The Celebration (Festen: Dogme 1). Thomas Vinterberg, 1998.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1108, released 2022. Danish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 106 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion Blu-ray release also includes a 2002 documentary about Dogme 95, The Purified, along with two early short films by Vinterberg: The Boy Who Walked Backwards (1995, 36 minutes); and Last Round (1993, 34 minutes).
Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (excerpt). Jonas Mekas, 1964-1969.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime of this excerpt approximately 8 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Venus in Furs. Piero Heliczer, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime approximately 22 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Award Presentation to Andy Warhol. Jonas Mekas, 1965.
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Edition screened: Included on Criterion Blu-ray #1164 The Velvet Underground, released 2022. No dialogue track. Runtime approximately 12 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Magnificent Obsession. John Stahl, 1935.
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Edition screened: Included with Criterion Blu-ray #497 Magnificent Obsession, released 2019. English language. Runtime approximately 102 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Criterion includes this early adaptation of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel as a bonus Blu-ray in their release of Douglas Sirk’s (superior) 1954 Magnificent Obsession.
The Velvet Underground. Todd Haynes, 2021.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1164, released 2022. English language. Runtime approximately 120 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
The Criterion release also includes three short films made by associates of Warhol and The Velvet Underground, and relevant to the environment of the time and place:
• Award Presentation to Andy Warhol (1965 Jonas Mekas, 12 minutes)
• Venus in Furs (1965 Piero Heliczer, 22 minutes)
• Walden: Diaries, Notes, and Sketches [excerpt] (1969 Jonas Mekas, 8 minutes)
Red Beard (Akahige). Akira Kurosawa, 1965.
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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #159, released 2002. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 185 minutes.
Summary: No depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Red Beard is a fitting sayōnara to a successful run of Hollywood-style Kurosawa films starring Toshirô Mifune. In a large supporting role rather than starring as the lead, Mifune masterfully portrays a 2010 Robert De Nero portraying a mid-1960s Mifune who plays a young doctor of the late Tokugawa shogunate.
Mother. Albert Brooks, 1996.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1232, released 2024. English language. Runtime approximately 104 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Clouds of Sils Maria. Olivier Assayas, 2014.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #822, released 2016. English language. Runtime approximately 124 minutes.
No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion release also includes Arnold Fanck’s beautiful 1924 Cloud Phenomena of Maloja.
Visions of Eight. Various directors, 1973.
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Edition screened: Included in Criterion’s 100 Years of Olympic Films 1912-2012 Blu-ray box set #900, released 2017. English language. Runtime approximately 110 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence toward animals.
Executive producer David Wolper invited eight directors to create a short film focused on an aspect of the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics:
Carnal Knowledge. Mike Nichols, 1971.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1270, released 2025. English language. Runtime approximately 98 minutes.
Summary: No animals or references to animals in the film.
Scanners. David Cronenberg, 1981.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #712, released 2014. English language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 103 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
The Criterion release also includes Cronenberg’s first full-length film, Stereo (1969).
L’enfance nue (Naked Childhood). Maurice Pialat, 1968.
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Edition screened: Criterion DVD #534, released 2010. French language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 83 minutes.
Summary: Depicted murder of a nice house cat.
Details:
1) We meet a gentle black cat early in the film as he sits on a little girl’s lap watching her and her adopted brother play a game. From 5:36-5:50 the cat tries to cling to the banister for his life as the brother drops him down the deep stairwell of an apartment building. We see a cat, possibly injured, hobbling away 6:07-6:10.
2) The psychopathic brother said he would care for the injured cat but just puts him in a box outside. He removes the dead cat from the box at 12:52 and tosses him over a bank with trash at 13:14.
The balance of the film is an enjoyable social drama about the difficulties faced by well-intentioned foster families. L’enfance nue is Pialat’s first film and the director has fallen for junior high school drivel that animal cruelty is a writer’s tool to develop character. As always, bullshit, no excuse, and shame on him. The entire film is about showing the child’s malignant character through other diverse anecdotes that are interesting, persuasive, and sometimes humorous or thought-provoking. Pialat should not have led with the most over-used and ignominious method.
Victims of Sin (Víctimas del pecado). Emilio Fernández, 1951.
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Edition screened: Criterion Blu-ray #1222, released 2024. Spanish language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 84 minutes.
Summary: No particular depictions of violence or harm to animals.
Zatoichi Challenged (Zatōichi chikemurikaidō). Kenji Misumi, 1967.
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Edition screened: In Criterion Blu-ray box set #679 Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman, released 2013. Japanese language with English subtitles. Runtime approximately 86 minutes.
Summary: Killing of a hornet.
Details: Blind Zatoichi continues to roam the Japanese countryside, cementing his reputation as yes a masseuse and yes a gambler and yes an incredible swordsman and yes a graduate of the Clint Eastwood School for Uncompensated Defense of the Pathetic, but most distinctively as a slayer of lone flying insects. This time a hornet endures his unsighted wrath at 29:15. If you are new to the series or possibly a little Zatoichi Challenged yourself, a display of samurai fly swatting is his typical opening move to impress those he will later defend and warn those he will later smite.
The seventeenth film in the Zatoichi series.
