Why So Blu?

4Ks for After Hours, Breathless, One False Move & More Coming to The Criterion Collection July 2023

Coming in July: a selection of American classics including After Hours, a Kafkaesque NYC nightmare by Martin Scorsese; One False Move, a razor-sharp neonoir by Carl Franklin; The Watermelon Woman, a trailblazing Black lesbian meta-comedy by Cheryl Dunye; and The Ranown Westerns: Five Films Directed by Budd Boetticher, a collection of five taut, unexpectedly profound westerns starring Randolph Scott. Plus: the dazzling debut that helped launch the French New Wave, Breathless, by Jean-Luc Godard—now on 4K UHD.

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AFTER HOURS

Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne) ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman (Rosanna Arquette). So begins the wildest night of his life, as bizarre occurrences—involving underground-art punks, a distressed waitress, a crazed Mister Softee truck driver, and a bagel-and-cream-cheese paperweight—pile up with anxiety-inducing relentlessness and thwart his attempts to get home. With this Kafkaesque cult classic, Martin Scorsese—abetted by Michael Ballhaus’s kinetic cinematography and scene-stealing supporting turns by Linda Fiorentino, Teri Garr, Catherine O’Hara, and John Heard—directed a darkly comic tale of mistaken identity, turning the desolate night world of 1980s SoHo into a bohemian wonderland of surreal menace.

1985 • 97 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• New program featuring director Martin Scorsese interviewed by writer Fran Lebowitz
• Audio commentary from 2004 featuring Scorsese, Schoonmaker, director of photography Michael Ballhaus, actor and producer Griffin Dunne, and producer Amy Robinson, with additional comments recorded in 2023
• Documentary about the making of the film featuring Dunne, Robinson, and Schoonmaker
• New program on the look of the filmfeaturing costume designer Rita Ryack and production designer Jeffrey Townsend
• Deleted scenes
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley

Available July 11, 2023

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THE WATERMELON WOMAN

The wry, incisive debut feature by Cheryl Dunye gave cinema something bracingly new and groundbreaking: a vibrant representation of Black lesbian identity by a Black lesbian filmmaker. Dunye stars as Cheryl, a video-store clerk and aspiring director whose interest in forgotten Black actresses leads her to investigate an obscure 1930s performer known as the Watermelon Woman, whose story proves to have surprising resonances with Cheryl’s own life as she navigates a new relationship with a white girlfriend (Guinevere Turner). Balancing breezy romantic comedy with a serious inquiry into the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood, The Watermelon Woman slyly rewrites long-standing constructions of race and sexuality on-screen, introducing an important voice in American cinema.

1996 • 84 minutes • Color • 3.0 surround • 1.33:1 aspect ratio 

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 2K digital restoration, supervised by director Cheryl Dunye, cinematographer Michelle Crenshaw, and producer Alexandra Juhasz, in collaboration with the Outfest UCLA Legacy Project, with 3.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New interview with Dunye
• New conversation between Dunye and artist-filmmaker Martine Syms
• New conversation between Juhasz and filmmaker and film scholar Thomas Allen Harris
• Six early short films by Dunye
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Cassie da Costa

Available July 11, 2023

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BREATHLESS

There was before Breathless, and there was after Breathless. Jean-Luc Godard burst onto the film scene in 1960 with this jazzy, free-form, and sexy homage to the American film genres that inspired him as a writer for Cahiers du cinéma. With its lack of polish, surplus of attitude, anything-goes crime narrative, and effervescent young stars Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg, Breathless helped launch the French New Wave and ensured that cinema would never be the same.

1960 • 90 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.37:1 aspect ratio 

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Interviews with director Jean-Luc Godard; actors Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg, and Jean-Pierre Melville; director of photography Raoul Coutard; assistant director Pierre Rissient; and filmmaker D. A. Pennebaker
• Two video essays: filmmaker Mark Rappaport’s Jean Sebergand critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s “Breathless” as Criticism
• Chambre 12, Hôtel de Suède, a 1993 French documentary about the making of Breathless, featuring members of the cast and crew
• Charlotte et son Jules, a 1959 short film by Godard featuring Belmondo
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by scholar Dudley Andrew, writings by Godard, François Truffaut’s original treatment, and Godard’s scenario

Available July 18, 2023

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THE RANOWN WESTERNS: FIVE FILMS DIRECTED BY BUDD BOETTICHER

 

The five briskly entertaining, vividly performed westerns made by director Budd Boetticher and strapping star Randolph Scott in the second half of the 1950s transcend their B-movie origins to become rich, unexpectedly profound explorations of loyalty, greed, honor, and revenge. Often grouped under the name Ranown (after producer Harry Joe Brown and Scott’s production company) and colorfully scripted by Burt Kennedy and Charles Lang, these films seem to unfold in a world unto themselves, staking a claim between traditional westerns and the subversive genre revisionism of the 1960s—and representing the crowning achievement of the underappreciated auteur Boetticher.

 

SIX-DISC 4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

 

• Five feature films: The Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, and Comanche Station.

• New 4K digital restorations by Sony Pictures Entertainment, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks

• Three 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and three Blu-rays with the films and special features

• Introductions to the films by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Taylor Hackford 

• New introduction by film critic Farran Smith Nehme on actor Randolph Scott

• Three audio commentaries, featuring film scholar Jeanine Basinger on The Tall T, film critic Jeremy Arnold on Ride Lonesome, and Hackford on Comanche Station

• Archival programs featuring interviews with director Budd Boetticher

• Audio conversation with Boetticher and film scholar Jim Kitses

• Super 8 home-movie version of Comanche Station

• Trailers

• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing

• PLUS: An essay by film scholar Tom Gunning

 

 

THE TALL T

Based on a story by Elmore Leonard, this collaboration between director Budd Boetticher, actor Randolph Scott, and screenwriter Burt Kennedy is a model of elegantly economical storytelling charged with psychological tension. Here, Scott is the easygoing rancher who, along with the newlywed daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan) of a wealthy mining baron, must use his wits to stay alive when he is taken hostage by a band of ruthless stagecoach robbers. He is memorably matched by Richard Boone’s dangerously charming, nearly sympathetic villain in a performance that exemplifies the fine moral shading that distinguishes the Ranown westerns.

1957 • 78 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

DECISION AT SUNDOWN

Randolph Scott boldly subverts his upstanding image in this stark, often startlingly bleak tale of revenge and a man’s misguided quest for redemption. He plays the mysterious stranger who, consumed by hatred for the man he blames for his wife’s suicide, rides into the corrupt town of Sundown hell-bent on vengeance. There, both he and the townspeople face a reckoning that forces them to confront disturbing truths about themselves. All but annihilating the myth of the righteous western hero, Decision at Sundown edges the Ranown films into increasingly dark, despairing territory.

1957 • 77 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

BUCHANAN RIDES ALONE

Welcome to Agry Town, a corrupt border outpost presided over by a pair of rival brothers whose bottomless greed corrupts everything in their orbit. Into this moral cesspool rides drifter Tom Buchanan (Randolph Scott), who soon finds himself railroaded for murder and, alongside a vengeful young Mexican vaquero, forced to take a stand for justice. The noir-tinged narrative—replete with twists, double crosses, and the kind of richly drawn villains who are hallmarks of the Ranown westerns—moves with entertaining economy toward a memorably ironic climax.

1958 • 79 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

RIDE LONESOME

Mysterious motivations drive taciturn bounty hunter Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott) to capture a wanted murderer—but his quest is complicated when he is accosted by a pair of outlaws who have their own inscrutable reasons for riding along. Masterfully scripted by Burt Kennedy, who weaves a complex web of ambiguous loyalties and motives, and featuring supporting turns by genre icons James Coburn (in his film debut) and Lee Van Cleef, the first of the Ranown westerns to be shot in CinemaScope makes striking use of the enlarged frame—with a final shot that stands as perhaps the single most unforgettable image in the series.

1959 • 73 minutes • Color • Monaural • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

 

COMANCHE STATION

 

The last collaboration between Budd Boetticher and Randolph Scott brings the Ranown westerns full circle, reexamining many of the films’ key themes and tropes: greed, loyalty, hidden motivations, and the fine moral line that separates heroes from villains. Scott stars as the enigmatic Jefferson Cody, who rescues a woman kidnapped by Comanches for reasons that may have nothing to do with the bounty offered for her return. But before he can bring her to safety, he’ll have to contend with the dangers of the Comanche warpath and a trio of bounty hunters who have designs on the reward.

1960 • 73 minutes • Color • Monaural • 2.35:1 aspect ratio 

Available July 18, 2023

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ONE FALSE MOVE

A small-town police chief (Bill Paxton) concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers (coscreenwriter Billy Bob Thornton and Michael Beach) who leave a bloody trail in their wake as they make their way from Los Angeles to Arkansas. And an enigmatic woman (Cynda Williams) caught in the middle. The way these desperate lives converge becomes a masterclass in slow-burn tension thanks to the nuanced direction of Carl Franklin, whose haunting debut feature travels a crooked road across America’s most fraught divisions—urban and rural, Black and white—while imbuing noir conventions with a wrenching emotional depth.

1992 • 105 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Carl Franklin, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary from 1999 featuring Franklin
• New conversation between Franklin and cowriter-actor Billy Bob Thornton
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by author William Boyle

Available July 25, 2023