Former Janus Head William Becker Dies At 88

One of art cinema’s great champions, William Becker, died on Saturday after complication from kidney failure. He was 88.

Starting out his career as a theater critic, Becker purchased legendary art cinema label and Criterion Collection backer Janus Films in 1965, in turn helping it evolve into the brand that it has become today. Overseeing expansion into realms like university education and eventually home video, Becker was a man with an affinity for intellectual discussion of cinema (he himself was a Rhodes scholar) and also an early adopter of the auteur theory, focusing on legendary filmmakers ranging from Luis Bunuel to Yasujiro Ozu.

He purchased the company with Saul J. Turell, going on to nab rights to films like Citizen Kane and King Kong, putting them alongside legendary art house films and pieces of world cinema, like Renoir’s Grand Illusion. This itself will be his lasting legacy.

I’m not normally one to write obituaries, but when it comes to Becker, this is personal. I never had the pleasure of meeting the man, but few people have has as great an impact on me as him. Generally one of the film world’s most influential curators, his brand, and more so his ability to shine a light on unsung pieces of work simply by putting them along side a film like Orson Welles’ masterpiece, forever changed me as a film fan. I know Janus films primarily as the father of The Criterion Collection, and as the brand that signifies the most important of the important, he played as one of the most influential figures in my film scholarship. Giving world cinema a chance as early as the mid ’50s with a film like The Seventh Seal, Janus Films helped bring to the masses here in the states the best of the best of avant garde and world cinema. However, it wasn’t until Becker’s arrival and the expansion of the catalog that it became the groundbreaking brand that we know it as today. Allowing for new generations to delve deep into the actual history of film as a medium and mode of artistic expression, Becker’s Janus Films became a powerhouse in the art house world, and the end all be all of the repertory world, a world that has now become almost universal with art houses cropping up in the smallest of markets.

Thank you, Mr. Becker.

Source: NY Times