CRITERION COLLECTION OCTOBER 2008
Legendary neonoir filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville has directed some of Criterion’s most popular titles, and this month two of his greatest crime dramas—Le doulos, with a striking young Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Le deuxième souffle, with the magnetic Lino Ventura— are introduced to DVD for the first time. And another notable matched pair: A Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, John Cassavetes’ searing 1970s masterworks, will be available for the first time as individual releases (and still available as being part of Criterion’s legendary box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.) Add to all that Costa-Gavras’s Oscar-winning political thriller Missing, with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, and a specially priced release of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, and Criterion’s got a month of classic, tough, uncompromising cinema.
LE DOULOS
The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le doulos have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisty, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for an informant) is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.
Info
• Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le flambeur, Army of Shadows, Le cercle rouge)
• Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, A Woman Is a Woman, Classe tous risques)
• Starring Serge Reggiani (La ronde, The Leopard, Army of Shadows)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
• Video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film
• Archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
Title: Le doulos
CAT: CC1770D
UPC: 7-15515-03282-7
ISBN: 978-1-60465-076-1
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/2/08
Street date: 10/7/08
LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE
With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (the inimitable Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him. The implosive Le deuxième souffle captures the pathos, loneliness, and excitement of a life in the shadows with methodical suspense and harrowing authenticity, and contains one of the most thrilling heist sequences Melville ever shot.
Info
• Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le flambeur, Army of Shadows, Le cercle rouge)
• Starring Lino Ventura (Elevator to the Gallows, Classe tous risques, Army of Shadows)
• Starring Paul Meurisse (Diabolique, Picnic on the Grass, Army of Shadows)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre
Melville: An American in Paris, and film critic Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute
• New video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier, who served as publicity
agent on the film
• Archival footage featuring interviews with Melville and Lino Ventura
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Adrian Danks
Title: Le deuxième souffle
CAT: CC1771D
UPC: 7-15515-03292-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-077-8
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/2/08
Street date: 10/7/08
MISSING
Missing is political filmmaker extraordinaire Costa-Gavras’s compelling, controversial dramatization of the search for American journalist Charles Horman, who mysteriously disappeared during the 1973 coup in Chile. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek give magnetic, emotionally commanding performances as Horman’s father and wife, who are led by U.S. embassy and consulate officials through a series of bureaucratic dead-ends before eventually uncovering the terrifying facts about Charles’s fate and disillusioning truths about their government. Written and directed with clarity and conscience, the Academy Award–winning Missing is a testament to Costa-Gavras’s daring
Info
• Directed by Costa-Gavras (Z, State of Siege, Music Box)
• Starring Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Glengarry Glen Ross)
• Starring Sissy Spacek (Badlands, Carrie, Coal Miner’s Daughter, In the Bedroom)
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Video interviews with Costa-Gavras, Joyce Horman (wife of Charles Horman), producers Edward and Mildred Lewis and Sean Daniel, and Thomas Hauser, author of Missing, the film’s source
• Interviews from the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with Costa-Gavras, Jack Lemmon, Ed Horman (father of Charles), and Joyce Horman
• New video essay with Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File, examining declassified documents concerning the 1973 military coup in Chile and the case of Charles Horman
• Video highlights from the 2002 Charles Horman Truth Project event honoring the twentieth anniversary of Missing, with actors Sissy Spacek, John Shea, and Melanie Mayron
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Michael Wood, an interview with Costa-Gavras, the U.S. State Department’s official response to Missing, and an open letter from Horman family friend Terry Simon
Title: Missing
CAT: CC1769D
UPC: 7-15515-03182-0
ISBN: 978-1-60465-063-1
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/16/08
Street date: 10/21/08
SHORT CUTS
The visions of two great American artists merge in Short Cuts, maverick director Robert Altman’s kaleidoscopic adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the lives of twenty-two characters struggling to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in one of Altman’s most compassionate creations. Now available from Criterion at a specially reduced price.
Info
• Directed by Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, Nashville, Three Women, Tanner ’88)
• Starring Lily Tomlin (Nashville, Nine to Five, I Heart Huckabees)
• Starring Julianne Moore (The Hours, Far from Heaven, Children of Men)
• Starring Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin, Wonder Boys, Iron Man)
• Starring Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, Missing, Glengarry Glen Ross)
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by editor Geraldine Peroni and approved by director Robert Altman
• Video conversation between Robert Altman and Tim Robbins
• Luck, Trust and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a feature-length documentary on the making of Short Cuts
• To Write and Keep Kind, a PBS documentary on the life of Raymond Carver
page 4 of 6
• Segment from BBC Television’s Moving Pictures tracing the development of the screenplay
• One-hour 1983 audio interview with Carver, conducted for the American Audio Prose Library
• Original demo recordings of the Doc Pomus–Mac Rebennack songs, performed by Dr. John
• Deleted scenes
• A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts
• Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack mix, plus isolated music track
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Wilmington
Title: Short Cuts (reduced price)
CAT: CC1776D
UPC: 7-15515-03362-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-094-5
SRP: $29.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
John Cassavetes’ devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple deeply in love yet unable to express that love in terms the other can understand, the film is an uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil. The Criterion Collection is proud to present one of the benchmark films of American independent cinema—a heroic document from a true maverick director. Available for the first time as a stand-alone release, from the box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.
Info
• Directed by John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie)
• Starring Gena Rowlands (Gloria, Night on Earth, Paris je t’aime)
• Starring Peter Falk (Columbo, Wings of Desire, The In-Laws)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary by longtime John Cassavetes collaborators Mike Ferris (camera operator) and Bo Harwood (sound recordist/composer)
• Video conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
• Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted in 1975
• Theatrical trailer
• Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Kent Jones and an interview with Cassavetes
Title: A Woman Under the Influence
CAT: WOM070
UPC: 0-37429-19892-6
ISBN: 0-78002-920-8
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE
John Cassavetes engages film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen’s club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to pretenses of composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime in a last-ditch effort to save his beloved club and his way of life. Suspenseful, mesmerizing, and idiosyncratic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a thought-provoking examination of desperation and masculine identity. Available for the first time as a stand-alone release, from the box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.
Info
• Directed by John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence)
• Starring Ben Gazzara (Husbands, Happiness, Dogville)
• Starring Seymour Cassel (Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, Rushmore)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer of John Cassavetes’ original 1976, 135-minute edit of the film
• Restored high-definition digital transfer of Cassavetes’ 108-minute edit from the 1978 theatrical rerelease
• Video interviews with star Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban
• Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted after the film’s release
• Stills gallery featuring rare, behind-the-scenes production photos
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Phillip Lopate and interviews with Cassavetes
Title: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
CAT: KIL050
UPC: 0-37429-19912-1
ISBN: 0-78002-922-4
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
Eclipse from the Criterion Collection – October 2008 release
ECLIPSE SERIES 13: KENJI MIZOGUCHI’S FALLEN WOMEN
Over the course of a three-decade, more than eighty film career, master cineaste Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) would return again and again to one abiding theme: the plight of women in male-dominated Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of socially conscious melodrama—two prewar (Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion), two postwar (Women of the Night, Street of Shame)—Mizoguchi introduces an array of compelling female protagonists, crushed or resilient, who are economically and spiritually deprived by their nation’s customs and traditions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.
FOUR-DISC BOX SET INCLUDES:
Osaka Elegy (1936)
A critical and popular triumph, Osaka Elegy established Mizoguchi as one of Japan’s major filmmakers. Mizoguchi’s often-used leading actress Isuzu Yamada stars as Ayoko, a switchboard operator trapped in a compromising, ruinous relationship with her boss, who promises her recompense for her indebted, wastrel father. With its fluid cinematography and deft storytelling, Osaka Elegy ushered in a new era of sound melodrama for Mizoguchi.
Page 1 of 2
Sisters of the Gion (1936)
Sisters of the Gion, cited by preeminent Japanese film scholar Donald Richie as “the best Japanese prewar sound film,” follows the parallel paths of the independent, unsentimental Omocha (Isuzu Yamada) and her sister, the more tradition-minded Umekichi (Yoko Umemura), both geishas in the working-class district of Gion. Mizoguchi’s film is a brilliantly shot, uncompromising look at the mechanisms that keep many women at the bottom rung of the social ladder.
Women of the Night (1948)
After World War II, Mizoguchi felt compelled to make a film inspired by the current vogue of Italian neorealism, and he turned up with one of the most emotionally and visually raw films of his career. Filmed on location in Osaka, Women of the Night concerns two sisters, a widow and the wife of a narcotics smuggler, whose precipitous descent into prostitution and moral chaos evokes the postwar degradation surrounding them.
Street of Shame (1955)
For his final film, Mizoguchi brought a lifetime of experience to bear on the poignant, heartbreaking tale of a brothel full of women whose dreams and aspirations are constantly shattered by the socioeconomic realities surrounding them. Set in Tokyo’s Red Light District (the literal translation of the Japanese title), Street of Shame was so cutting and its popularity so great that when antiprostitution laws were passed in Japan just one year later, the film was deemed a catalyst.
Title: Eclipse series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women
CAT: ECL056
UPC: 7-15515-03352-7
ISBN: 978-1-60465-093-8
SRP: $59.95
Prebook: 9/16/08
Street date: 10/21/08
10 Years of Rialto Pictures – October 2008 release
Since 1997, Rialto Pictures has been helping to keep classic cinema alive and invigorated by bringing the world’s greatest films to theaters across the United States, in phenomenal restored 35 mm prints. This special gift box set, in celebration of Rialto’s tenth anniversary, features ten films that display the breadth of its collection, including works by Rialto favorites, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Pierre Melville.
TEN-DISC BOX SET INCLUDES:
Army of Shadows (1969)
Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, and Paul Meurisse go underground to face the German occupation in gangster-film legend Jean-Pierre Melville’s World War II French Resistance masterpiece. Army of Shadows was never released in the U.S. until 2006, when it became the most acclaimed film of the year, winning awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics.
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
A little donkey is suckled by its mother, then baptized Balthazar. It moves from owner to owner, some kind, some cruel, some drunkenly careless. In a body of work known for its purity and transcendence, Balthazar is perhaps the most wrenching of Robert Bresson's visions, voted nineteenth in the 2002 BFI Sight & Sound critics and filmmakers poll of all-time great films, and ninth in the Village Voice's poll of the greatest films of the twentieth century.
Band of Outsiders (1964)
Young layabouts Franz and Arthur meet the ravishing Odile (Anna Karina), with whom they plan on stealing a stash of cash hidden in her aunt’s mansion. In the hands of Jean-Luc Godard, a crime caper becomes pure pulp poetry. Pauline Kael called this French New Wave classic as “a reverie of a gangster movie . . . perhaps Godard’s most delicately charming film.”
Billy Liar (1963)
John Schlesinger’s adaptation of the smash-hit West End play stars Tom Courtenay as a feckless aspiring comedy writer whose dream life helps him momentarily escape from an endlessly nagging family and a dead-end job. Also starring Julie Christie in her enchanting film debut, the honestly hilarious Billy Liar is one the finest films of the British New Wave, which the New York Times called “one of the great movies of the 1960s.”
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
A group of stylish, elegant friends—portrayed by Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Stephane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel—find their dinner plans constantly going awry; whether they find they’ve got the wrong day or the cops are intruding while performing a sting operation, they’re never able to sit down to eat their meals. Luis Buñuel’s surreal and cutting masterwork of social satire won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
Mafioso (1962)
Alberto Sordi (The White Sheik, I Vitelloni) is a Fiat factory foreman in Northern Italy who returns to his hometown in Sicily with his wife and children, only to find himself unwittingly tapped as a hit man by the local Don. Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso is one of the darkest, most authentic––and funniest—movies about the mob, which the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman called “a blueprint for The Godfather in sardonic, compressed, anecdotal form.”
Murderous Maids (2000)
More than seventy years on, the case of the Papin sisters, the servants who murdered and mutilated their mistress and her daughter in pre-World War II Le Mans, remains an enigma. Jean-Pierre Denis’ film is the definitive screen version: at once a stunning dramatization of the events leading up to the tragedy, and a compelling interrogation of the class issues that are believed to have contributed to the incident.
Rififi (1955)
Four ex-cons plot to crack a Parisian jewelry store’s safe—it’s one last heist, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Blacklisted, Bronx-raised Hollywood exile Jules Dassin, then living in France, turned a Spillane-esque potboiler by Auguste le Breton into an existential heist film, which earned him the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and set the standard for screen robberies for decades to come.
The Third Man (1949)
In rubble-strewn postwar Vienna, Joseph Cotten’s pulp Western writer Holly Martins arrives to meet up with his old friend Harry Lime only to find that he’s dead — or is he? Winner of the Academy Award for best cinematography, Carol Reed’s The Third Man is a triumph of atmosphere, with Robert Krasker’s tilted camera angles and deep shadows, and Anton Karas’s unforgettable zither theme.
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
Jean Gabin is aging gangster Max le Menteur, whose plans to retire following a huge heist are curtailed when his partner Riton tells his two-timing dame, played by Jeanne Moreau, about the cash. Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi (Hands Off the Loot) took the gangster film to new heights of realism by portraying the criminal class as a larcenous sub-bourgeoisie and introducing authentic underworld slang to screen dialogue. And, as per the San Francisco Chronicle, “Gabin, voted ‘actor of the century’ in an end-of-the-millennium French poll, is perfection here.”
Title: 10 Years of Rialto Pictures
CAT: RAP001
UPC: 7-15515-03212-4
ISBN: 978-1-60465-069-3
SRP: $149.95
Prebook: 9/23/08
Street date: 10/28/08
ATTN CANADA: LE DOULOS, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, SHORT CUTS, AND 10 YEARS OF RIALTO PICTURES ARE AVAILABLE IN THE US ONLY. MISSING IS AVAILABLE IN ALL CANADA. LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE AND ECLPISE SERIES 13: KENJI MIZOGUCHI'S FALLEN WOMEN ARE AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CANADA ONLY.
Legendary neonoir filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville has directed some of Criterion’s most popular titles, and this month two of his greatest crime dramas—Le doulos, with a striking young Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Le deuxième souffle, with the magnetic Lino Ventura— are introduced to DVD for the first time. And another notable matched pair: A Woman Under the Influence and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, John Cassavetes’ searing 1970s masterworks, will be available for the first time as individual releases (and still available as being part of Criterion’s legendary box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.) Add to all that Costa-Gavras’s Oscar-winning political thriller Missing, with Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek, and a specially priced release of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, and Criterion’s got a month of classic, tough, uncompromising cinema.
LE DOULOS
The backstabbing criminals in the shadowy underworld of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le doulos have only one guiding principle: “Lie or die.” A stone-faced Jean-Paul Belmondo stars as enigmatic gangster Silien, who may or may not be responsible for squealing on Faugel (Serge Reggiani), just released from the slammer and already involved in what should have been a simple heist. By the end of this brutal, twisty, and multilayered policier, who will be left to trust? Shot and edited with Melville’s trademark cool and featuring masterfully stylized dialogue and performances, Le doulos (slang for an informant) is one of the filmmaker’s most gripping crime dramas.
Info
• Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le flambeur, Army of Shadows, Le cercle rouge)
• Starring Jean-Paul Belmondo (Breathless, A Woman Is a Woman, Classe tous risques)
• Starring Serge Reggiani (La ronde, The Leopard, Army of Shadows)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre Melville: An American in Paris
• Video interviews with directors Volker Schlöndorff and Bertrand Tavernier, who served as assistant director and publicity agent, respectively, on the film
• Archival interviews with Melville and actors Jean-Paul Belmondo and Serge Reggiani
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Glenn Kenny
Title: Le doulos
CAT: CC1770D
UPC: 7-15515-03282-7
ISBN: 978-1-60465-076-1
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/2/08
Street date: 10/7/08
LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE
With his customary restraint and ruthless attention to detail, director Jean-Pierre Melville follows the parallel tracks of French underworld criminal Gu (the inimitable Lino Ventura), escaped from prison and roped into one last robbery, and the suave inspector, Blot (Paul Meurisse), relentlessly seeking him. The implosive Le deuxième souffle captures the pathos, loneliness, and excitement of a life in the shadows with methodical suspense and harrowing authenticity, and contains one of the most thrilling heist sequences Melville ever shot.
Info
• Directed by Jean-Pierre Melville (Bob le flambeur, Army of Shadows, Le cercle rouge)
• Starring Lino Ventura (Elevator to the Gallows, Classe tous risques, Army of Shadows)
• Starring Paul Meurisse (Diabolique, Picnic on the Grass, Army of Shadows)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, author of Jean-Pierre
Melville: An American in Paris, and film critic Geoff Andrew of the British Film Institute
• New video interview with director Bertrand Tavernier, who served as publicity
agent on the film
• Archival footage featuring interviews with Melville and Lino Ventura
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film critic Adrian Danks
Title: Le deuxième souffle
CAT: CC1771D
UPC: 7-15515-03292-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-077-8
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/2/08
Street date: 10/7/08
MISSING
Missing is political filmmaker extraordinaire Costa-Gavras’s compelling, controversial dramatization of the search for American journalist Charles Horman, who mysteriously disappeared during the 1973 coup in Chile. Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek give magnetic, emotionally commanding performances as Horman’s father and wife, who are led by U.S. embassy and consulate officials through a series of bureaucratic dead-ends before eventually uncovering the terrifying facts about Charles’s fate and disillusioning truths about their government. Written and directed with clarity and conscience, the Academy Award–winning Missing is a testament to Costa-Gavras’s daring
Info
• Directed by Costa-Gavras (Z, State of Siege, Music Box)
• Starring Jack Lemmon (Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Glengarry Glen Ross)
• Starring Sissy Spacek (Badlands, Carrie, Coal Miner’s Daughter, In the Bedroom)
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Video interviews with Costa-Gavras, Joyce Horman (wife of Charles Horman), producers Edward and Mildred Lewis and Sean Daniel, and Thomas Hauser, author of Missing, the film’s source
• Interviews from the 1982 Cannes Film Festival with Costa-Gavras, Jack Lemmon, Ed Horman (father of Charles), and Joyce Horman
• New video essay with Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File, examining declassified documents concerning the 1973 military coup in Chile and the case of Charles Horman
• Video highlights from the 2002 Charles Horman Truth Project event honoring the twentieth anniversary of Missing, with actors Sissy Spacek, John Shea, and Melanie Mayron
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by critic Michael Wood, an interview with Costa-Gavras, the U.S. State Department’s official response to Missing, and an open letter from Horman family friend Terry Simon
Title: Missing
CAT: CC1769D
UPC: 7-15515-03182-0
ISBN: 978-1-60465-063-1
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/16/08
Street date: 10/21/08
SHORT CUTS
The visions of two great American artists merge in Short Cuts, maverick director Robert Altman’s kaleidoscopic adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short stories. Epic in scale yet meticulously observed, the film interweaves the lives of twenty-two characters struggling to find solace and meaning in contemporary Los Angeles. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Tim Robbins, Julianne Moore, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Lemmon, and Jennifer Jason Leigh—all giving fearless performances in one of Altman’s most compassionate creations. Now available from Criterion at a specially reduced price.
Info
• Directed by Robert Altman (M*A*S*H, Nashville, Three Women, Tanner ’88)
• Starring Lily Tomlin (Nashville, Nine to Five, I Heart Huckabees)
• Starring Julianne Moore (The Hours, Far from Heaven, Children of Men)
• Starring Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin, Wonder Boys, Iron Man)
• Starring Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, Missing, Glengarry Glen Ross)
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by editor Geraldine Peroni and approved by director Robert Altman
• Video conversation between Robert Altman and Tim Robbins
• Luck, Trust and Ketchup: Robert Altman in Carver Country, a feature-length documentary on the making of Short Cuts
• To Write and Keep Kind, a PBS documentary on the life of Raymond Carver
page 4 of 6
• Segment from BBC Television’s Moving Pictures tracing the development of the screenplay
• One-hour 1983 audio interview with Carver, conducted for the American Audio Prose Library
• Original demo recordings of the Doc Pomus–Mac Rebennack songs, performed by Dr. John
• Deleted scenes
• A look inside the marketing of Short Cuts
• Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack mix, plus isolated music track
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Wilmington
Title: Short Cuts (reduced price)
CAT: CC1776D
UPC: 7-15515-03362-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-094-5
SRP: $29.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE
John Cassavetes’ devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple deeply in love yet unable to express that love in terms the other can understand, the film is an uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil. The Criterion Collection is proud to present one of the benchmark films of American independent cinema—a heroic document from a true maverick director. Available for the first time as a stand-alone release, from the box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.
Info
• Directed by John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie)
• Starring Gena Rowlands (Gloria, Night on Earth, Paris je t’aime)
• Starring Peter Falk (Columbo, Wings of Desire, The In-Laws)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary by longtime John Cassavetes collaborators Mike Ferris (camera operator) and Bo Harwood (sound recordist/composer)
• Video conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
• Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted in 1975
• Theatrical trailer
• Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Kent Jones and an interview with Cassavetes
Title: A Woman Under the Influence
CAT: WOM070
UPC: 0-37429-19892-6
ISBN: 0-78002-920-8
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE
John Cassavetes engages film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen’s club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to pretenses of composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime in a last-ditch effort to save his beloved club and his way of life. Suspenseful, mesmerizing, and idiosyncratic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a thought-provoking examination of desperation and masculine identity. Available for the first time as a stand-alone release, from the box set John Cassavetes: Five Films.
Info
• Directed by John Cassavetes (Shadows, Faces, A Woman Under the Influence)
• Starring Ben Gazzara (Husbands, Happiness, Dogville)
• Starring Seymour Cassel (Faces, Minnie and Moskowitz, Rushmore)
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
• Restored high-definition digital transfer of John Cassavetes’ original 1976, 135-minute edit of the film
• Restored high-definition digital transfer of Cassavetes’ 108-minute edit from the 1978 theatrical rerelease
• Video interviews with star Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban
• Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted after the film’s release
• Stills gallery featuring rare, behind-the-scenes production photos
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Phillip Lopate and interviews with Cassavetes
Title: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
CAT: KIL050
UPC: 0-37429-19912-1
ISBN: 0-78002-922-4
SRP: $39.95
Prebook: 9/9/08
Street date: 10/14/08
Eclipse from the Criterion Collection – October 2008 release
ECLIPSE SERIES 13: KENJI MIZOGUCHI’S FALLEN WOMEN
Over the course of a three-decade, more than eighty film career, master cineaste Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff) would return again and again to one abiding theme: the plight of women in male-dominated Japanese society. In these four lacerating works of socially conscious melodrama—two prewar (Osaka Elegy, Sisters of the Gion), two postwar (Women of the Night, Street of Shame)—Mizoguchi introduces an array of compelling female protagonists, crushed or resilient, who are economically and spiritually deprived by their nation’s customs and traditions. With Mizoguchi’s visual daring and eloquence, these films are as cinematically thrilling as they are politically rousing.
FOUR-DISC BOX SET INCLUDES:
Osaka Elegy (1936)
A critical and popular triumph, Osaka Elegy established Mizoguchi as one of Japan’s major filmmakers. Mizoguchi’s often-used leading actress Isuzu Yamada stars as Ayoko, a switchboard operator trapped in a compromising, ruinous relationship with her boss, who promises her recompense for her indebted, wastrel father. With its fluid cinematography and deft storytelling, Osaka Elegy ushered in a new era of sound melodrama for Mizoguchi.
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Sisters of the Gion (1936)
Sisters of the Gion, cited by preeminent Japanese film scholar Donald Richie as “the best Japanese prewar sound film,” follows the parallel paths of the independent, unsentimental Omocha (Isuzu Yamada) and her sister, the more tradition-minded Umekichi (Yoko Umemura), both geishas in the working-class district of Gion. Mizoguchi’s film is a brilliantly shot, uncompromising look at the mechanisms that keep many women at the bottom rung of the social ladder.
Women of the Night (1948)
After World War II, Mizoguchi felt compelled to make a film inspired by the current vogue of Italian neorealism, and he turned up with one of the most emotionally and visually raw films of his career. Filmed on location in Osaka, Women of the Night concerns two sisters, a widow and the wife of a narcotics smuggler, whose precipitous descent into prostitution and moral chaos evokes the postwar degradation surrounding them.
Street of Shame (1955)
For his final film, Mizoguchi brought a lifetime of experience to bear on the poignant, heartbreaking tale of a brothel full of women whose dreams and aspirations are constantly shattered by the socioeconomic realities surrounding them. Set in Tokyo’s Red Light District (the literal translation of the Japanese title), Street of Shame was so cutting and its popularity so great that when antiprostitution laws were passed in Japan just one year later, the film was deemed a catalyst.
Title: Eclipse series 13: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Fallen Women
CAT: ECL056
UPC: 7-15515-03352-7
ISBN: 978-1-60465-093-8
SRP: $59.95
Prebook: 9/16/08
Street date: 10/21/08
10 Years of Rialto Pictures – October 2008 release
Since 1997, Rialto Pictures has been helping to keep classic cinema alive and invigorated by bringing the world’s greatest films to theaters across the United States, in phenomenal restored 35 mm prints. This special gift box set, in celebration of Rialto’s tenth anniversary, features ten films that display the breadth of its collection, including works by Rialto favorites, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Pierre Melville.
TEN-DISC BOX SET INCLUDES:
Army of Shadows (1969)
Lino Ventura, Simone Signoret, and Paul Meurisse go underground to face the German occupation in gangster-film legend Jean-Pierre Melville’s World War II French Resistance masterpiece. Army of Shadows was never released in the U.S. until 2006, when it became the most acclaimed film of the year, winning awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the National Society of Film Critics.
Au hasard Balthazar (1966)
A little donkey is suckled by its mother, then baptized Balthazar. It moves from owner to owner, some kind, some cruel, some drunkenly careless. In a body of work known for its purity and transcendence, Balthazar is perhaps the most wrenching of Robert Bresson's visions, voted nineteenth in the 2002 BFI Sight & Sound critics and filmmakers poll of all-time great films, and ninth in the Village Voice's poll of the greatest films of the twentieth century.
Band of Outsiders (1964)
Young layabouts Franz and Arthur meet the ravishing Odile (Anna Karina), with whom they plan on stealing a stash of cash hidden in her aunt’s mansion. In the hands of Jean-Luc Godard, a crime caper becomes pure pulp poetry. Pauline Kael called this French New Wave classic as “a reverie of a gangster movie . . . perhaps Godard’s most delicately charming film.”
Billy Liar (1963)
John Schlesinger’s adaptation of the smash-hit West End play stars Tom Courtenay as a feckless aspiring comedy writer whose dream life helps him momentarily escape from an endlessly nagging family and a dead-end job. Also starring Julie Christie in her enchanting film debut, the honestly hilarious Billy Liar is one the finest films of the British New Wave, which the New York Times called “one of the great movies of the 1960s.”
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
A group of stylish, elegant friends—portrayed by Fernando Rey, Delphine Seyrig, Bulle Ogier, Stephane Audran and Jean-Pierre Cassel—find their dinner plans constantly going awry; whether they find they’ve got the wrong day or the cops are intruding while performing a sting operation, they’re never able to sit down to eat their meals. Luis Buñuel’s surreal and cutting masterwork of social satire won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.
Mafioso (1962)
Alberto Sordi (The White Sheik, I Vitelloni) is a Fiat factory foreman in Northern Italy who returns to his hometown in Sicily with his wife and children, only to find himself unwittingly tapped as a hit man by the local Don. Alberto Lattuada’s Mafioso is one of the darkest, most authentic––and funniest—movies about the mob, which the Village Voice’s J. Hoberman called “a blueprint for The Godfather in sardonic, compressed, anecdotal form.”
Murderous Maids (2000)
More than seventy years on, the case of the Papin sisters, the servants who murdered and mutilated their mistress and her daughter in pre-World War II Le Mans, remains an enigma. Jean-Pierre Denis’ film is the definitive screen version: at once a stunning dramatization of the events leading up to the tragedy, and a compelling interrogation of the class issues that are believed to have contributed to the incident.
Rififi (1955)
Four ex-cons plot to crack a Parisian jewelry store’s safe—it’s one last heist, but you know what they say about the best-laid plans. Blacklisted, Bronx-raised Hollywood exile Jules Dassin, then living in France, turned a Spillane-esque potboiler by Auguste le Breton into an existential heist film, which earned him the Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival and set the standard for screen robberies for decades to come.
The Third Man (1949)
In rubble-strewn postwar Vienna, Joseph Cotten’s pulp Western writer Holly Martins arrives to meet up with his old friend Harry Lime only to find that he’s dead — or is he? Winner of the Academy Award for best cinematography, Carol Reed’s The Third Man is a triumph of atmosphere, with Robert Krasker’s tilted camera angles and deep shadows, and Anton Karas’s unforgettable zither theme.
Touchez pas au grisbi (1954)
Jean Gabin is aging gangster Max le Menteur, whose plans to retire following a huge heist are curtailed when his partner Riton tells his two-timing dame, played by Jeanne Moreau, about the cash. Jacques Becker’s Touchez pas au grisbi (Hands Off the Loot) took the gangster film to new heights of realism by portraying the criminal class as a larcenous sub-bourgeoisie and introducing authentic underworld slang to screen dialogue. And, as per the San Francisco Chronicle, “Gabin, voted ‘actor of the century’ in an end-of-the-millennium French poll, is perfection here.”
Title: 10 Years of Rialto Pictures
CAT: RAP001
UPC: 7-15515-03212-4
ISBN: 978-1-60465-069-3
SRP: $149.95
Prebook: 9/23/08
Street date: 10/28/08
ATTN CANADA: LE DOULOS, THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE, A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, SHORT CUTS, AND 10 YEARS OF RIALTO PICTURES ARE AVAILABLE IN THE US ONLY. MISSING IS AVAILABLE IN ALL CANADA. LE DEUXIÈME SOUFFLE AND ECLPISE SERIES 13: KENJI MIZOGUCHI'S FALLEN WOMEN ARE AVAILABLE IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CANADA ONLY.
