All About Eve, Cold War & More Coming to The Criterion Collection November 2019
August 15th, 2019 by Aaron Neuwirth
This November, the Criterion Collection will celebrate the incomparable Bette Davis, one of Hollywood’s greatest stars, with two releases that demonstrate her extraordinary range. The swoon-inducing melodrama Now, Voyager, appearing on Blu-ray for the first time, finds her at the height of her reign as the queen of the women’s picture. Then All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s beloved theater-world satire, features Davis in an acid-tongued comeback performance, a turn that now defines her legacy. Also coming in November: Paweł Pawlikowski’s sweeping, Oscar-nominated Cold War, a tumultuous, passionate love story that traverses the Iron Curtain, debuts on home video. Béatrice Dalle stars in Betty Blue, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s intoxicating tale of amour fou, appearing in its three-hour director’s cut. And Greg Mottola’s irresistible comedy The Daytrippers – starring Hope Davis, Parker Posey, Anne Meara, Liev Schreiber, and Stanley Tucci – will appear in a new 4K restoration.
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THE DAYTRIPPERS
With its droll humor and bittersweet emotional heft, the feature debut of writer-director Greg Mottola announced the arrival of an unassumingly sharp-witted new talent on the 1990s indie scene. When she discovers a love letter written to her husband (Stanley Tucci) by an unknown paramour, the distraught Eliza (Hope Davis) turns to her tight-knit Long Island family for advice. Soon the entire clan-strong-willed mom (Anne Meara), taciturn dad (Pat McNamara), and jaded sister (Parker Posey) with pretentious boyfriend (Liev Schreiber) in tow-has squeezed into a station wagon and headed into Manhattan to find out the truth, kicking off a one-crazy-day odyssey full of unexpected detours and life-changing revelations. Performed with deadpan virtuosity by a top-flight ensemble cast, The Daytrippers is a wry and piercing look at family bonds stretched to the breaking point.
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DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Greg Mottola, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New audio commentary featuring Mottola, editor Anne McCabe, and producer Steven Soderbergh
* New interviews with Mottola and cast members Hope Davis, Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, and Campbell Scott
* The Hatbox, a 1985 short film by Mottola, with audio commentary by the director
* PLUS: An essay by critic Emily Nussbaum
1996 * 87 minutes * Color * Stereo * 1.85:1 aspect ratio
Available November 12, 2019
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BETTY BLUE
When the easygoing would-be novelist Zorg (Jean-Hugues Anglade) meets the tempestuous Betty (Béatrice Dalle in a magnetic breakout performance) in a sunbaked French beach town, it’s the beginning of a whirlwind love affair that sees the pair turn their backs on conventional society in favor of the hedonistic pursuit of freedom, adventure, and carnal pleasure. But as the increasingly erratic Betty’s grip on reality begins to falter, Zorg finds himself willing to do things he never expected to protect both her fragile sanity and their tenuous existence. Adapted from the hit novel 37°2 le matin by Philippe Djian, Jean-Jacques Beineix’s art-house smash-presented here in its extended director’s cut-is a sexy, crazy, careening joyride of a romance that burns with the passion and beyond-all-reason fervor of all-consuming love.
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DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* High-definition digital restoration, approved by director Jean-Jacques Beineix, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Blue Notes and Bungalows, a sixty-minute documentary from 2013 featuring Beineix, actors Jean-Hugues Anglade and Béatrice Dalle, associate producer Claudie Ossard, cinematographer Jean-François Robin, and composer Gabriel Yared
* Making of “Betty Blue,” a short video featuring Beineix and author Philippe Djian
* Le chien de Monsieur Michel, a short film by Beineix from 1977
* French television interview from 1986 with Beineix and Dalle
* Dalle screen test
* Trailers
* New English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by critic Chelsea Phillips-Carr
1986 * 185 minutes * Color * Monaural * In French with English subtitles * 1.66:1 aspect ratio
Available November 19, 2019
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COLD WAR
This sweeping, delirious romance begins in the Polish countryside, where Wiktor (Tomasz Kot), a musician on a state-sponsored mission to collect folk songs, discovers a captivating young singer named Zula (Joanna Kulig, in a performance for the ages). Over the next fifteen years, their turbulent relationship will play out in stolen moments between two worlds: the jazz clubs of decadent bohemian Paris, to which he defects, and the corrupt, repressive Communist Bloc, where she remains-universes bridged by their passion for music and for each other. Photographed in luscious monochrome and suffused with the melancholy of the simple folk song that provides a motif for the couple’s fateful affair, Paweł Pawlikowski’s timeless story-inspired by that of his own parents-is a heart-stoppingly grand vision of star-crossed love caught up in the tide of history.
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DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New 4K digital master, supervised and approved by director Paweł Pawlikowski and director of photography Łukasz Zal, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio Soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* New conversation between Pawlikowski and filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñàrritu
* Press conference featuring Pawlikowski and Zal; actors Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, and Borys Szyc; and producer Ewa Puszczynska
* Documentaries from 2018 on the making of the film
* Trailer
* New English subtitle translation
* PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek
2018 * 88 minutes * Black & White * 5.1 surround * In Polish, Croatian, Russian, German, Italian, and French with English subtitles * 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Available November 19, 2019
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ALL ABOUT EVE
In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s devastatingly witty Hollywood classic, backstage is where the real drama plays out. One night, Margo Channing (Bette Davis) entertains a surprise dressing-room visitor: her most adoring fan, the shy, wide-eyed Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). But as Eve becomes a fixture in Margo’s life, the Broadway legend soon realizes that her supposed admirer intends to use her and everyone in her circle, including George Sanders’s acid-tongued critic, as stepping-stones to stardom. Featuring stiletto-sharp dialogue and direction by Mankiewicz, and an unforgettable Davis in the role that revived her career and came to define it, the multiple-Oscar-winning All About Eve is the most deliciously entertaining film ever made about the ruthlessness of show business.
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SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Two audio commentaries from 2010, one featuring actor Celeste Holm, director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s son Christopher Mankiewicz, and author Kenneth L. Geist; the other featuring author Sam Staggs
* All About Mankiewicz, a feature-length documentary from 1983 about the director
* Episodes of The Dick Cavett Show from 1969 and 1980 featuring actors Bette Davis and Gary Merrill
* New interview with costume historian Larry McQueen
* Hollywood Backstories: “All About Eve,” a 2001 documentary featuring interviews with Davis and others about the making of the film
* Documentaries from 2010 about Mankiewicz’s life and career, the short story on which the film is based and its real-world inspiration, and a real-life “Sarah Siddons Society” based on the film’s fictional society
* Radio adaptation of the film from 1951
* Trailer
* PLUS: An essay by critic Terrence Rafferty and the 1946 short story on which the film is based
1950 * 138 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.37:1 aspect ratio
Available November 26, 2019
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NOW, VOYAGER
Nervous spinster Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) is stunted from growing up under the heel of her puritanical Boston Brahmin mother (Gladys Cooper), and remains convinced of her own unworthiness until a kindly psychiatrist (Claude Rains) gives her the confidence to venture out into the world on a South American cruise. Onboard, she finds her footing with the help of an unhappily married man (Paul Henreid). Their thwarted love affair may help Charlotte break free of her mother’s grip-but will she find fulfillment as well as independence? Made at the height of Davis’s reign as the queen of the women’s picture and bolstered by an Oscar-winning Max Steiner score, Now, Voyager is a melodrama for the ages, both a rapturous Hollywood romance and a poignant saga of self-discovery.
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SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Episode of The Dick Cavett Show from 1971 with actor Bette Davis
* Interview with Paul Henreid from 1980
* Selected-scene commentary on the film’s score by professor Jeff Smith
* New interview with film critic Farran Smith Nehme on the making of the film
* New interview with costume historian Larry McQueen
* Two radio adaptations from 1943 and 1946
* PLUS: An essay by scholar Patricia White and a 1937 reflection on acting by Davis
1942 * 118 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.37:1 aspect ratio
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Available November 26, 2019
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Aaron Neuwirth
Writer/Reviewer, Film Lover, Podcaster, Gamer, Comic Reader, Disc Golfer & a Lefty. There are too many films, TV, books, etc. for me to list as favorites, but I can assure that the amount film knowledge within my noggin is ridiculous, though I am always open to learning more. You can follow me on Twitter @AaronsPS4, see what else I am up to at TheCodeIsZeek.com & check out my podcast, Out Now with Aaron and Abe, on iTunes.
