Few aspects of moviegoing during the past 50 years have remained unchanged. The double feature disappeared along with 35-cent tickets, 35-foot screens, continuous showings, cartoons, travelogues, unruly balconies, nicotine, illuminated Bulova clocks, affordable popcorn, re-releases, theater curtains, Technicolor, Dynamation, Westerns, musicals, Will Rogers coin-boxes, ad-free zones, and most repertory theaters. Watching the first scene of a new direct-to-DVD atrocity in which a teenager inadvertently masturbates on his grandmother, inducing a fatal coronary, I realized for the first time that even the detestable Production Code had its uses.

But then there are those two reaffirming constants: Janus and James. Janus Films is the distribution company that created the American art house market in the late 1950s and early ’60s with its importation of Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal,” Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” Antonioni’s “L’Aventurra,” and dozens of other staples of international cinema, some stretching back to the silent era, others straight off the movieola. Janus’s success led to the founding of Criterion, which pioneered the innovative laser discs, complete with commentary tracks and other addenda, and now sets the standard for DVDs.

James Bond first appeared in Ian Fleming’s novel “Casino Royale,” a few years before Janus’s breakthrough, and made his way into cinema with Terence Young’s “Dr. No,” the surprise hit of 1962, combining the spy thriller with science fiction, baccarat, calypso, Ursula Andress’s sunlit bikini, and Joseph Wiseman’s one venture into underacting. The home video rights to Bond briefly allowed Criterion to bestow its imprimatur on editions of the best Sean Connery entries.

The differences between the Janus and Bond franchises are obvious. One appeals to serious filmgoers unfazed by subtitles. The other dazzles the masses, which pay millions for each installment. Janus distributed dozens of films; the “official” Bond catalog (films created by the same producers who launched “Dr. No”) numbers 21, including the current “Casino Royale.” Janus films are viewed repeatedly with increased intimations of sublimity; Bond films are also viewed repeatedly, with, in many instances, increased humility and shame.

So much for differences, which seem paltry compared to the similarities. First, they are always present. Janus and James — whether in theaters or on home video — abide as generational markers, with each improved restoration of “The Seven Samurai” or “Goldfinger” mandating revisits and re-evaluations. Second, the magic of cultural imperialism has made them oddly American. Repertory theaters, film classes, déclassé remakes, and Woody Allen punchlines have turned the Janus catalog into a crucial component in cultured memory banks. American men have always laughed at Bond while identifying with him. His accent may be British (or Scottish, or Irish, or Australian), but he only visits London for proforma repartee with Miss Moneypenny and dressing downs from M and Q. My quintessential Janus experience occurred in 1966, when an extracurricular high school club bused us to an uptown theater for the Bergman trilogy: “Through a Glass Darkly,” “Winter Light,” and “The Silence,” four and half hours of subtitles and enough theological maundering for a month of Sundays. My quintessential Bond experience followed in 1987, when “The Living Daylights” opened in Amsterdam — reserved seating in a grand old rococo theater. From my first-tier box seat, the exhilaration was palpable.

On the other hand, I have subsequently been enthralled by the Bergman trilogy, taken one at a time, especially “The Silence,” yet I have nodded off twice watching the DVD of “The Living Daylights,” which would have been improved a thousand-fold, along with most other movies, had it co-starred Gunnel Lindblom. (“On your knees, James.” “Yes, mum.”) Cinema is news that stays news.

Each franchise is the subject of knock-your-socks-off DVD revelry, released in time for gift giving, but at a price that encourages self-giving. Actually, per-film prices are reasonable; it’s the total outlay that may cause financial trauma. Criterion’s “Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films” is sold on the company’s Web site and elsewhere for $650, which comes to $13 per film. Note, however, that only the movies are included, not the extras for which Criterion is famous — not even the booklet essays. Instead there is a sumptuous 235-page book with introductory essays on Janus and glosses on each film.

The entire package, may be dismissed as the cinematic equivalent of what Dwight Macdonald famously ridiculed as “The Book-of-the-Millennium Club.” The selections are surely open to question: “Ivan the Terrible, Part 2” but not “Part One,” “Summertime” but not “Children of Paradise,” and so forth. But such quibbles miss the point. If this set is an indulgence, part of its pleasure is purely tactile: Holding all at once 50 discs (52 films, including three show business documentaries by Saul Turell), among them many of the greatest films ever made, is a druggy sensation reminiscent of Chaplin’s pas de deux with a globe, except that they are far too heavy to hold aloft.

Turning the heavy cardboard pages, each embedding four films, is an exercise in memory boosting. That the films are shorn of all midrash is unsurprisingly cathartic. We don’t have to consult commentaries, but usually do, ending up with filtered experiences of the work at hand. In “Art House Essentials,” the unencumbered movies regain their art house intimacy. I find myself choosing among them blindly, not unlike going to a repertory theater without a marquee. Ah, Alf Sjoberg ‘s “Miss Julie” (1951), an unreasonably beautiful and hypnotic rendering of a Strindberg play that is neither.

The 20 Bond films are packaged in four volumes, each film restored and accompanied by a disc of supplements and a booklet that ties the film to concurrent political or social events. Each set plants at least one pearl — “Dr. No,” “From Russia with Love,” “Goldfinger,” “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” “Diamonds are Forever” (a perverse favorite: ruthlessly violent, nastily funny, utterly incomprehensible), “For Your Eyes Only,” “Goldeneye” — with the dross. If “A View to a Kill” is the nadir, it is closely followed by the endless explosions in “License to Kill,” the invisible car of “Die Another Day,” the growing indifference of Roger Moore, and the minstrel makeup imposed on Sean Connery in “You Only Live Twice” (Japanese style, 1967) and Yaphet Kotto in “Live and Let Die” (Negro style, 1973).

The price is the same as Janus given the online $65 cost per box — $13 per two-disc film (the sets list for $90) — and the commentaries are sometimes more interesting than the movies, notably those by the ever game Mr. Moore. Many stars, including Mr. Connery, did not participate. The films have never looked or sounded better. Whatever else happens, John Barry’s scores rarely disappoint.

Almost every Bond film has been attacked as overlong, but the success of the operation depends on each entry arriving as an event with its own epic tempo, however dull the payoff. The dullness began to creep in with the interminable underwater battle in “Thunderball” and, with rare exceptions, gained in direct proportion to the costs — which grew like the armies of color-coded henchmen who devote their lives to Dr. No, Blofeld, and other nut jobs that make Fritz Lang’s world beaters seem relatively well-adjusted.

Lang is apparently Bond’s true godfather. James is descended from agent 326 in “Spies” (1928); the madmen are recycled from Mabuse and Haghi; the henchmen and giants are out of “Metropolis” (1927); and the many, many liftoffs, particularly the 30-minute rocket launch of “You Only Live Twice,” are lifted from “Woman on the Moon” (1929). One difference is that Lang’s monsters occasionally kill his heroes. In the world of James Bond, his enemies can be depended upon to put down their guns, and either send him sky diving or toss him in a crocodile swamp, and leave. So far, Bond has proved to be immortal in every way.

Mr. Giddins’s most recent book, “Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books,” is available from Oxford University Press.