Huge list of new Criterions (with specs and pics)
 

All February releases. From www.criterionco.com


Maitresse 29.95 #223

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A young provincial in search of adventure stumbles into the subterranean world of sadomasochism when he is implicated in a burglary of a Paris apartment. The apartment’s mistress runs a two-floor operation, all respectability above and a dungeon of punishment-seeking clients below. After the young man becomes her upstairs lover, she finds that the two levels of her carefully controlled existence begin to interfere with each other. Barbet Schroeder’s Maitresse examines the line between fantasy and reality, decadence and deprivation, and the distance one will go for love.

New high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Barbet Schroeder with restored image and sound and enhanced for widescreen televisions

Exclusive video interview with Barbet Schroeder

New essay by film critic Elliott Stein

New and improved English subtitle translation

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition




Diary of a Country Priest #222 39.95
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A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began to implement his stylistic philosophy as a filmmaker, stripping away all inessential elements from his compositions, the dialogue and the music, exacting a purity of image and sound.

New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound

Audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie

11-minutes of deleted scenes

New and improved English subtitle translation

New essay by film critic Frédéric Bonnaud

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition




Tunes of Glory #225 29.95
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In Ronald Neame’s Tunes of Glory, the incomparable Alec Guinness inhabits the role of Jock Sinclair—a whiskey-drinking, up-by-the-bootstraps commanding officer of a peacetime Scottish battalion. Sinclair is a lifetime military man, who expects respect and loyalty from his men. But when Basil Barrow (John Mills, winner of the Best Actor award at the 1960 Venice Film festival)—an educated, by-the-book scion of a traditionally military family—enters the scene as Sinclair’s replacement, the two men become locked in a fierce battle for control of the battalion and the hearts and minds of its men. Based on the novel by James Kennaway and featuring flawless performances by Guinness and Mills, Tunes of Glory uses the rigidly stratified hierarchy of military life as a jumping off point to examine the institutional contradictions and class divisions of English society, resulting in an unexpectedly moving drama.


New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound and enhanced for widescreen televisions

New video interview with director Ronald Neame

Exclusive new audio interview with actor Sir John Mills

Original theatrical trailer

New essay by acclaimed film critic and historian Robert Murphy

English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

More!





Pickup on South Street #224 29.95
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Petty crook Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark) has his eyes fixed on the big score. When the cocky three-time convict picks the pocketbook of unsuspecting Candy (Jean Peters), he finds a haul bigger than he could have imagined: a strip of microfilm bearing confidential U.S. secrets. Tailed by manipulative Feds and the unwitting courier’s Communist puppeteers, Skip and Candy find themselves in a precarious gambit that pits greed against redemption, Right versus Red, and passion against self preservation. With its dazzling cast and director Samuel Fuller’s signature raw energy and hardboiled repartee, Pickup on South Street is a true film noir classic by one of America’s most passionate cinematic craftsmen.

New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound

Exclusive interview with the late Samuel Fuller, made by renowned film critic Richard Schickel

Excerpts from the Cinéma Cinémas series with Fuller discussing the making of the film

Illustrated biographical essay on Fuller by Jeb Brody (Scenario, Print magazines)

Stills gallery of photos, posters, lobby cards, and original paintings by noted artist Russell Christian (The NY Times, The New Yorker)

Trailers for Pickup on South Street and other Fuller features

Booklet including excerpts from Fuller’s award-winning autobiography A Third Face, featuring Martin Scorsese’s introduction and Fuller on Pickup on South Street, plus a new essay by acclaimed cultural historian Luc Sante (Low Life, Evidence)

English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

More!



Le Corbeau (The Raven) #227 29.95
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A mysterious writer of poison pen letters, known only as Le Corbeau (the Raven), plagues a French provincial town, unwittingly exposing the collective suspicion and rancor seething beneath the community’s calm surface. Made during the Nazi Occupation of France, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau was attacked by the right-wing Vichy regime, the left-wing Resistance press, the Catholic Church, and was banned after the Liberation. But some—including Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre—recognized the powerful subtext to Clouzot’s anti-informant, anti-Gestapo fable, and worked to rehabilitate Clouzot’s directorial reputation after the war. Le Corbeau brilliantly captures a spirit of paranoid pettiness and self-loathing turning an occupied French town into a twentieth-century Salem.


New digital transfer, with restored image and sound

Video interview with Bertrand Tavernier, director of Coup de Torchon

Excerpts from The Story of French Cinema by Those Who Made It: Grand Illusions 1939 – 1942, a 1975 documentary featuring Henri-Georges Clouzot

New essay by film scholar Alan Williams, author of Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking

New and improved English subtitle translation

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

More!




Salvatore Giuliano #228 39.95 (2 disk set)
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July 5, 1950, Castelvetrano, Sicily—Infamous bandit Salvatore Giuliano’s bullet-riddled corpse is found facedown in a courtyard, a handgun and rifle by his side. Local and international press descend upon the scene, trying to gather the truth behind this young man, who, at the age of twenty-seven, is Italy’s most wanted criminal and celebrated hero of his day. In this groundbreaking work of investigative filmmaking, director Francesco Rosi harnesses the facts and myths surrounding the true story of Giuliano’s death, creating a searching and startling exposé of Sicily and the web of relations between her citizens, the Mafia, the military, and government officials. Pushing the boundaries of Italian neorealism, Salvatore Giuliano established Rosi’s reputation and secured his place in cinema history.


New high-definition digital transfer, with restored picture and sound and enhanced for widescreen televisions

New audio commentary by film historian Peter Cowie

Francesco Rosi: a 55-minute documentary made for Italian television surveying the director’s career to date, offering an intimate visit with Rosi at home and on location around Sicily, with special appearances by directors Giuseppe Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso) and Martin Scorsese

New video interviews with Rosi and film critic and author Tullio Kezich

Original theatrical trailer

New essay by film historian and critic Michel Ciment

Written tributes to Rosi by Martin Scorsese, Federico Fellini, and Francis Ford Coppola

New and improved English subtitle translation

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

More!




Richard III #213 39.95
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With Richard III, Laurence Olivier—as director, producer, and star—transfigures Shakespeare’s great historical drama into a mesmerizing vision of Machiavellian villainy. Olivier’s performance, viewed as the greatest of his career, charges Richard with magnetic malevolence as he steals his brother Edward’s crown through a murderous set of machinations. His inspired direction brings to the screen superlative performances by veteran theater actors Ralph Richardson and John Gielgud and the young Claire Bloom. Filmed in VistaVision and Technicolor, The Criterion Collection is proud to present the restored full-length version for which Olivier received the 1956 British Academy Film Awards for Best Actor and Best Film.

New high-definition digital transfer including newly discovered footage from the original theatrical release, with restored image and sound, enhanced for widescreen televisions

Commentary by playwright and stage director Russell Lees, joined by John Wilders, former Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre

Great Acting: Laurence Olivier, a 1966 BBC interview with Olivier hosted by renowned theater critic Kenneth Tynan

Gallery of on-set and production stills and posters, featuring excerpts from Olivier’s autobiography On Acting

12-minute television trailer with Olivier, producer Alexander Korda, production designer Roger Furse, and other crew members at work in Shepperton Studios Theatrical trailer

Essay by film historian Bruce Eder

English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired

Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Hot Damn I'm all over Who Murdered Salvatore Giuliano? & Pickup on South Street. The rest I don't really have any interest in but I'm sure the Criterion groupies here will be drooling over all of these. Thanks for the post.

Amazing cover art. Wow.

Agreed! Works of art they are.

I thought Ikiru would have been among the first quarter batch of Criterions.

Richard III :drool:

Ikiru and Rules of the Game were previously announced about a month ago to be released in January.

Check it out.
http://www.criterionco.com/asp/coming_soon.asp

Tunes of Glory? I. Am. So. There.
The other look good, too.

Argh. Me gonna be so poor come February...

i was just thinking how amateurish a couple of them looked. rather disappointing, really. then again, there are always some every now and then that aren't too great.

This is good stuff - and amazing cover art!

Ah yes, ok, as long as they are en route!

Tunes of Glory... wow. That'll be a street date pickup for me. :up: Good deal - all of these are pretty impressive, especially Le Corbeau, Pickup, and Richard III.

Maitresse! I had no idea that was in the pipeline, I am so excited. I never thought I would get a good copy of that, least of all a Criterion. I am kind of blown away.

Any substance to the rumour that Kurosawa's films will be reissued ? I'd hate to buy the boxset only for new improved versions to come out the following week ....

Can one usually find most Criterions to rent? I haven't seen a lot of their titles so haven't been buying any but would like to start looking to rent them.

Netflix my friend....they have all of them....and it is indeed your friend - I have been able to see a few so far since i joined a couple of months ago that I wasn't sure about. Glad I got to see them, but wouldn't want to own them....gets rid of the blind buy/try and sell routine :up:

Pickup on South Street :drool:

Wow, thats a lot of Criterions for one month - but I'm sure they're not all going to come out in Feb.

Diary of a Country Priest has been on my must-see list for some time now. I've seen Pickup on South St. and Le Corbeau before and are worthy of the Criterion treatment.