Each month, the Criterion Collection releases a selected number of titles onto DVD and Blu-ray. For the most part, these are films that have seen sort of home video release previously, but would never reach the shelves of your local Best Buy or Barnes and Noble without the extra push that the Criterion Collection gives it. Aside from cleaning up the picture and sound (frequently working from the original negative), providing some nifty packaging and artwork, and making your DVD collection look that much more cultured and refined, Criterion provides the valuable service of rescuing films that otherwise would never see the light of day, so not only can you proudly show off your sets, you can tell people that you’re performing a public service. Here’s what’s coming out this month:
THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS
Much has been made of the seeming parallels between The Battle of Algiers and the recent war in Iraq, but upon serious consideration, most of these are superficial at best, and add little to understanding of either French colonialism or modern American military incursions. But that's not to say that Algiers is irrelevant, even though it is not, as seems to be widely believed, a documentary, but instead a dramatization filmed under the best possible circumstances for verisimilitude. While it is perhaps tempting to recast the film as a parable for contemporary circumstances (as a member of any political persuasion), it is perhaps best viewed as one of cinema's most heartfelt odes to nationhood, and the painful birthing process which realizes it.
1965 • 121 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French and Arabic with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
TWO-DISC BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• High-definition digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Marcello Gatti, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Gillo Pontecorvo: The Dictatorship of Truth, a documentary narrated by literary critic Edward Said
• Marxist Poetry: The Making of “The Battle of Algiers,” a documentary featuring interviews with Pontecorvo, Gatti, composer Ennio Morricone, and others
• Interviews with Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Julian Schnabel, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone on the film’s influence, style, and importance
• Remembering History, a documentary reconstructing the Algerian experience of the battle for independence
• “États d’armes,” a documentary excerpt featuring senior French military officers recalling the use of torture and execution to combat the Algerian rebellion
• “The Battle of Algiers”: A Case Study, a video piece featuring U.S. counterterrorism experts
• Gillo Pontecorvo’s Return to Algiers, a documentary in which the filmmaker revisits the country after three decades of independence
• Production gallery
• Theatrical and rerelease trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Peter Matthews, excerpts from Algeria’s National Liberation Front leader Saadi Yacef’s original account of his arrest, excerpts from the film’s screenplay, a reprinted interview with cowriter Franco Solinas, and biographical sketches of key figures in the French-Algerian War
IF...
To reference Kubrick for the first of several times (it happens), he did once say that if Malcolm McDowell had not been available, he probably never would have made A Clockwork Orange. To get a clear idea of why, just take a look at If…, in which McDowell portrays an impish, scheming student at a British all-boys boarding school. But unlike Orange, If… is firmly entrenched in the war between the generations that was taking place at the same time that the nearly parallel Cold War was taking place, imbuing his actions with wit and fun rather than downright menace. If you ever wanted to see what Alex would have looked like snearing at his masters instead of, you know, raping people, this would be your chance; at least now, you won’t have to deal with the stifling guilt of finding him charming.
1969 • 112 minutes • Color/Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by cinematographer Miroslav Ondříček and assistant editor Ian Rakoff, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring film critic and historian David Robinson and actor Malcolm McDowell
• Episode of the Scottish TV series Cast and Crew from 2003, featuring interviews with McDowell, Ondříček, Rakoff, director’s assistant Stephen Frears, producer Michael Medwin, and screenwriter David Sherwin
• Video interview with actor Graham Crowden
• Thursday’s Children (1954), an Academy Award–winning documentary about a school for deaf children, by director Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton and narrated by actor Richard Burton
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Ehrenstein as well as reprinted pieces by Sherwin and Anderson
CUL-DE-SAC
Before he set the world on fire with the double-header of Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown, Roman Polanski worked on a more modest scale, producing smaller thrillers that played on the fear of invasion before large set-pieces were within his reach. Cul-de-Sac is firmly of this set, and like Knife in the Water it deals with the effects of a couple having to deal with the intrusion of an unexpected guest. Here, the couple is in an isolated house (instead of on a yacht), and the invader is a burly American gangster, surely the antithesis of the constantly reserved Donald Pleasence. Less famous than a number of his other works (this was released after Repulsion), this nonetheless displays his ability to make people tremendously uncomfortable, as well as his commitment to the unifying and destructive power of claustrophobia.
1966 • 112 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New digital restoration, approved by director Roman Polanski, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Two Gangsters and an Island, a 2003 short documentary about the making of Cul-de-sac, featuring interviews with Polanski, producer Gene Gutowski, and cinematographer Gil Taylor
• Interview with Polanski from 1967
• Theatrical trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic David Thompson
ORPHEUS
Of all cinematic attempts at adapting Greek myths, there may be none more ethereal, beautiful, and affecting than Jean Cocteau's Orpheus. Already well-versed in fantastic storytelling by his work on La Belle et la Bete (also available on Criterion), Orpheus is no less surreal than that film (amazingly, it's probably even more so), but it is a good deal more earth-bound than that film, and probably more adult in its dealings with how a marriage would work when one partner can't even look at the other. But that's not to say that it's any less enjoyable than that film, as the invention that Cocteau brings to his imagining of Hell, has scarcely been matched. The film also stars Jean Marais, one of few men in film history who could comfortably be called handsome by everyone everywhere.
1950 • 95 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary by French film scholar James Williams
• Jean Cocteau: Autobiography of an Unknown, a 1984 feature-length documentary
• Video piece from 2008 featuring assistant director Claude Pinoteau on the special effects in the film
• 40 Minutes with Jean Cocteau, an interview with the director from 1957
• In Search of Jazz, a 1956 interview with Cocteau on the use of jazz in the film
• La villa Santo-Sospir, a 16 mm color Cocteau film from 1951
• Gallery of images by French film portrait photographer Roger Corbeau
• Raw newsreel footage of the Saint-Cyr military academy ruins, a location used in the film
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by author Mark Polizzotti, selected Cocteau writings on the film, and an essay on La villa Santo-Sospir by Williams
THE KILLING
Don't forget Reservoir Dogs, obviously, because it's an important movie in its own right, but at the same time, kind of do, because now there's no excuse not to have seen The Killing, one of Kubrick's earliest films and arguably better than anything he did following Barry Lyndon. The heist set-up should be familiar to film viewers of any stripe, but the sharpness and energy that the director brings to the material advances it formally out of noir and into a spare, energetic thriller, discarding all of the opulence for which Kubrick later became known. Its influence can hardly be overstated (and not just in Tarantino), but unlike even that man's work, it is not so buried in imitators that it cannot be approached on its own.
1956 • 85 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New video interview with producer James B. Harris
• Excerpts of interviews with actor Sterling Hayden from the French television series Cinéma cinémas
• New video interview with film scholar Robert Polito about writer Jim Thompson and his work on The Killing
• Restored transfer of Stanley Kubrick’s 1955 noir feature Killer’s Kiss
• New video appreciation of Killer’s Kiss with film critic Geoffrey O’Brien
• Theatrical trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film historian Haden Guest and a reprinted interview with Marie Windsor on The Killing
SECRET SUNSHINE
Though its title makes it sound like a late period album from a pop act desperate for critical respectability, Secret Sunshine is quiet, disarming, and sensitive in its portrayal of the grief process and the ultimate emergence from it. Starring Cannes best acress award winner Jeon Do-yeon as a piano teacher who returns to her husband’s hometown with her son following his death, Sunshine looks at death through the same clear lens that Atom Egoyan did in The Sweet Hereafter; careful, probing, and totally devoid of sentiment. An excellent introduction for those of you looking for an introduction to the flourishing world of Korean film-making, and to one of its most prominent artists Lee Chang-dong.
2007 • 142 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In Korean with English subtitles • 2.35:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Lee Chang-dong and cinematographer Cho Yong-kyu, with DTS-HD Master Audio on the
Blu-ray edition
• New interview with Lee
• On the Set of “Secret Sunshine,” a video piece featuring interviews with actors Jeon Do-yeon and Song Kang-ho, as well as behind-the-scenes footage
• U.S. theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Dennis Lim
THE COMPLETE JEAN VIGO
If old school film nerds had to pick their James Dean, their martyred superstar who could have gone on to much greater things had he only lived long enough to have a receding hairline, it would certainly be Jean Vigo, the French director who made at least two bonefied classics but died at the age of 29. Though the ideal way to watch L'Atalante and Zero for Conduct is on a rattling old 16 mm projector in an empty classroom, Criterion does the next best thing by collecting those films (and the lesser known shorts Taris and À propos de Nice) into a single set, as well as cleaning them up for anybody without a nostalgic appreciation for tinny sound and scratchy picture. It may feel like too little, but it's still a great tribute to a rock star director in a field sadly lacking in rock stars.
À propos de Nice • 1930 • 23 min • B&W • Silent • 1.33:1
Taris • 1931 • 9 min • B&W • Mono • In French with English subtitles • 1.19:1
Zéro de conduite • 1933 • 44 min • B&W • Mono • In French with English subtitles
L’Atalante • 1934 • 85 min • B&W • Mono • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restorations of all of Jean Vigo’s films: À propos de Nice, Taris, Zéro de conduite, and L’Atalante, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentaries featuring Michael Temple, author of Jean Vigo
• Alternate shots from À propos de Nice, featuring footage Vigo cut from the film
• Animated tribute to Vigo by filmmaker Michel Gondry
• Ninety-minute 1964 episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps on Vigo, directed by Jacques Rozier
• Conversation from 1968 between filmmakers François Truffaut and Eric Rohmer on L’Atalante
• Les voyages de “L’Atalante,” Bernard Eisenschitz’s 2001 documentary tracking the history of the film
• Video interview from 2007 with director Otar Iosseliani on Vigo
• New and improved English subtitle translations
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film writers Michael Almereyda, Robert Polito, B. Kite, and Luc Sante
ECLIPSE SERIES 28: THE WARPED WORLD OF KOREYOSHI KURAHARA
Continuing its tradition of director retrospectives, Criterion’s final offering for the month is Eclipse Series 28: The Warped World of Koreyoshi Kurahara, a collection of five of the director’s eclectic and highly varied catalogue from the 1960s. These include Intimidation, a minor noir (only 67 minutes) about a blackmailed bank manager and his resentful underling, The Warped Ones, a juvenile delinquency picture in line with those done by the Americans and French, I Hate But Love, a comedy in which a major celebrity escapes from Tokyo and his girlfriend/manager to the countryside, Black Sun, about a black GI and a Japanese drifter on the run, and Thirst for Love, about a young widow who becomes involved with her father-in-law but secretly obsesses over the family gardener.
Intimidation 1960 · 67 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Japanese with English subtitles · 2.20:1 aspect ratio
The Warped Ones 1960 · 75 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Japanese with English subtitles · 2.35:1 aspect ratio
I Hate But Love 1962 · 105 minutes · Color · Monaural · In Japanese with English subtitles · 2.35:1 aspect ratio
Black Sun 1964 · 95 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Japanese with English subtitles · 2.25:1 aspect ratio
Thirst for Love 1967 · 104 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Japanese with English subtitles · 2.45:1 aspect ratio
