Why So Blu?

Burnett, Lester, Kiarostami, Demy, and More Coming to The Criterion Collection May 2025

Coming in May: Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, a quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking; Withnail and I and How to Get Ahead in Advertising, two indelible comedies from maverick British writer-director Bruce Robinson; Abbas Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, a meditative masterpiece set in rural Iran; and The Three Musketeers/The Four Musketeers, a two-part swashbuckling spectacular directed by Richard Lester. Plus: Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time, and In the Heat of the Night, a Hollywood classic from the civil rights era directed by Norman Jewison—now on 4K UHD.

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THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

 

1964 • 92 minutes • Color • 5.0 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio

 

The angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through lilting songs by the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.

 

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris and approved by Mathieu Demy, director Jacques Demy’s son, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Alternate uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Once Upon a Time . . . “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” a 2008 documentary
• Interview with film scholar Rodney Hill
• French television interview from 1964 featuring Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand discussing the film
• Archival audio interviews with Legrand and actor Catherine Deneuve at the National Film Theatre in London
• Demonstration of the 2013 restoration
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Jim Ridley

 

Available May 6, 2025

 

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT

 

1967 • 110 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

Passing through the backwoods town of Sparta, Mississippi, Philadelphia detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) becomes embroiled in a murder case. He forms an uneasy alliance with the bigoted police chief (Rod Steiger), who faces mounting pressure from Sparta’s hostile citizens to catch the killer and run the African American interloper out of town. Director Norman Jewison splices incisive social commentary into this thrilling police procedural with the help of Haskell Wexler’s vivid cinematography, Quincy Jones’s eclectic score, and two indelible lead performances—a career-defining display of seething indignation and moral authority from Poitier and an Oscar-winning masterclass in Method acting from Steiger. Winner of five Academy Awards, including for Best Picture, In the Heat of the Night is one of the most enduring Hollywood films of the civil rights era.

 

4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Alternate 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Interviews with director Norman Jewison and actor Lee Grant
• Segment from a 2006 American Film Institute interview with actor Sidney Poitier
• Interview with Aram Goudsouzian, author of Sidney Poitier: Man, Actor, Icon
• Audio commentary featuring Jewison, Grant, actor Rod Steiger, and cinematographer Haskell Wexler
• Turning Up the Heat: Movie-Making in the ’60s, a program about the production of the film and its legacy, featuring Jewison, Wexler, producer Walter Mirisch, and filmmakers John Singleton and Reginald Hudlin
• Quincy Jones: Breaking New Sound, a program about Jones’s innovative soundtrack, including the title song sung by Ray Charles, featuring interviews with Jones, lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and musician Herbie Hancock
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic K. Austin Collins

 

Available May 6, 2025

 

THE WIND WILL CARRY US

 

1999 • 118 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Persian with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

The mysteries of everyday life come into astonishing focus in one of Abbas Kiarostami’s greatest cinematic achievements. A slyly self-reflexive commentary on the director’s own artistic practice, The Wind Will Carry Us unfolds with unhurried majesty as it follows an undercover documentarian (Behzad Dorani) whose assignment to cover a small village’s funeral rites is continually frustrated by an elderly woman’s refusal to die. Along the way, though, he forges surprising, unsettling, and enlightening connections with those he meets. Suffused with Kiarostami’s love for people, poetry, and the arid beauty of rural Iran, this meditative masterpiece reflects upon the boundaries between intimacy and alienation, tradition and modernity, with the utmost grace.

 

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 4K restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• A Week with Kiarostami (1999), a documentary by Yuji Mohara on the making of the film
• Interview from 2002 with director Abbas Kiarostami
• New video essay presenting Kiarostami’s poetry narrated by Massoumeh Lahiji, a longtime translator and creative collaborator of the director’s
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by poet and novelist Kaveh Akbar

 

Available May 13, 2025

 

WITHNAIL AND I

 

1987 • 107 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

 

The ultimate cult British comedy, Bruce Robinson’s semi-autobiographical cinematic bender is a feast of delectably florid dialogue delivered with deadpan relish by stars Richard E. Grant and Paul McGann as, respectively, Withnail and “I,” a pair of perpetually soused, unemployed actors in 1960s London who, desperate to escape their nightmarishly grimy flat, embark on a hilariously misbegotten country getaway beset by menacing locals, bare cupboards, and a randy uncle—all of which they may be able to withstand as long as they don’t run out of alcohol. While Robinson’s dazzling script yields quotable moments galore, it’s the film’s bittersweet evocation of a friendship gradually unraveling that gives this beloved end-of-youth tale its lasting poignancy.

 

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Peter Hannan, 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
• Two audio commentaries, one from 2020 featuring writer-director Bruce Robinson, and the other from 2001 featuring actors Ralph Brown and Paul McGann
• New short program featuring Robinson and actor Richard E. Grant
• Withnail and Us (1999), a documentary on the making of the film
• British Film Institute Q&A from 2017 with Robinson and Grant
• Stills gallery featuring photographs by artist Ralph Steadman
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic David Cairns

 

Available May 20, 2025

 

HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING

1989 • 94 minutes • Color • 2.0 surround • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

Writer-director Bruce Robinson and star Richard E. Grant, the cracked comic geniuses behind the cult favorite Withnail and I, reteamed for this diabolically dark satire of runaway capitalism in Margaret Thatcher–era England. Grant gives a virtuosically crazed performance as an ambitious advertising exec whose latest assignment—devising a campaign for a pimple cream—has him on the edge of a nervous breakdown. When he sprouts an enormous boil on his shoulder—one that not only talks but has evil ambitions of its own—a twisted battle of wills ensues. With fantastically fleshy body-horror effects and flourishes of gonzo surrealism, this tour de force of verbal jousting and physical comedy is a caustic Jekyll-and-Hyde tale for the greed-is-good 1980s.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• 2K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Peter Hannan, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New documentary featuring interviews with writer-director Bruce Robinson and actor Richard E. Grant
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic David Cairns

 

Available May 20, 2025

 

THE THREE MUSKETEERS / THE FOUR MUSKETEERS: TWO FILMS BY RICHARD LESTER

Alexandre Dumas’s immortal tale of adventure and camaraderie received perhaps the finest of its numerous screen adaptations with this two-part swashbuckling spectacular from A Hard Day’s Night director Richard Lester. Featuring Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain as the swaggering swordsmen, who thrust and parry their way through courtly intrigue in seventeenth-century France, The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers are also graced with an all-star supporting cast that includes Raquel Welch, Faye Dunaway, Geraldine Chaplin, and Charlton Heston. Lester’s exuberant epic breathes new life into an oft-told classic through its boisterous slapstick invention, its meticulous attention to period detail, and a sense of pure, unbridled bravado that is thrilling to behold.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
• In the 4K UHD edition: Two 4K UHD discs of the films presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the films and special features
• Two for One, a new documentary by critic David Cairns
• The Saga of the Musketeers (2002), a two-part documentary featuring interviews with cast and crew members
• The Making of “The Three Musketeers,” a 1973 featurette with behind-the-scenes footage of director Richard Lester
• Trailers
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek

THE THREE MUSKETEERS

1973 • 107 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio 

Richard Lester’s spirited adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s timeless novel immediately distinguished itself from previous film versions with its irresistible lightheartedness. It follows the brash, young wannabe musketeer d’Artagnan (Michael York) as he travels from the French countryside to Paris and befriends Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), famed swordsmen whom he must help to stop the conniving Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) and his plot to undermine the king. The Three Musketeers sweeps viewers away with its exquisite sets and costumes, chivalric romance, and breathless duels punctuated by the ingenious physical comedy that was Lester’s trademark.

THE FOUR MUSKETEERS

1974 • 106 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.85:1 aspect ratio  

It may be “one for all and all for one,” but it took director Richard Lester two films to contain the sweeping spectacle of Alexandre Dumas’s swashbuckling adventure. This sequel—shot simultaneously with The Three Musketeers, since they were originally conceived as a single film—dials down the comic high jinks that distinguished the first installment in favor of a more somber tone, as our heroes are drawn into a deadly revenge plot orchestrated by the seductive Milady de Winter (a deliciously wicked Faye Dunaway). Upping the psychological stakes and deepening our sense of the characters, The Four Musketeers brings this beloved tale of honor and friendship to a close with a rousing emotional flourish.

Available May 27, 2025

 

KILLER OF SHEEP

 

1977 • 80 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.33:1 aspect ratio 

 

A quiet revelation of American independent filmmaking, Charles Burnett’s lyrical debut feature unfolds as a mosaic of Black life in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Stan (Henry Gayle Sanders), a father worn down by his job in a slaughterhouse, and his wife (Kaycee Moore) seek moments of tenderness in the face of myriad disappointments. Equally attuned to the world of children and that of adults, Burnett—acting as director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor—finds poetry amid everyday struggles in indelible images that glow with compassionate beauty. Largely unseen for decades following its completion in 1977, Killer of Sheep is now recognized as a touchstone of the groundbreaking LA Rebellion movement, and a masterpiece that brought Black American lives to the screen with an aching intimacy like no film before. 

 

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Charles Burnett, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Burnett and film scholar Richard Peña
• New interviews with Burnett and actor Henry Gayle Sanders
• New appreciation by filmmaker Barry Jenkins 
• Two short films by Burnett: Several Friends (1969) and The Horse (1973), with a new introduction to the latter by Burnett
• Excerpt from the 2010 UCLA LA Rebellion Oral History Project, featuring an interview with Burnett by film scholar Jacqueline Stewart
• A Walk with Charles Burnett (2019), a documentary by Robert Townsend
• Cast reunion from 2007
• Trailer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Danielle Amir Jackson

 

Available May 27, 2025