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For more than 30 years, the Criterion Collection has been packaging classic and contemporary films as works of art that you can hold in your hand. The designs of its laserdiscs — and more recently its DVDs and Blu-rays — are often as beautiful as the movies contained inside the boxes, and the boutique home video label has become famous for the care it puts into its presentation. As Criterion nears the release of its 900th DVD, we’ve pored over their entire library and ranked the 50 greatest DVD covers the company has ever created.

#50. “The Game” (1997)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse.

Criterion: The enormously wealthy and emotionally remote investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) receives a strange gift from his ne’er-do-well younger brother (Sean Penn) on his forty-eighth birthday: a voucher for a game that, if he agrees to play it, will change his life. Thus begins a trip down the rabbit hole that is puzzling, terrifying, and exhilarating for Nicholas and viewers alike. This multilayered, noirish descent into one man’s personal hell is also a surreal, metacinematic journey that, two years after the phenomenon “Se7en,” further demonstrated that director David Fincher was one of Hollywood’s true contemporary visionaries.

Indiewire: Neil Kellerhouse’s dark design captures the menace and manipulation of Fincher’s film, while also subtly riffing on its unforgettable climax.  

#49. “Twenty-Four Eyes” (1954)

Art by Michael Boland.

Criterion: Keisuke Kinoshita’s “Twenty-Four Eyes” (Nijushi no hitomi) is an elegant, emotional chronicle of a teacher’s unwavering commitment to her students, her profession, and her sense of morality. Set in a remote, rural island community and spanning decades of Japanese history, from 1928 through World War II and beyond, Kinoshita’s film takes a simultaneously sober and sentimental look at the epic themes of aging, war, and death, all from the lovingly intimate perspective of Hisako Oshi (Hideko Takamine), as she watches her pupils grow and deal with life’s harsh realities. Though little known in the United States, “Twenty-Four Eyes” is one of Japan’s most popular and enduring classics.

IndieWire: Michael Boland’s elegant design is a testament to the power of typography. His beautiful — and extremely prominent — cursive captures the   plaintive poetry of Kinoshita’s film, and adds a dynamic element to an otherwise understated image.

#48. “The Rules of the Game” (1939)

Art by Edward Sorel.

Criterion: Considered one of the greatest films ever made, “The Rules of the Game” (La règle du jeu), by Jean Renoir, is a scathing critique of corrupt French society cloaked in a comedy of manners in which a weekend at a marquis’ country château lays bare some ugly truths about a group of haut bourgeois acquaintances. The film has had a tumultuous history: it was subjected to cuts after the violent response of the premiere audience in 1939, and the original negative was destroyed during World War II; it wasn’t reconstructed until 1959. That version, which has stunned viewers for decades, is presented here.

IndieWire: In some cases, the brilliance of Criterion’s cover art boils down to who they hire for it. Commissioning legendary political cartoonist Edward Sorel was a stroke of genius, as his satirical maximalism is the perfect fit for Renoir’s complement to Renoir’s doomed tragicomedy. It’s fun, it’s menacing, and it’s as busy as a weekend at the marquis’ château.

#47. “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant” (1972)

Art by Gary Fernández.

Criterion: In the early 1970s, Rainer Werner Fassbinder discovered the American melodramas of Douglas Sirk and was inspired by them to begin working in a new, more intensely emotional register. One of the first and best-loved films of this period in his career is “The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant,” which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director’s roots in experimental theater. This unforgettable, unforgiving dissection of the imbalanced relationship between a haughty fashion designer (Margit Carstensen) and a beautiful but icy ingenue (Hanna Schygulla)—based, in a sly gender reversal, on the writer-director’s own desperate obsession with a young actor—is a true Fassbinder affair.

IndieWire: Rather than work from a specific scene, Gary Fernández decided to take a more abstract approach to Fassbender’s melodrama. His design targets the essence of the relationship between Petra and Karin, literalizing the doll-like nature of their dynamic. After looking at this cover, it’s impossible to watch the movie without marveling at its joints.

#46 “Ran” (1985)

Art by Lucien S. Y. Yang.

Criterion: With “Ran,” legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.

IndieWire: Kurosawa’s hyper-operatic take on Shakespeare’s most immense tragedy contains several of the director’s most indelible images. Rather than run with any one of them, Yang’s awesome cover melts the madness of war into a splotchy abstraction, and ices it with blood-red Kanji that looks as though it was sprayed onto the box directly from someone’s jugular. 

#45: “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” (1975)

Art by Rodrigo Corral.

Criterion: The notorious final film from Pier Paolo Pasolini, “Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom” has been called nauseating, shocking, depraved, pornographic . . . It’s also a masterpiece. The controversial poet, novelist, and filmmaker’s transposition of the Marquis de Sade’s eighteenth-century opus of torture and degradation to Fascist Italy in 1944 remains one of the most passionately debated films of all time, a thought-provoking inquiry into the political, social, and sexual dynamics that define the world we live in.

IndieWire: How do you sell people on one of the ugliest movies ever made without betraying the unflinching rage that makes it worth buying? It’s a hard needle to thread, but Corral’s eye-catching designs distills the perversity of Pasolini’s film — the image may seem salacious at first glance, but good luck looking at it without wincing once you’ve seen the film. 

#44. “Tokyo Drifter” (1966)

Art by Eric Skillman.

Criterion: In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki’s onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima—an anything-goes, in-your-face rampage. “Tokyo Drifter” is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.

IndieWire: “Tokyo Drifter” is all about Suzuki’s trip-gangster style, and Skillman’s kinetic cover nails the movie’s electrically brash sense of cool.

#43. “Judex” (1963)

Art by Ron Wimberly.

Criterion: This effortlessly cool crime caper, directed by Georges Franju, is a marvel of dexterous plotting and visual invention. Conceived as an homage to Louis Feuillade’s 1916 cult silent serial of the same name, “Judex” kicks off with the mysterious kidnapping of a corrupt banker by a shadowy crime fighter (American magician Channing Pollock) and spins out into a thrillingly complex web of deceptions.

IndieWire: Ron Wimberly’s gorgeous illustration perfectly captures the dream-like elegance and playfulness of Franju’s masterpiece. The cover lets you know that this is a classy affair, but with all sorts of super stylish animal masks. No doubt a popular blind buy.

#42. “Port of Shadows” (1938)

Art by Eric Skillman (based off the original poster).

Criterion: Down a foggy, desolate road to the port city of Le Havre travels Jean (Jean Gabin), an army deserter looking for another chance to make good on life. Fate, however, has a different plan for him, as acts of both revenge and kindness render him front-page news. Also starring the blue-eyed phenomenon Michèle Morgan in her first major role, and the menacing Michel Simon, “Port of Shadows” (Le Quai des brumes) starkly portrays an underworld of lonely souls wrestling with their own destinies.

IndieWire: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Criterion was smart to stick with the gorgeous, lovelorn poster for Marcel Carné’s fogbound classic of poetic realism. The aching black-and-white illustration perfectly distills the film’s hardscrabble heartbreak.

#41. “Floating Weeds” / “A Story of Floating Weeds” (1959 / 1934)

Art by Lucien S. Y. Yang.

Criterion: In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic “A Story of Floating Weeds” in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunities with his former lover and illegitimate son, a scenario that enrages his current mistress and results in heartbreak for all. Together, the films offer a unique glimpse into the evolution of one of cinema’s greatest directors.

IndieWire: Attacking two films at once, Lucien S.Y. Yang’s double-hitter finds traditionalism and modernity jostling for space, her art speaking to the drama between Ozu’s characters as well as the tension that results from watching one of his silent classics through the lens of its later remake.

#40. “The Double Life of Veronique” (1991)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse.

Criterion: Krzysztof Kieślowski’s international breakthrough remains one of his most beloved films, a ravishing, mysterious rumination on identity, love, and human intuition. Irène Jacob is incandescent as both Weronika, a Polish choir soprano, and her double, Véronique, a French music teacher. Though unknown to each other, the two women share an enigmatic, emotional bond, which Kieślowski details in gorgeous reflections, colors, and movements.

IndieWire: Criterion describes “The Double Life of Veronique” as “an unforgettable symphony of feeling,” and Neil Kellherhouse’s cover design finds Irène Jacob in a state of musical ecstasy, the two spheres of her reality separating from each other like floating notes. It’s a simple idea, borrowing a key image from the work, but one that’s defined by the depth of feeling that echoes throughout Kieślowski’s film.

#39. “The Royal Tenenbaums” (2001)

Art by Eric Chase Anderson.

Criterion: Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife, Etheline (Anjelica Huston), had three children—Chas, Margot, and Richie—and then they separated. Chas (Ben Stiller) started buying real estate in his early teens and seemed to have an almost preternatural understanding of international finance. Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) was a playwright and received a Braverman Grant of $50,000 in the ninth grade. Richie (Luke Wilson) was a junior champion tennis player and won the U.S. Nationals three years in a row. Virtually all memory of the brilliance of the young Tenenbaums was subsequently erased by two decades of betrayal, failure, and disaster. 

IndieWire: Who better to bottle up “The Royal Tenenbaums” than Wes Anderson’s own brother? From the snowflakes to the quivering Tenenbaum flag, this is just one of several illustrations that reveal Eric Chase Anderson to be every bit as talented and meticulous as the director in his family.

#38. “ONIBABA” (1964)

Art by Lucien S. Y. Yang.

Criterion: Deep within the wind-swept marshes of war-torn medieval Japan, an impoverished mother and her daughter-in-law eke out a lonely, desperate existence. Forced to murder lost samurai and sell their belongings for grain, they dump the corpses down a deep, dark hole and live off of their meager spoils. When a bedraggled neighbor returns from the skirmishes, lust, jealousy, and rage threaten to destroy the trio’s tenuous existence, before an ominous, ill-gotten demon mask seals the trio’s horrifying fate. 

IndieWire: Riffing on the film’s most iconic image, Lucien S.Y. Yang’s vivid cover illustration is full of the heightened frenzy that runs through Kaneto Shindo’s horror classic. The vaguely lantern-like lettering is particularly nice, the character staring at it like a curse that she’s just starting to believe.

#37. “F for Fake” (1975)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse.

Criterion: Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In “F for Fake,” a free-form sort-of documentary by Orson Welles, the legendary filmmaker (and self-described charlatan) gleefully reengages with the central preoccupation of his career: the tenuous lines between illusion and truth, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of the world- renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles embarks on a dizzying journey that simultaneously exposes and revels in fakery and fakers of all stripes—not the least of whom is Welles himself. 

IndieWire: How do you visually distill a film about why viewers shouldn’t be so quick to trust their own eyes? Neil Kellerhouse smartly addressed this paradox by focusing on Welles’ overbearing showmanship, keeping him just out of focus — his favorite place — and emphasizing instead his singular sleight-of-hand. The result is a bit of close-up magic that appropriately still feels like it’s hiding something.

#36. “Viridiana” (1961)

Art by Eric Skillman.

Criterion: Banned in Spain and denounced by the Vatican, Luis Buñuel’s irreverent vision of life as a beggar’s banquet is regarded by many as his masterpiece. In it, novice nun Viridiana does her utmost to maintain her Catholic principles, but her lecherous uncle and a motley assemblage of paupers force her to confront the limits of her idealism. 

IndieWire: Cheekily playing up the virginal nature of Buñuel’s eponymous heroine, Eric Skillman cuts Viridiana off at the neck to isolate her in a pose that seems darker and more ambiguous the longer you look at it (particularly after you’ve seen the film). Extra credit for the extraordinary cursive lettering that drips onto her forehead like a blessing of holy water.

#35. “SAWDUST AND TINSEL” (1953)

Art by Sarah Habibi.

Criterion: Ingmar Bergman presents the battle of the sexes as a ramshackle, grotesque carnival in “Sawdust and Tinsel,” one of the late master’s most vivid early works. The story of the charged relationship between a turn-of-the-century traveling circus owner (Ake Grönberg) and his performer girlfriend (Harriet Andersson), the film features dreamlike detours and twisted psychosexual power plays that presage the director’s “Smiles of a Summer Night” and “The Seventh Seal.”

IndieWire: One of the few Criterion covers that may be even better than the film its selling, Habibi’s chiaroscuro take on “Sawdust and Tinsel” portrays the spotlight as a gnarled trap surrounded by darkness. Bergman was never so succinct.

#34. “BELLE DE JOUR” (1967)

Art by David Downton.

Criterion: Catherine Deneuve’s porcelain perfection hides a cracked interior in one of the actress’s most iconic roles: Séverine, a Paris housewife who begins secretly spending her after­noon hours working in a bordello. This surreal and erotic late-sixties daydream from provocateur for the ages Luis Buñuel is an examination of desire and fetishistic pleasure (its characters’ and its viewers’), as well as a gently absurdist take on contemporary social mores and class divisions.

IndieWire: All hail David Downton. The British fashion illustrator is more typically associated with Vogue than he is Sight & Sound, but his Criterion covers — all portraits of cinematic heroines painted with the artist’s signature thick brushstrokes — immaculately embody the drama of the films that inspired them. Here, his vision of a suppliant Catherine Deneuve drips with the unmoored eros of Buñuel’s film, the actress’ body smudged by an indivisible layer of fantasy.

#33. “SCIENCE IS FICTION: 23 FILMS BY JEAN PAINLEVE” (1927 — 1938)

Art by Rodrigo Corral.

Criterion: The mesmerizing, utterly unclassifiable science films of Jean Painlevé (1902-89) have to be seen to be believed: delightful, surrealist-influenced dream works that are also serious science. The French filmmaker-scientist-inventor had a decades-spanning career in which he created hundreds of short films on subjects ranging from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, such marine-life marvels as the sea horse and the sea urchin. 

IndieWire: It’s tough to sell people on three DVDs worth of underwater nature docs, but Rodrigo Corral’s cover art helps to overcome that hurdle by emphasizing the dreamy sense of discovery that defines all of Painlevé’s work. The seahorse here looks as though it could be floating in outer space, the perfect image for a series of short films that inspire you to look at the ocean with the same sense of wonder that we typically reserve for the stars.

#32. “THE HUMAN CONDITION” (1959 – 1961)

Art by Sarah Habibi, calligraphy by Akiko Crowther.

Criterion: Masaki Kobayashi’s mammoth humanist drama is one of the most staggering achievements of Japanese cinema. Originally filmed and released in three parts, the nine-and-a-half-hour “The Human Condition” (Ningen no joken), adapted from Junpei Gomikawa’s six-volume novel, tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji (handsome Japanese superstar Tatsuya Nakadai) from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage. 

IndieWire: Watching all of “The Human Condition” is definitely an uphill climb (or at least it can feel that way before you get sucked in), a reality that Sarah Habibi’s cover art literalizes to great effect. The stark coloring and the imposing calligraphy articulately speak to the sheer emotional heft of Kobayashi’s magnum opus, a film that’s profound enough to earn its title.

#31. “IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE” (2000)

Art by Lucien S. Y. Yang.

Criterion: Hong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses creates an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love” is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. 

IndieWire: How do you distill a film as beautiful and fluid as “In the Mood for Love” into a single image? Any still from the movie could make for beautiful cover art, but few could speak to Wong Kar-Wai’s sense of motion, his gift for mining an indelible romance from the margins of a typical love story. Lucien S.Y. Yang chose wisely, centering the cover on a downcast Maggie Cheung; the shadows on the actress’ face and the light running through her hair combine to give the impression of a woman who’s passing through a moment she can’t bear to look at directly. A quick glance at this art is all it takes to have “Yumeji’s Theme” running through your head all day.

#30. “REPULSION” (1965)

Art by Steve Chow.

Criterion: Roman Polanski followed up his international breakthrough Knife in the Water with this controversial, chilling tale of psychosis. Catherine Deneuve is Carol, a fragile, frigid young beauty cracking up in her London flat when left alone by her vacationing sister. She is soon haunted by specters real and imagined, and her insanity grows to a violent, hysterical pitch. Thanks to its disturbing detail and Polanski’s adeptness at turning claustrophobic space into an emotional minefield, “Repulsion” is a surreal, mind-bending odyssey into personal horror.

IndieWire: A brilliantly clever idea, Steve Chow’s cover needs only a shard of real estate to express Deneuve’s manic desperation and the feeling of being trapped inside a blank space that’s as hard to define as it is to escape. 

#29. “THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO” (1998)

Art by Pierre Le Tan.

Criterion: “The Last Days of Disco,” from director Whit Stillman, is a cleverly comic look at the early 1980s Manhattan party scene from the vantage point of the late nineties. At the center of the film’s roundelay of revelers are the icy Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) and the demure Alice (Chloë Sevigny), by day toiling as publishing house assistants and by night looking for romance and entertainment at a Studio 54–like club. Brimming with Stillman’s trademark dry humor, “The Last Days of Disco” is an affectionate yet unsentimental look at the end of an era.

IndieWire: Pierre Le Tan has designed the covers for all of Criterion’s Whit Stillman releases (his “Metropolitan” art is also killer), but his illustration for “The Last Days of Disco” is especially great, the textured drawing split between finality and nostalgia. 

#28. “A BRIGHTER SUMMER DAY” (1991)

Photograph by Edward Yang.

Criterion: Among the most praised and sought-after titles in all contemporary film, this singular masterpiece of Taiwanese cinema, directed by Edward Yang, finally comes to home video in the United States. Set in the early sixties in Taiwan, “A Brighter Summer Day” is based on the true story of a crime that rocked the nation. A film of both sprawling scope and tender intimacy, this novelistic, patiently observed epic centers on the gradual, inexorable fall of a young teenager (Chen Chang, in his first role) from innocence to juvenile delinquency, and is set against a simmering backdrop of restless youth, rock and roll, and political turmoil.

IndieWire: It’s still hard to make peace with the idea that Yang is gone. In part, that’s because he died so young, and in part that’s because his spirit is so evocatively preserved by his films. The great Taiwanese director didn’t live to see his magnum opus find the global audience it deserves (a music rights snafu kept the film in limbo for ages), but Criterion’s edition of “A Brighter Summer Day” made it feel as though Yang were still here. The decision to use one of his photos for the DVD cover art certifies the intimate, autobiographical energy beneath this four-hour epic; it’s like Yang himself is welcoming us back into his past.

#27. “WINGS OF DESIRE” (1987)

Art by Michael Boland.

Criterion: “Wings of Desire” is one of cinema’s loveliest city symphonies. Bruno Ganz is Damiel, an angel perched atop buildings high over Berlin who can hear the thoughts—fears, hopes, dreams—of all the people living below. But when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist, he is willing to give up his immortality and come back to earth to be with her. Made not long before the fall of the Berlin wall, this stunning tapestry of sounds and images, shot in black and white and color by the legendary Henri Alekan, is movie poetry.

IndieWire: “When the child was a child, it was the time of these questions. Why am I me, and why not you? Why am I here, and why not there? When did time begin, and where does space end? Isn’t life under the sun just a dream? Isn’t what I see, hear, and smell just the mirage of a world before the world? Does evil actually exist, and are there people who are really evil? How can it be that I, who am I, wasn’t before I was, and that sometime I, the one I am, no longer will be the one I am?”

#26. “I Knew Her Well” (1965)

Art by F. Ron Miller.

Criterion: Following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (“Divorce Italian Style’”s Stefania Sandrelli) as she chases her dreams in the Rome of “La dolce vita,” I Knew Her Well” is at once a delightful immersion in the popular music and style of Italy in the sixties and a biting critique of its sexual politics and the culture of celebrity. Over a series of intimate episodes, just about every one featuring a different man, a new hairstyle, and an outfit to match, the unsung Italian master Antonio Pietrangeli, working from a script he cowrote with Ettore Scola, composes a deft, seriocomic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure.

IndieWire: At first, the teardrop idea might seem a bit on the nose (or at least close to it), but it’s better to think of it as more like a rip than a tear. Stefania Sandrelli’s performance cuts so deeply that it demands an approach as direct as the one that F. Ron Miller devised for it, his cover intuiting the difference between capriciousness and catastrophe.

#25. “STAGECOACH” (1939)

Art by Eric Skillman.

Criterion: This is where it all started. John Ford’s smash hit and enduring masterpiece “Stagecoach” revolutionized the western, elevating it from B movie to the A-list and establishing the genre as we know it today. The quintessential tale of a group of strangers thrown together into extraordinary circumstances, “Stagecoach” features outstanding performances from Hollywood stalwarts Claire Trevor, John Carradine, and Thomas Mitchell, and, of course, John Wayne, in his first starring role for Ford, as the daredevil outlaw the Ringo Kid.

IndieWire: It’s all about the colors, as the faded palette of Eric Skillman’s cover instantly takes us back in time to a time when Monument Valley was the most exciting place on Earth, and the skies were painted thick blue even when John Ford shot them in black and white.

#24. “A CHRISTMAS TALE” (2008)

Art by Rodrigo Corral.

Criterion: In Arnaud Desplechin’s beguiling “A Christmas Tale” (Un conte de Noël), Catherine Deneuve brings her legendary poise to the role of Junon, matriarch of the troubled Vuillard family, who come together at Christmas after she learns she needs a bone marrow transplant from a blood relative. That simple family reunion setup, however, can’t begin to describe the unpredictable, emotionally volatile experience of this film, an inventive, magical drama that’s equal parts merriment and melancholy. 

IndieWire: A cover that evokes more in a single image than something like “The Family Stone” does over the course of two hours, Rodrigo Corral’s design for “A Christmas Tale” is pretty much the universal symbol for a messy holiday season at home with the fam. A cold touch of tinsel, a lot of stress… but in the end, it’s undeniably beautiful.

#23. “WALKABOUT” (1971)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse.

Criterion: A young sister and brother are abandoned in the harsh Australian outback and must learn to cope in the natural world, without their usual comforts, in this hypnotic masterpiece from Nicolas Roeg. Along the way, they meet a young aborigine on his “walkabout,” a rite of passage in which adolescent boys are initiated into manhood by journeying into the wilderness alone. 

IndieWire: Beginning with a brick wall and ending with a burning car in the middle of the outback, the first 10 minutes of “Walkabout” chart the distance between civilization and its calamities — it might be the best thing that Nicolas Roeg ever shot. Neil Kellerhouse’s cover art squeezes it down into a single image.

#22. “MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW” (1937)

Art by Seth.

Criterion: “Make Way for Tomorrow,” by Leo McCarey, is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. Beulah Bondi and Victor Moore headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and subject to their offspring’s selfish whims. An inspiration for Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” this is among American cinema’s purest tearjerkers, all the way to its unflinching ending, which McCarey refused to change despite studio pressure.

IndieWire: Fun fact: If you’ve seen “Make Way for Tomorrow,” you won’t be able to so much as think about this cover art without crying. 

#21. “NASHVILLE” (1975)

Art by Jay Shaw, design by Rob Jones.

Criterion: This cornerstone of 1970s American moviemaking from Robert Altman is a panoramic view of the country’s political and cultural landscapes, set in the nation’s music capital. Nashville weaves the stories of twenty-four characters—from country star to wannabe to reporter to waitress—into a cinematic tapestry that is equal parts comedy, tragedy, and musical. Altman’s ability to get to the heart of American life via its eccentric byways was never put to better use than in this grand, rollicking triumph, which barrels forward to an unforgettable conclusion.

IndieWire: Not only did Jay Shaw and Rob Jones come up with a fun way of foregrounding the turbulent Americana at the heart of Robert Altman’s greatest film, they did so in a way that could accomodate every member of its enormous cast. 

#20. “L’AVVENTURA” (1960)

Art by Lucien S. Y. Yang.

Criterion: Michelangelo Antonioni invented a new film grammar with this masterwork. An iconic piece of challenging 1960s cinema and a gripping narrative on its own terms, “L’avventura” concerns the enigmatic disappearance of a young woman during a yachting trip off the coast of Sicily, and the search taken up by her disaffected lover (Gabriele Ferzetti) and best friend (Monica Vitti, in her breakout role). Antonioni’s controversial international sensation is a gorgeously shot tale of modern ennui and spiritual isolation.

IndieWire: Gray skies, Monica Vitti’s hair flapping in the wind, her face turned away from the existential dread of life on Earth like she can’t bear to look it in the eye… what more could you want?

#19. “MODERN TIMES” (1936)

Art by Sam Smith.

Criterion: “Modern Times,” Charlie Chaplin’s last outing as the Little Tramp, puts the iconic character to work as a giddily inept factory employee who becomes smitten with a gorgeous gamine (Paulette Goddard). With its barrage of unforgettable gags and sly commentary on class struggle during the Great Depression, “Modern Times” —though made almost a decade into the talkie era and containing moments of sound (even song!)—is a timeless showcase of Chaplin’s untouchable genius as a director of silent comedy.

IndieWire: As if it weren’t nerve-wracking enough to distill one of the greatest films ever made into a single image, graphic designer (and Ben Folds tour drummer) Sam Smith was also tasked with introducing The Little Tramp to the Criterion Collection for the very first time. His brilliantly simple solution: Transplant Chaplin’s eyes with two mismatched gears and call it a day. In truth, the process probably wasn’t quite so quick, but Smith nevertheless found a way to put the iconic comedian front and center while also speaking to the wonkiness of “Modern Times.” 

#18. “TOPSY-TURVY” (1999)

Art by Yuko Shimizu.

Criterion: The world of Gilbert and Sullivan comes to vivid life in director Mike Leigh’s extraordinary dramatization of the staging of the duo’s legendary 1885 comic opera “The Mikado.” Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner brilliantly inhabit the roles of the world-famous Victorian librettist and composer, who, along with their troupe of temperamental actors, must battle personal and professional demons while mounting this major production. 

IndieWire: The word you’re looking for is “ambigram,” but Yuko Shimizu’s nifty cover design conveys the irreverent theatricality of Leigh’s historical drama no matter how you see it. 

#17. “THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE” (1921)

Art by Christopher Brian King

Criterion: The last person to die on New Year’s Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death’s chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year. So says the legend that drives “The Phantom Carriage” (Körkarlen), directed by the father of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström. The story, based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, concerns an alcoholic, abusive ne’er-do-well (Sjöström himself) who is shown the error of his ways, and the pure-of-heart Salvation Army sister who believes in his redemption.

IndieWire: Christopher Brian King’s haunted painting feels as though it was lifted directly from the darkest corners of Victor Sjöström’s imagination. A gothic vision of the gloaming and all the morbid things that it portends, this cover is as powerful as any of the images that actually made it into the movie.

#16. “EYES WITHOUT A FACE” (1960)

Art by Aesthetic Apparatus.

Criterion: At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter’s disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price. “Eyes Without a Face,” directed by the supremely talented Georges Franju, is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release. There are images here—of terror, of gore, of inexplicable beauty—that once seen are never forgotten.

IndieWire: Edith Scob’s mask has become one of the most iconic props in all of horror, and Aesthetic Apparatus didn’t shy away from it. Instead, they built around its blankness, using a grainy storm of pink and black to highlight the contrast between the girlishness of Scob’s young character and the madness of her predicament. It all draws attention back to her eyes, slivers of despair in the middle of a cover that’s pretty and poisoned in equal measure.

#15. “PIER PAOLO PASOLINI’S TRILOGY OF LIFE” (1971 — 1974)

Art by Rodrigo Corral.

Criterion: In the early 1970s, the great Italian poet, philosopher, and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini brought to the screen a trio of masterpieces of medieval literature—Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales”, and The Thousand and One Nights (often known as “The Arabian Nights”)—and in doing so created his most uninhibited and extravagant work. In this brazen and bawdy triptych, the director set out to challenge modern consumer culture and celebrate the uncorrupted human body, while commenting on contemporary sexual and religious mores and hypocrisies. 

IndieWire: Anyone could make a DVD box set with cover art that features a dildo arrow pointing at a naked woman’s crotch, but only Criterion could get Barnes & Noble to stock it on store shelves across the country. Taking snatches from Pasolini’s subversive triptych and ringing them into a cartoon circle of unholy desires, Rodrigo Corral absolutely nailed the anarchic fever that binds these films together.

#14. “THE MUSIC ROOM” (1958)

Art by Marian Bantjes.

Criterion: With “The Music Room” (Jalsaghar), Satyajit Ray brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to a fading way of life. His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years—now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day, “The Music Room” is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker.

IndieWire: Marian Bantjes’ understated take on “The Music Room” is a devastatingly simple distillation of the decay that the film was made to mourn. Her patterned rendition of the chandelier speaks volumes, the fixture growing looser towards the bottom as gravity takes hold.

#13. “ON THE WATERFRONT” (1954)

Art by Sean Phillips, design by Eric Skillman.

Criterion: Marlon Brando gives the performance of his career as the tough prizefighter-turned-longshoreman Terry Malloy in this masterpiece of urban poetry. A raggedly emotional tale of individual failure and social corruption, “On the Waterfront” follows Terry’s deepening moral crisis as he must decide whether to remain loyal to the mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) and Johnny’s right-hand man, Terry’s brother, Charley (Rod Steiger), as the authorities close in on them.

IndieWire: Criterion’s cover art is really just the tip of the iceberg — the immaculate care they put into their packaging extends to the back of the box, the spine alongside it, and to everything contained inside. The cover might be what convince you to buy one of these discs, but the cohesiveness of the presentation is one of the things that makes you glad to own it. “On the Waterfront” is a perfect example. The package is burnished with a solemn Sean Phillips’ illustration that appropriates the feel of a graphic novel in order to locate Terry Malloy as an American legend. He’s larger than life, a mythic symbol of an incorruptible spirit. Sure, he might tell you he’s a bum, but Terry’s got soul, and its spread across every inch of Criterion’s set. 

#12. “THE UNINVITED” (1944)

Art by Sam Weber.

Criterion: A pair of siblings from London (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price—and soon they’re caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave. Rich in atmosphere, “The Uninvited,” directed by Lewis Allen, was groundbreaking for the seriousness with which it treated the haunted-house genre, and it remains an elegant and eerie experience, featuring a classic score by Victor Young.

IndieWire: Gothic and gorgeous in equal measure, Sam Weber’s oil painting is like a séance for an entire sub-genre of vintage horror films. It’s the rare piece of marketing that’s every bit as powerful as the thing it was commissioned to sell.

#11. “JULES AND JIM” (1962)

Art by David Downton.

Criterion: Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, “Jules and Jim” charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, “Jules and Jim” was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today.

IndieWire: Jeanne Moreau may have passed on, but her face is forever. David Downton’s sparsest cover is one of his best, rightly ignoring Jules and Jim in order to focus on the immortal woman who came between them. The lines of her brows, the shadow that streaks away from her left eye, and the mustache painted above her lips manage to convey every inch of the film’s tragedy.

#10. “THE SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS” (1957)

Art by Sean Phillips.

Criterion: In the swift, cynical “Sweet Smell of Success,” directed by Alexander Mackendrick, Burt Lancaster stars as the vicious Broadway gossip columnist J. J. Hunsecker, and Tony Curtis as Sidney Falco, the unprincipled press agent Hunsecker ropes into smearing the up-and-coming jazz musician romancing his beloved sister. Featuring deliciously unsavory dialogue, in an acid, brilliantly structured script by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, and noirish neon cityscapes from Oscar-winning cinematographer James Wong Howe, “Sweet Smell of Success” is a cracklingly cruel dispatch from the kill-or-be-killed wilds of 1950s Manhattan.

IndieWire: Given the holy status they’ve earned in the film community, it can be easy to forget that Criterion is a business like any other, constricted by the arbitrary boundaries of commerce that plague everyone else. Hurdles, however, only inspire people to jump higher. When Sean Phillips was hired to create a cover for “The Sweet Smell of Success,” he was told that Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis’ heads had to be the exact same size. His solution to this problem was nothing short of genius. Sweltering with the neon fever that defines the film’s depiction of mid-century Manhattan, Phillips’ painting turned a bug into a feature by inserting Falco and Hunsecker into the city on their own terms. They’re both the same size, but one of them holds all the power.

#9. “VIVRE SA VIE” (1962)

Art by F. Ron Miller.

Criterion: “Vivre sa vie” was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna Karina, Godard’s greatest muse, plays Nana, a young Parisian who aspires to be an actress but instead ends up a prostitute, her downward spiral depicted in a series of discrete tableaux of daydreams and dances. Featuring some of Karina and Godard’s most iconic moments—from her movie theater vigil with “The Passion of Joan of Arc” to her seductive pool-hall strut—”Vivre sa vie” is a landmark of the French New Wave that still surprises at every turn.

IndieWire: Jean-Luc Godard knew how to frame Anna Karina’s face. F. Ron Miller did, too.

#8. “BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!” (2006)

Art by Jason Hardy.

Criterion: In the weird and wonderful supercinematic world of Canadian cult filmmaker Guy Maddin, personal memory collides with movie lore for a radical sensory overload. This eerie excursion into the Gothic recesses of Maddin’s mad, imaginary childhood is a silent, black-and-white comic science-fiction nightmare set in a lighthouse on grim Black Notch Island, where fictional protagonist Guy Maddin was raised by an ironfisted, puritanical mother. Originally mounted as a theatrical event (accompanied by live orchestra, Foley artists, and assorted narrators), “Brand upon the Brain!” is an irreverent, delirious trip into the mind of one of current cinema’s true eccentrics.

IndieWire: Part Hardy Boys mystery and part fever dream, Guy Maddin’s singularly strange “Brand Upon the Brain!” is a maximalist time machine that takes us back to the filmmaker’s childhood and sideways into a parallel universe. Jason Hardy’s hypnotic cover art displays an intuitive feel for Maddin’s handmade aesthetic and all the vibrant trauma that it implies; illuminated by the panopticon-like lighthouse that juts up through the center of the image, the scribbled intertitles begin to look like the manic S.O.S. notes of a little boy who’s locked in someone’s attack. How could you not want to watch this movie? 

#7. “DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB” (1964)

Art by Eric Skillman.

Criterion: Stanley Kubrick’s painfully funny take on Cold War anxiety is one of the fiercest satires of human folly ever to come out of Hollywood. The matchless shape-shifter Peter Sellers plays three wildly different roles: Royal Air Force Captain Lionel Mandrake, timidly trying to stop a nuclear attack on the USSR ordered by an unbalanced general (Sterling Hayden); the ineffectual and perpetually dumbfounded U.S. President Merkin Muffley, who must deliver the very bad news to the Soviet premier; and the titular Strangelove himself, a wheelchair-bound presidential adviser with a Nazi past.

IndieWire: Eric Skillman couldn’t believe his eyes (or his luck) when he saw that the iconic opening credits that Pablo Ferro created for “Dr. Strangelove” had never been repurposed for any of the film’s marketing materials. So he changed that. Reshaping the horizontal text into a nuke-shaped vertical block, Skillman’s cover feels true to the look of Kubrick’s classic while also emphasizing the nihilistic gallows humor of a comedy that continues to grow scarier with every passing day.

#6. “ARMY OF SHADOWS” (1969)

Art by Michael Boland.

Criterion: This masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville about the French Resistance went unreleased in the United States for thirty-seven years, until its triumphant theatrical debut in 2006. Atmospheric and gripping, “Army of Shadows” is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean-Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.

IndieWire: The elegant simplicity of Boland’s design makes for a fetching image, but this “Army of Shadows” art is so sublime because of how its midnight blue shading perfectly evokes the bleak chill of hopelessness that runs down the spine of Melville’s spy classic.

#5. “IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES” (1976)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse.

Criterion: Still censored in its own country, “In the Realm of the Senses” (Ai no corrida), by Japanese director Nagisa Oshima, remains one of the most controversial films of all time. A graphic portrayal of insatiable sexual desire, Oshima’s film, set in 1936 and based on a true incident, depicts a man and a woman (Tatsuya Fuji and Eiko Matsuda) consumed by a transcendent, destructive love while living in an era of ever escalating imperialism and governmental control. Less a work of pornography than of politics, “In the Realm of the Senses” is a brave, taboo-breaking milestone.

IndieWire: “In the Realm of the Senses” is not a pretty film, or a pleasant one. On the contrary, its true story of amour fou sours sexual pleasure into something that ultimately becomes downright pungent (Oshima’s masterpiece is one of those movies that leaves a smell, and that’s almost never a good thing). In that light, Neil Kellerhouse’s cover art is startlingly beautiful for a film that ends with… well, it doesn’t end well. And yet — to put it mildly — it works. It works because it restores the poetry to a woman who’s been reduced to an urban legend, because the white flecks that puff out of Sada Abe’s mouth feel like the escaping particles of her soul. It’s hard to tell where her ecstasy stops and her agony begins, and that’s exactly how it should be. 

#4. “HOUSE” (1977)

Art by Sam Smith.

Criterion: How to describe Nobuhiko Obayashi’s indescribable 1977 movie “House” (Hausu)? As a psychedelic ghost tale? A stream-of-consciousness bedtime story? An episode of Scooby-Doo as directed by Mario Bava? Any of the above will do for this hallucinatory head trip about a schoolgirl who travels with six classmates to her ailing aunt’s creaky country home and comes face-to-face with evil spirits, a demonic house cat, a bloodthirsty piano, and other ghoulish visions, all realized by Obayashi via mattes, animation, and collage effects. Equally absurd and nightmarish, House might have been beamed to Earth from some other planet.

IndieWire: For several decades, “House” was just another obscure old movie about Japanese school girls being eaten by a piano. But that all changed with Sam Smith’s giddy and ghoulish (and kind of adorable?) design for the film’s Janus re-release. Too wild to ignore, it’s a good thing that Smith’s image was selling one of the only films that could possibly live up to the dementedness promised by its promo art.

#3. “LOLA MONTES” (1955)

Art by David Downton

Criterion: “Lola Montès” is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts the course of Montès’s scandalous past through the invocations of the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she has ended up performing. Ophuls’s final film, “Lola Montès” is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

IndieWire: David Downton is a master of minimalism, so perhaps it’s strange that his most opulent Criterion cover is also his best. But the illustration he created for “Lola Montès” clarifies his attraction to destructive beauty, as well as his love for the women who are possessed by it. Re-animated by the artist’s soft, half-sketched aesthetic, Martine Carol’s most famous character is immediately recognized as a person who’s always looked at but seldom seen. 

#2. “PIERROT LE FOU” (1965)

Art by Steve Chow

Criterion: Dissatisfied in marriage and life, Ferdinand (Jean-Paul Belmondo) takes to the road with the babysitter, his ex-lover Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), and leaves the bourgeoisie behind. Yet this is no normal road trip: genius auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s tenth feature in six years is a stylish mash-up of consumerist satire, politics, and comic-book aesthetics, as well as a violent, zigzag tale of, as Godard called them, “the last romantic couple.”

IndieWire: There’s a reason why Steve Chow is Criterion’s go-to guy for the pivotal films that Godard made in the mid-’60s. Chow recognizes the revolutionary exhuberance of Godard’s characters, and he respects the fact that people — young people, in particular — have been grafting their fantasies onto the likes of Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo for several generations. He gives them their space and he leaves room for interpretation; we might know how badly this story ends, but a cover like this emphasizes the freedom of taking one step at a time.

#1 “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” (1985)

Art by Neil Kellerhouse

Criterion: Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collagelike portrait of acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted an impossible harmony between self, art, and society. Taking place on Mishima’s last day, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s life as well as by gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works.

IndieWire: As severe, flamboyant, and beautiful as Yukio Mishima himself, Neil Kellerhouse’s cover art isn’t just the most striking design that Criterion has ever commissioned, it’s also the most evocative. Doubling down on the kaleidescopic nature of Paul Schrader’s biopic, this incredible cover imagines the iconic warrior-poet as an erupting bomb of creative energy, his life and his work sprouting from the same molten core. The splintered rays of sunlight illustrate Mishima’s uniquely colorful nationalism and pierce into every part of his being, creating a symphony of ideas in a single image. But, when you hold this thing in your hands, the glint of the box is the first thing you notice; it’s as if the whole package has been kissed with the chintzy shine of the Golden Pavillion where Mishima first learned about beautiful things and how to burn them down.