Give the gift of Criterion!
Live stream preview

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Watch this video and more on The Criterion Channel

Start your free trial

Already subscribed? Sign in

The Tempest

Leaving December 31 • 1h 35m

Directed by Derek Jarman • 1979 • United Kingdom
Starring Peter Bull, David Meyer, Neil Cunningham

Derek Jarman transforms William Shakespeare’s final great play—about the magician Prospero (Heathcote Williams), who lives on an enchanted island with his daughter, Miranda (Toyah Willcox), and exacts revenge on his shipwrecked enemies—into an original and dazzling spectacle, mixing Hollywood pastiche, high camp, and gothic horror. Shot on location at the ancient and ghostly Stoneleigh Abbey, THE TEMPEST channels the innocent homoeroticism of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s versions of classics, while its lush sense of decor and color worthy of Vincente Minnelli. Jarman’s master stroke is the finale, a wedding feast designed and choreographed as a full-scale production number, with the veteran musical-comedy star Elisabeth Welch wafting her way through a chorus line of hunky sailors as she belts out “Stormy Weather.”

Up Next in Leaving December 31

  • Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore
    1:35:33
    Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore

    Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore

    Directed by Sarah Jacobson • 1996 • United States
    Starring Lisa Gerstein, Chris Enright, Greg Cruikshank, Marny Snyder Spoons

    The punk-spirited films of Sarah Jacobson combine B-movie aesthetics, riot grrrl feminism, and the DIY ethos of the 1990s zine scene into unfiltered and subversive looks...

  • She Runs
    19:43
    She Runs

    She Runs

    Directed by Qiu Yang • 2019 • China, France
    Starring Xue Jiayi, Shuxian Li, Frank Sun

    With a heartbreaking mix of intimacy and restraint, director Qiu Yang depicts the enormous pressure a young student faces as she desperately attempts to quit her school dance team.

  • Kamikaze Hearts
    1:17:26
    Kamikaze Hearts

    Kamikaze Hearts

    Directed by Juliet Bashore • 1986 • United States
    Starring Tigr, Sharon Mitchell, Jon Martin

    Juliet Bashore’s quasi-documentary plunge into the 1980s porn industry takes an unsparing look at issues of misogyny, drug abuse, and exploitation via the story of two women—the naive Tigr and the magne...

×