The Criterion Collection – September 2016 – New Releases!
We are excited to announce Criterion’s incredible September line-up. First up, one of the company’s most ambitious and long-awaited releases, a complete and newly-restored edition of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s epic 10-part masterpiece, Dekalog, a kaleidoscopic exploration of morality and humanity, available on Blu-Ray and DVD. The films will also have a theatrical release. Next we visit Valley of the Dolls, Mark Robson’s steamy, eye-popping adaptation of the decade-defining pop culture novel, as well as its deliriously entertaining, ante-upping semi-sequel, Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert’s Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, an outrageous and raucous cult classic, each in their own glorious new DVD and Blu-ray editions. Just as visually stunning is the restoration of one of the great debuts of American cinema, Joel & Ethan Coen’s Blood Simple, a mad, murderous, and wildly influential Neonoir fresh off its theatrical re-release. The long awaited release of Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People, made under the guidance of legendary producer Val Lewton, is a landmark of the horror genre and one of the cinema’s best creature features. Kenji Mizoguchi’s pre-war masterpiece of love and theater, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, joins the Collection in a US debut on Blu-Ray and DVD. All this plus Carol Reed’s WWII Spy Thriller, Night Train to Munich, from the writers of Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, now available on Blu-Ray for the first time, plus the twenty-five-film set of the adventures of Zatoichi, The Blind Swordsman, now available in a Blu-Ray-only edition.
Night Train to Munich, from writers Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat (Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes) and director Carol Reed (The Fallen Idol, The Third Man), is a twisting, turning, cloak-and-dagger delight. Paced like an out-of-control locomotive, this gripping, occasionally comic confection takes viewers on a World War II-era journey from Prague to England to the Swiss Alps, as Nazis pursue a Czech scientist and his daughter (Margaret Lockwood, of The Lady Vanishes), who are being aided by a debonair British undercover agent, played by Rex Harrison (Major Barbara, My Fair Lady). This captivating adventure-which also features Casablanca’s Paul Henreid-mixes comedy, romance, and thrills with enough skill and cleverness to give the Master of Suspense himself pause.*
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1940 * 95 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.33:1 aspect ratio
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* PLUS: An essay by film critic Philip Kemp
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This heartrending masterpiece by Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu) about the give-and-take between life and art marked the director’s first use of the hypnotic long takes and eloquent camera movements that would come to define his films. The adopted son of legendary kabuki actor Kikunosuke (Shotaro Hanayagi), who is striving to achieve stardom by mastering female roles, turns to his infant brother’s wet nurse (Kakuko Mori) for support and affection-and she soon gives up everything for her beloved’s creative glory. Featuring fascinating glimpses behind the scenes of kabuki theater in the late nineteenth century, The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum is a critique of the oppression of women and the sacrifices required of them, and the pinnacle of Mizoguchi’s early career.*
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1939 * 143 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * In Japanese with English subtitles * 1.37:1 aspect ratio
* PLUS: An essay by film scholar Dudley Andrew
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The colossally popular Zatoichi films make up the longest-running action series in Japanese history and created one of the screen’s great heroes: an itinerant blind masseur who also happens to be a lightning-fast swordsman. As this iconic figure, the charismatic and earthy Shintaro Katsu became an instant superstar, lending a larger-than-life presence to the thrilling adventures of a man who lives staunchly by a code of honor and delivers justice in every town and village he enters. The films that feature him are variously pulse-pounding, hilarious, stirring, and completely off-the-wall. This deluxe set features the string of twenty-five Zatoichi films made between 1962 and 1973.*
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* PLUS: A book featuring an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien; synopses of the films by critic, novelist, and musician Chris D.; “The Tale of Zatoichi,” the original short story by Kan Shimozawa; and twenty-five illustrations inspired by the films, by twenty-five different artists
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The career-long darkly comic road trip through misfit America of Joel and Ethan Coen (Inside Llewyn Davis) began with this razor-sharp, hard-boiled neonoir set somewhere in Texas, where a sleazy bar owner sets off a torrent of violence with one murderous thought. Actor M. Emmet Walsh (Blade Runner) looms over the proceedings as the slippery private eye with a yellow suit, a cowboy hat and no moral compass, and Frances McDormand (Fargo) gives a cunning debut performance that set her on the road to stardom. The tight scripting and inventive camera work that have marked the Coens’ work for decades is all here, as cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (Raising Arizona) trades black-and-white chiaroscuro for neon signs and jukebox colors that combine with a haunting score by Carter Burwell (Barton Fink) to lurid and thrilling effect. Blending elements from pulp fiction and low-budget horror flicks, Blood Simple reinvented the film noir for a new generation, and marked the arrival of a filmmaking ensemble that would help to transform the American independent cinema scene in the 1980s.
1984 * 96 minutes * Color * 5.1 surround * 1.85:1 aspect ratio
* PLUS: An essay by novelist and critic Nathaniel Rich
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The first of the horror films producer Val Lewton (The Body Snatcher, I Walked with a Zombie) made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination. Simone Simon (La bête humaine) stars as a Serbian émigré in Manhattan who believes that, because of an ancient curse, any physical intimacy with the man she loves (Kent Smith) will turn her into a feline predator. Lewton, a consummate producer-auteur who oversaw every aspect of his projects, found an ideal director in Jacques Tourneur (Out of the Past), a chiaroscuro stylist adept at keeping viewers off-kilter with startling compositions and psychological innuendo. Together, they eschewed the canned effects of earlier monster movies in favor of shocking with subtle shadows and creative audio cues. One of the studio’s most successful movies of the 1940s, Cat People raised the creature feature to new heights of sophistication and mystery.*
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1942 * 73 minutes * Black & White * Monaural * 1.37:1 aspect ratio
* PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien
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In 1970, 20th Century-Fox, impressed by the visual zing “King of the Nudies” Russ Meyer (Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!) brought to bargain-basement exploitation fare, handed the director a studio budget and the title to one of its biggest hits, Valley of the Dolls. With a satirical screenplay by Roger Ebert, Beyond the Valley of the Dollsfollows three young female rockers going Hollywood in hell-bent sixties style under the spell of a flamboyant producer-whose decadent bashes showcase Meyer’s trademark libidinal exuberance. Transgressive and outrageous, this big-studio version of a debaucherous midnight movie is an addictively entertaining romp from one of the movies’ great outsider artists.
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1970 * 109 minutes * Color * Monaural * 2.35:1 aspect ratio
* PLUS: An essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
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This masterwork by Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colors) is one of the twentieth century’s greatest achievements in visual storytelling. Originally made for Polish television, Dekalog focuses on the residents of a housing complex in post-Communist Poland, whose lives become subtly intertwined as they face emotional dilemmas that are at once deeply personal and universally human. Using the Ten Commandments for thematic inspiration and an overarching structure, Dekalog’s ten hour-long films deftly grapple with complex moral and existential questions concerning life, death, love, hate, truth, and the passage of time. Shot by nine different cinematographers, with stirring music by Zbigniew Preisner (The Double Life of Véronique) and compelling performances from established and unknown actors alike, Dekalog arrestingly explores the unknowable forces that shape our lives. Also presented are the longer theatrical versions of Dekalog’s fifth and sixth films: A Short Film About Killing and A Short Film About Love.*
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1988 * 561 minutes * color * Monaural * In Polish with English subtitles * 1.33:1/1.70:1 aspect ratio
* PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay and film analyses by film scholar Paul Coates and excerpted reprints from Kieślowski on Kieślowski
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Cutthroat careerism, wild sex, and fierce female protagonists are all on offer in this adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s sensational and wildly popular novel. Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker), Barbara Parkins (Peyton Place), and Sharon Tate star as three friends attempting to navigate the glamorous, pressurized world of big-time show business-the “valley” is not a place but a narcotized state of mind, and the “dolls” are the pills that rouse them in the morning and knock them out at night. Blending old-fashioned gloss with Madison Avenue grooviness, this slick look by director Mark Robson (Peyton Place) at the early days of sexual liberation and an entertainment industry coming apart was a giant box-office hit and has become an unforgettably campy time capsule of the 1960s.
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SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
* PLUS: An essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
UPC 7-15515-18641-4