In July, Criterion will introduce viewers to the latest film by the great director Aki Kaurismäki. Le Havre comes to Blu-ray and DVD direct from its acclaimed U.S. theatrical run courtesy of Janus Films, which picked it up after it took the 2011 Cannes Film Festival by storm, earning a standing ovation and an international critics’ prize. The warm-hearted, humorous, and humane Le Havre is not the only deadpan delight this month: Jim Jarmusch’s classic prison-break comedy Down by Law, and Whit Stillman’s erudite and quirkily hilarious Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco all come to Blu-ray for the first time too.
The names Jean Renoir (The Rules of the Game), Marcel Carné (Children of Paradise), and Henri-Georges Clouzot (Le corbeau) surely ring bells for lovers of classic French cinema. One of their contemporaries is not as well known today: Jean Grémillon, the subject of July’s Eclipse set. In their thirty-fourth series, Jean Grémillon During the Occupation, Criterion offers three of this brilliant director’s most acclaimed films, all made during a tumultuous period in history, after the German invasion of France. These are subtly political films but also supreme entertainments, about love and other obsessions.
DOWN BY LAW – Blu-ray Edition
Director Jim Jarmusch followed up his brilliant breakout Stranger Than Paradise with another, equally beloved portrait of loners and misfits in America. When fate lands three hapless men—an unemployed disc jockey (Short Cuts’ Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (Fishing with John’s John Lurie), and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Life Is Beautiful’s Roberto Benigni)—in a Louisiana prison, a singular adventure begins. Described by Jarmusch as a “neo-Beat noir comedy,†Down by Law is part nightmare and part fairy tale, featuring sterling performances and crisp black-and-white photography by esteemed cinematographer Robby Müller (Paris, Texas).
1986 • 107 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.78:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Thoughts and reflections on the making of the film from director Jim Jarmusch in 2002
• Interview with director of photography Robby Müller from 2002
• Footage from the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, including a press conference featuring Jarmusch and actors John Lurie, Roberto Benigni, and Nicoletta Braschi, and an interview with Lurie, with commentary
• Sixteen outtakes
• Music video for Tom Waits’s cover of Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right with Me,†directed by Jarmusch
• Q&A with Jarmusch in which he responds to fans’ questions
• Recordings of phone conversations between Jarmusch and Waits, Benigni, and Lurie
• Production Polaroids and location stills
• Isolated music track
• Optional French dub track, featuring Benigni
• Trailer
• PLUS: An essay by critic Luc Sante
TITLE: Down by Law (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC1986BD
UPC: 7-15515-06861-1
ISBN: 978-1-60465-393-9
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 6/19/12
STREET: 7/17/12
THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO -Â Blu-ray Edition
The Last Days of Disco is a cleverly comic return to an early 1980s Manhattan party scene from director Whit Stillman (Metropolitan). At the center of the film’s roundelay of revelers are the icy Charlotte (Underworld’s Kate Beckinsale) and the demure Alice (Boys Don’t Cry’s Chloë Sevigny), by day toiling as publishing house assistants and by night looking for romance and entertainment at a Studio 54–like club. The Last Days of Disco is an affectionate yet unsentimental look at the end of an era, brimming with Stillman’s trademark dry humor.
1998 • 113 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • 1.78:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Whit Stillman, with 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Stillman and actors Chloë Sevigny and Chris Eigeman
• Four deleted scenes with commentary by Stillman, Eigeman, and Sevigny
• Audio recording of Stillman reading a chapter from his book The Last Days of Disco, with Cocktails at Petrossian Afterwards
• Behind-the-scenes featurette
• Stills gallery with captions by Stillman
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: An essay by novelist David Schickler
TITLE: The Last Days of Disco (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2165BD
UPC: 7-15515-09681-2
ISBN: 978-1-60465-608-4
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 6/26/12
STREET: 7/24/12
METROPOLITIAN – Blu-ray Edition
One of the great American independent films of the 1990s, the surprise hit Metropolitan by writer-director Whit Stillman (Damsels in Distress) is a sparkling comedic chronicle of a middle-class young man’s romantic misadventures in New York City’s debutante society. Stillman’s deft, literate dialogue and hilariously highbrow observations earned this first film an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay. Alongside the wit and sophistication, though, lies a tender tale of adolescent anxiety.
1990 • 99 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Whit Stillman and cinematographer John Thomas, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Audio commentary by Stillman, editor Christopher Tellefsen, and actors Chris Eigeman and Taylor Nichols
• Rare outtakes and alternate casting, with commentary by Stillman
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Luc Sante
TITLE: Metropolitan (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2164BD
UPC: 7-15515-09671-3
ISBN: 978-1-60465-607-7
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 6/26/12
STREET: 7/24/12
LE HAVRE – Blu-ray & DVD
In this warmhearted comic yarn from Aki Kaurismäki (The Match Factory Girl), fate throws the young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (La vie de bohème’s André Wilms), a kindly bohemian who shines shoes for a living, in the French harbor city Le Havre. With inborn optimism and the support of most of his tight-knit community, Marcel stands up to the officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic French cinema of the past, especially the poetic realist works of Jean Duvivier and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight and one of the Finnish director’s finest films.
2011 • 93 minutes • Color • 5.1 surround • In French with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Aki Kaurismäki, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New interview with actor André Wilms
• Cannes Film Festival press conference from 2011, featuring cast and crew
• French television interview with Kaurismäki, Wilms, and actors Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Kati Outinen
• Concert footage of Little Bob, the rock group featured in the film
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Sicinski
TITLE: Le Havre (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2162BD
UPC: 7-15515-09651-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-605-3
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 7/03/12
STREET: 7/31/12
TITLE: Le Havre (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2163D
UPC: 7-15515-09661-4
ISBN: 978-1-60465-606-0
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 7/03/12
STREET: 7/31/12
Eclipse Series 34: Jean Grémillon During the Occupation
Though little known outside of France, Jean Grémillon is a consummate filmmaker from his country’s golden age. A classically trained violinist who discovered cinema as a young man when his orchestra was hired to accompany silent movies, he went on to make almost fifty films—which ranged from documentaries to avant-garde works to melodramas with major stars—in a career that started in the mid-1920s and didn’t end until the late 1950s. Three of his richest films came during a dire period in French history: Remorques, starring Jean Gabin, was begun in 1939 but finished and released after Germany invaded France, and Lumière d’été and Le ciel est à vous were produced during the occupation. These are character-driven dramas that reveal either a society on the precipice of doom or people breaking free of societal limitations; humane, entertaining, and technically brilliant, they show Grémillon to be
one of cinema’s true hidden masters.
THREE-DVD BOX SET INCLUDES:
Remorques
Jacques Prévert cowrote this atmospheric tale of the romantic trials of a tugboat captain, played by the iconic French star Jean Gabin. For André and the other members of the Cyclone’s crew, existence is harshly divided between the danger of the stormy seas and the safety of life at home with their patient women. When André meets temptation in the form of the alluring Catherine (Michèle Morgan) during a risky rescue, he comes perilously close to betraying his wife (Madeleine Renaud) of ten years. The haunting Remorques is distinguished by beautiful tracking shots and cunning special-effects work.
1941 • 84 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Lumière d’été
A shimmering glass hotel at the top of a remote Provençal mountain provides the setting for a tragicomic tapestry about lives on the edge. This Jacques Prévert and Pierre Laroche–scripted tale of an obsessive love pentangle—whose principals range from artist to hotel manager to dam worker—was banned from theaters for the duration of the occupation for its dark portrayal of the hedonistic excesses of the ruling class. Today, it is often singled out as Grémillon’s greatest achievement.
1943 • 110 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
Le ciel est à vous
In this soaring romantic drama, the wife (Madeleine Renaud) of a former fighter pilot (Charles Vanel) who is preoccupied with his glory days in the sky during World War I, falls in love with the idea of flying herself. This soon becomes an obsession, and she undertakes a lofty feat: the longest solo flight ever made by a woman. A warm look at a working-class family as well as a triumphant tale of determination, Le ciel est à vous was one of Grémillon’s most successful films, and can be interpreted as a necessarily stealthy portrait of nonconformity.
1944 • 107 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
TITLE: Eclipse Series 34: Jean Grémillon During the Occupation
CAT. NO: ECL155
UPC: 7-15515-09721-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-611-4
SRP: $44.95
PREBOOK: 6/26/12
STREET: 7/24/12
Attention Canada: Eclipse Series 34: Jean Grémillon During the Occupation and METROPOLITAN BD are available in English-Speaking Canada only. All other July titles are available in all Canada.