotating selection of Criterion content — it's worth checking MUBI before buying physical media, because the film you want may currently be streaming. The MUBI Criterion library is not the whole Criterion catalogue; it rotates, and availability changes. For the films you want to own and revisit, physical media is still the answer.
Cost: Criterion physical editions are expensive relative to standard releases and worth it for films you return to. The supplementary materials alone — particularly the essays and interviews — justify the price on the films that matter most to you. Buy selectively; don't try to collect comprehensively.
Criterion is the company most responsible for making the serious study of film accessible to people who aren't in film school.