I always tell people that having the Criterion Channel is like continually taking a film course. In fact, it should probably come with graduate credit. As I've doubtless discussed, my Japanese film noir class grew out of a Criterion Channel collection. I mean, who knew? Another collection that I discovered, and which has remained consistently popular (many collections come and go, but some are so popular that they always hang around - like the Japanese film noir collection), is Czech New Wave. The films are extraordinary, and I'm probably going to use three or four of them as the core of my upcoming Images of Fascism class. I just finished rewatching Jaromil Jires's The Joke. Years ago I read the Milan Kundera novel that is its inspiration, and loved it, but it was only through the kindness of the Criterion Channel that I had the pleasure of seeing Jires's cinematic vision. It's one of the last films of the Czech New Wave (which, truthfully, I like better than the far more famous French New Wave), and is another brilliant condemnation of authoritarianism (in this case, communist). Josef Somr (who also starred in the brilliant Closely Watched Trains, which will also be featured in my class this spring) plays Ludvig Jahn, who, when he was young, is vanished from university and the party because of a joke he had shared with his girlfriend in a postcard. Years later he tries to get revenge, albeit a tawdry one, by seducing the wife of one of the students who had voted him out, with unexpected results. It's a wonderful film. Highly recommended.
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