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The Criterion Collection

step into cinematic perfection – our massive criterion collection sale is here!
sale ends Sunday 30 November.
since 1984, the criterion collection has been a haven for cinephiles, unearthing overlooked masterpieces and preserving cinematic landmarks with obsessive care. every release is chosen not for fame or trend but for its ability to transform the way we see film, from obscure avant-garde experiments to defining works of storytelling. criterion doesn’t just restore movies, it reinvents the way we experience them, layering each with insightful extras, essays, and perspectives that deepen understanding and spark curiosity. over the decades, it has become more than a collection: a cultural touchstone, a place where film lovers and creators alike can lose themselves, learn, and be endlessly inspired.

anora

format: Blu-ray

 

Contemporary cinema’s foremost chronicler of American dreamers and schemers hustling on the margins of capitalist promise, Sean Baker, reaches new heights of mastery with this audacious anti–Cinderella story—a whirlwind neorealist screwball comedy with an aching heart. In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch’s wild-child son (Mark Eydelshteyn). This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale—also featuring standout performances from Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan—that turns the cruel realities of class inside out. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora confirms Baker as one of our preeminent auteurs.

 

  • New 4K digital master, supervised by director Sean Baker and producer Alex Coco, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Two audio commentaries: one featuring Baker, Coco, producer Samantha Quan, and cinematographer Drew Daniels, and the other featuring Baker and actors Yura Borisov, Mark Eydelshteyn, Karren Karagulian, Mikey Madison, and Vache Tovmasyan
  • New making-of documentary
  • New interviews with Baker and Madison
  • Cannes Film Festival press conference
  • Q&A with Madison and actor-stripper Lindsey Normington
  • Deleted scenes
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing and English descriptive audio

crumb

format: Blu-ray

 

Terry Zwigoff’s landmark 1995 film is an intimate documentary portrait of the underground artist Robert Crumb, whose unique drawing style and sexually and racially provocative subject matter have made him a household name in popular American art. Zwigoff candidly and colorfully delves into the details of Crumb’s incredible career and life, including his family of reclusive eccentrics, some of the most remarkable people you’ll ever see on-screen. At once a profound biographical portrait, a riotous examination of a man’s controversial art, and a devastating look at a troubled family, Crumb is a genuine American original.

 

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Terry Zwigoff, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Two audio commentaries, one featuring Zwigoff from 2010, and one with Zwigoff and critic Roger Ebert from 2006
  • More than fifty minutes of unused footage
  • Stills gallery
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum and artwork by Charles, Jesse, Maxon, and Robert Crumb
  • Cover illustration by R. Crumb

prince of broadway

format: Blu-ray

 

A raw, disarmingly moving slice of neorealism, this early-career triumph from DIY auteur Sean Baker plunges into the world of West African immigrant Lucky (Prince Adu) and his Armenian Lebanese boss Levon (Karren Karagulian), two unlikely friends who peddle knockoff designer goods in Manhattan’s wholesale district. When a long-forgotten ex forces him to take care of a young son he didn’t even know he had, Lucky must figure out how to become a father without losing his edge in the counterfeit-merch game. Capturing the chaos of urban life through expressive handheld camera work, remarkably naturalistic performances, and flashes of manic humor, Prince of Broadway is one of Baker’s most vivid explorations of the illusory nature of the American dream.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Sean Baker and restoration supervisor Alex Coco, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Two audio commentaries: one featuring Baker and the other featuring producer and cowriter Darren Dean, associate producer and actor Victoria Tate, and actor Karren Karagulian
  • New introduction by Baker
  • Archival interviews with Baker and actor Prince Adu
  • Two documentaries on the making of the film
  • Restoration demonstration featuring Baker and Coco
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Robert Daniels

Basquiat

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Julian Schnabel’s tribute to his friend and fellow painter Jean-Michel Basquiat is less a conventional biopic than an impressionistic, sensory immersion into the much-mythologized downtown-Manhattan art world of the 1980s. Jeffrey Wright, in his first lead film role, stars as the visionary artist whose rise from graffiti tagger to art star forces him to confront the glare of sudden fame, along with racism, his own struggles with addiction, and the difficulties of being self-determining and free in America. Bolstered by an ensemble cast that includes a sublime performance by David Bowie channeling Andy Warhol, Schnabel’s directorial debut – presented here in the filmmaker’s own luminous black-and-white remastering – is a profoundly expressive elegy for a radiant life cut short.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration of the 2024 black-and-white version of the film, supervised and approved by director Julian Schnabel, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Audio commentary featuring Schnabel and writer and curator Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan
  • New 4K digital restoration of the 1996 theatrical version
  • New interview with actor Jeffrey Wright
  • Interview from 1996 with Schnabel and actor David Bowie
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Roger Durling
  • New cover by Julian Schnabel

mishima: a life in four chapters

format: 4k uhd

 

Paul Schrader’s visually stunning, collagelike portrait of the acclaimed Japanese author and playwright Yukio Mishima (played by Ken Ogata) investigates the inner turmoil and contradictions of a man who attempted the impossible task of finding harmony among self, art, and society. Taking place on the last day of Mishima’s life, when he famously committed public seppuku, the film is punctuated by extended flashbacks to the writer’s past as well as gloriously stylized evocations of his fictional works. With its rich cinematography by John Bailey, exquisite sets and costumes by Eiko Ishioka, and unforgettable, highly influential score by Philip Glass, Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters is a tribute to its subject and a bold, investigative work of art in its own right.

 

  • 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, supervised and approved by director Paul Schrader and cinematographer John Bailey, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Two alternate English narrations, including one by actor Roy Scheider
  • Audio commentary featuring Schrader and producer Alan Poul
  • Program on the making of the film featuring Bailey, producers Tom Luddy and Mata Yamamoto, composer Philip Glass, and production designer Eiko Ishioka
  • Program on Yukio Mishima featuring his biographer John Nathan and friend Donald Richie
  • Audio interview with coscreenwriter Chieko Schrader
  • Interview excerpt from 1966 featuring Mishima talking about writing
  • The Strange Case of Yukio Mishima, a 1985 documentary about the author

drugstore cowboy

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Gus Van Sant’s dreamy, drifty, deadpan second feature—an addiction drama based on James Fogle’s autobiographical novel—captures the zonked-out textures and almost surreal absurdity of a life lived fix to fix. Swinging between dope-fueled disconnection and edgy paranoia, Matt Dillon plays the leader of a ragtag crew (also featuring Kelly Lynch, Heather Graham, and James Le Gros) that robs pharmacies for pills, coasting across the 1970s Pacific Northwest while trying to outrun sobriety and fate. With a brilliant supporting turn from counterculture high priest William S. Burroughs and a lyrical feeling for the streetscapes of Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, Drugstore Cowboy cemented the director’s status as a preeminent poet of outsiderhood.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by director Gus Van Sant and director of photography Robert Yeoman, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack
  • Audio commentary featuring Van Sant and actor Matt Dillon
  • The Making of Drugstore Cowboy, featuring interviews with Van Sant and members of the cast and crew
  • New interviews with Yeoman and actor Kelly Lynch
  • Deleted scenes
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by author and screenwriter Jon Raymond
  • New cover by F. Ron Miller

the umbrellas of cherbourg

format: 4k uhd

 

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.

 

  • 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

Hard Day’s Night

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Meet the Beatles! Just one month after they exploded onto the U.S. scene with their Ed Sullivan Show appearance, John, Paul, George, and Ringo began working on a project that would bring their revolutionary talent to the big screen. This film, in which the bandmates play slapstick versions of themselves, captured the astonishing moment when they officially became the singular, irreverent idols of their generation and changed music forever. Directed with raucous, anything-goes verve by Richard Lester (The Knack . . . and How to Get It) and featuring a slew of iconic pop anthems—including the title track, “Can’t Buy Me Love,” “I Should Have Known Better,” and “If I Fell”—A Hard Day’s Night, which reconceived the movie musical and exerted an incalculable influence on the music video, is one of the most deliriously entertaining movies of all time.

 

  • 4K digital restoration, approved by director Richard Lester, with three audio options—a monaural soundtrack as well as stereo and 5.1 surround mixes supervised by sound producer Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios—presented in uncompressed monaural, uncompressed stereo, and DTS-HD Master Audio
  • Audio commentary featuring cast and crew
  • In Their Own Voices, a program combining 1964 interviews with the Beatles and behind-the-scenes footage and photos
  • “You Can’t Do That”: The Making of A Hard Day’s Night, a 1994 documentary by producer Walter Shenson including an outtake performance by the Beatles
  • Things They Said Today, a 2002 documentary about the film featuring Lester, music producer George Martin, screenwriter Alun Owen, and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor

Funny Girl

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Witness the birth of a movie star as Barbra Streisand makes a screen debut for the ages in this musical spectacular. From humor to pathos, she hits every note as popular 1920s singer-comedian Fanny Brice, a young Jewish New Yorker whose spirit and supernova talent propel her to fame in the Ziegfeld Follies, but whose devotion to an unreliable gambler (a charismatic Omar Sharif) brings drama and heartbreak into her life. Adapted from a hit Broadway show and directed by Hollywood master William Wyler, Funny Girl hits emotional highs in unforgettable performances of songs like “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade”—moments that won Streisand one of the most richly deserved Best Actress awards in Oscar history.

 

  • 4K digital restoration, with 5.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • New audio interview with star Barbra Streisand
  • New conversation between director William Wyler’s son David and author and Turner Classic Movies host Alicia Malone
  • Directed by William Wyler (1986), a documentary on Wyler’s life and career
  • Archival interview with actor Omar Sharif
  • Deleted scene featuring Streisand and Sharif
  • Featurettes from the original theatrical release

Night Moves

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Arthur Penn’s haunting neonoir reimagines the hard-boiled detective film for the disillusioned, paranoid 1970s. In one of his greatest performances, Gene Hackman oozes world-weary cynicism as a private investigator whose search for an actress’s missing daughter (Melanie Griffith) leads him from the Hollywood Hills to the Florida Keys, where he is pulled into a sordid family drama and a sinister conspiracy he can hardly grasp. Bolstered by Alan Sharp’s genre-scrambling script and Dede Allen’s elliptical editing, the daringly labyrinthine Night Moves is a defining work of post-Watergate cinema—a silent scream of existential dread and moral decay whose legend has only grown with time.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New audio commentary by Matthew Asprey Gear, author of Moseby Confidential
  • New audio interview with actor Jennifer Warren
  • Interview with director Arthur Penn from a 1975 episode of Cinema Showcase
  • Interview with Penn from the 1995 documentary Arthur Penn: A Love Affair with Film
  • The Day of the Director, a behind-the-scenes featurette
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Harris

Jo jo dancer, your life is calling

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

One of the greatest comedians of all time, Richard Pryor gets raw and real in this brutally funny and lacerating self-portrait. Following the notorious incident in which he caught on fire while high on cocaine, nearly losing his life, Pryor exorcised his inner demons by writing, producing, directing, and starring in this dizzying hall-of-mirrors biopic and backstage drama, which traces a young comedian’s rise to fame, from his childhood growing up in a brothel to the colorful experiences that shaped his edgy comic voice to the addiction struggles that brought him to the brink of death. As he did in his legendary stand-up sets, here Pryor fearlessly turns his soul inside out, revealing the deep vulnerability that made his art so compelling.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • New interview on the film with filmmaker Robert Townsend
  • Interview with director Richard Pryor from a 1985 episode of The Dick Cavett Show
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An appreciation by critic Hilton Als

Crossing Delancey

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

Joan Micklin Silver’s wonderfully affectionate spin on the romantic comedy infuses the genre with a fresh, personal perspective, following an unmarried Jewish woman’s search for fulfillment in New York City. Happily independent bookstore manager Izzy (a luminous Amy Irving) isn’t looking for love, but she’s forced to reevaluate her desires when she catches the eye of two very different men: a self-centered novelist (Jeroen Krabbé) and the mild-mannered Lower East Side pickle seller (Peter Riegert) with whom her old-fashioned bubbie (scene-stealing Yiddish-theater star Reizl Bozyk) sets her up. A love letter to 1980s Manhattan shot in beautifully burnished, autumnal tones, Crossing Delancey gracefully captures the magic of a city where disparate cultures, generations, and traditions both clash and connect.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by cinematographer Theo van de Sande, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • New program on the making of the film featuring actors Amy Irving and Peter Riegert and screenwriter Susan Sandler
  • Audio interview from 1988 with director Joan Micklin Silver
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Rachel Syme

performance

format: 4k uhd & blu-ray

 

The grimy criminal underworld and hedonistic rock-and-roll counterculture of late-1960s London collide in this mind-scrambling, kaleidoscopic freak-out. On the run from his vengeful boss, a ruthless gangster (James Fox) hides out in the Notting Hill home of a reclusive rock star (Mick Jagger) and his companions (Anita Pallenberg and Michele Breton), who open the doors of his perception as the lines between reality and fantasy, male and female, persona and self, dissolve in a hallucinogenic haze. Built around Jagger’s most magnetic narrative-film performance, this visionary collaboration between Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg is a daringly transgressive, endlessly influential journey to the dark side of bohemia.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural original-UK-version soundtrack
  • Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance (1998), a documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley
  • Influence and Controversy: Making “Performance” (2007)
  • New visual essay about David Litvinoff, the film’s dialogue coach and technical adviser
  • Interviews with the actors
  • Program on the overdubbing done for the U.S. version of the film
  • Memo from Turner, featuring on-set footage
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Ryan Gilbey and a 1995 article by scholar Peter Wollen

Thelma & Louise

 

Two women, a turquoise Thunderbird, the ride of a lifetime. With this pop-culture landmark, screenwriter Callie Khouri and action auteur Ridley Scott rewrote the rules of the road movie, telling the story of two best friends who find themselves transformed into accidental fugitives during a weekend getaway gone wrong—leading them on a high-speed southwestern odyssey as they elude police and discover freedom on their own terms. Propelled by irresistible performances from Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis (plus Brad Pitt in a sexy, star-making turn)—and nominated for six Academy Awards, winning one for Khouri—the exhilaratingly cathartic Thelma & Louise stands as cinema’s ultimate ode to ride-or-die female friendship.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Ridley Scott, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
  • Two audio commentaries, featuring Scott, screenwriter Callie Khouri, and actors Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
  • New interviews with Scott and Khouri
  • Documentary featuring Davis; Khouri; Sarandon; Scott; actors Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, and Brad Pitt; and other members of the cast and crew
  • Boy and Bicycle (1965), Scott’s first short film, and one of his early commercials
  • Storyboards and deleted and extended scenes, including an extended ending with director’s commentary
  • PLUS: Essays by critics Jessica Kiang and Rachel Syme and journalist Rebecca Traister

Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

 

A classic tale is reborn through the inspired imagination of cinematic dream-weaver Guillermo del Toro, directing alongside Mark Gustafson. Realized through boundary-pushing, breathtakingly intricate stop-motion animation, this dark rendering of the fable of the puppet boy and his maker—which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature—daringly transfers the story to Fascist Italy, where the irrepressible Pinocchio gradually learns what it means to be human through his experiences of war, death, and sacrifice. Featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton, and Christoph Waltz, this Pinocchio imbues the oft-told tale with a bold new resonance about living with courage and compassion.

 

  • 4K digital master, supervised by directors Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson, with Dolby Atmos
  • One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
  • Handcarved Cinema, a new documentary featuring del Toro, Gustafson, and cast and crew, including the film’s puppet creators, production designers, and animation supervisor
  • Directing Stop-Motion, a new program featuring del Toro and Gustafson
  • New conversation between del Toro and film critic Farran Smith Nehme
  • New interview with curator Ron Magliozzi on The Museum of Modern Art’s 2022 exhibition devoted to the film
  • New program on the eight rules of animation that informed the film’s production
  • Panel discussion featuring del Toro, Gustafson, production designer Guy Davis, composer Alexandre Desplat, and sound designer Scott Martin Gershin, moderated by filmmaker James Cameron

The Last Picture Show

 

One of the key films of the American seventies cinema renaissance, The Last Picture Show is set in the early fifties, in the loneliest Texas nowheresville to ever dust up a movie screen. This aching portrait of a dying West, adapted from Larry McMurtry’s novel, focuses on the daily shuffles of three futureless teens—enigmatic Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), wayward jock Duane (Jeff Bridges), and desperate-to-be-adored rich girl Jacy (Cybill Shepherd)—and the aging lost souls who bump up against them in the night like drifting tumbleweeds. Featuring evocative black-and-white imagery and profoundly felt performances, this hushed depiction of crumbling American values remains the pivotal work in the career of invaluable film historian and director Peter Bogdanovich.

 

  • 4K digital restoration of the director’s cut, 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
  • Two audio commentaries, featuring Bogdanovich and actors Cybill Shepherd, Randy Quaid, Cloris Leachman, and Frank Marshall
  • Three documentaries about the making of the film
  • Screen tests and location footage
  • Excerpts from a 1972 television interview with filmmaker François Truffaut about the New Hollywood
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film critic Graham Fuller

One False Move

 

A small-town police chief (Bill Paxton) concealing an explosive secret. A pair of ruthless drug dealers (cowriter 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 film 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.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by director Carl Franklin, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • 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

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen

 

The boundless imagination of Terry Gilliam yields a dazzling fantasy of epic proportions. Inspired by the extravagant exploits of the fabled Baron Munchausen, this spectacle—born of a famously turbulent production—follows the whimsical eighteenth-century nobleman (John Neville) as he embarks on an outlandish quest that takes him from faraway lands to the moon to the belly of a sea monster and beyond, meanwhile waging battle against a vengeful sultan and the tyranny of logic. Packed frame to frame with special effects, mischievous wit, and colorful performances—including a young Sarah Polley as the Baron’s no-nonsense sidekick—the Oscar-nominated The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is a lavish celebration of the triumph of make-believe over reality.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, approved by writer-director Terry Gilliam, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Audio commentary featuring Gilliam and his coscreenwriter, Charles McKeown
  • Documentary on the making of the film
  • New video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns about the history of the Baron Munchausen character
  • Behind-the-scenes footage of the film’s special effects, narrated by Gilliam
  • Deleted scenes with commentary by Gilliam
  • Storyboards for unfilmed scenes, narrated by Gilliam and McKeown
  • Original marketing materials including a trailer and electronic-press-kit featurettes, as well as preview cards and advertising proposals read by Gilliam
  • Miracle of Flight (1974), an animated short film by Gilliam

Beau Travail

 

With her ravishingly sensual take on HERMAN MELVILLE’s Billy Budd, Sailor, CLAIRE DENIS (White Material) firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Mauvais sang’s DENIS LAVANT) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (35 Shots of Rum’s GRÉGOIRE COLIN) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of BENJAMIN BRITTEN. Denis and cinematographer AGNÈS GODARD (Let the Sunshine In) fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism’s legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Agnès Godard and approved by director Claire Denis, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack 
  • New conversation between Denis and filmmaker Barry Jenkins 
  • New selected scene commentary with Godard 
  • New interviews with actors Denis Lavant and Grégoire Colin 
  • New video essay by film scholar Judith Mayne
  • New English subtitle translation 
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Girish Shambu

Roma

 

With his eighth and most personal film, ALFONSO CUARÓN (Children of Men) recreated the early-1970s Mexico City of his childhood, narrating a tumultuous period in the life of a middle-class family through the experiences of Cleo (YALITZA APARICIO, in a revelatory screen debut), the indigenous domestic worker who keeps the household running. Charged with the care of four small children abandoned by their father, Cleo tends to the family even as her own life is shaken by personal and political upheavals. Written, directed, shot, and coedited by Cuarón, Roma is a labour of love with few parallels in the history of cinema, deploying monumental black and white cinematography, an immersive soundtrack, and a mixture of professional and nonprofessional performances to shape its author’s memories into a world of enveloping texture, and to pay tribute to the woman who nurtured him.

 

  • 4K digital master, supervised by director Alfonso Cuarón, with Dolby Atmos soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Road to “Roma,” a new documentary about the making of the film, featuring behind-the-scenes footage and an interview with Cuarón
  • Snapshots from the Set, a new documentary featuring actors Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira, producers Gabriela Rodríguez and Nicolás Celis, production designer Eugenio Caballero, casting director Luis Rosales, executive producer David Linde, and others
  • New documentaries about the film’s sound and postproduction processes, featuring Cuarón; Sergio Diaz, Skip Lievsay, and Craig Henighan from the postproduction sound team; editor Adam Gough; post production supervisor Carlos Morales; and finishing artist Steven J. Scott
  • New documentary about the film’s ambitious theatrical campaign and social impact in Mexico, featuring Celis and Rodríguez
  • Nothing at Stake, a new video essay by filmmaker :: kogonada

Punch-Drunk Love

 

Chaos lurks in every corner of this giddily off-kilter foray into romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson. Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty-toilet-plunger salesman Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, demonstrating remarkable versatility in his first dramatic role) spends his days collecting frequent-flyer-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affection of a mysterious woman named Lena (Emily Watson), but their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss (played with maniacal brio by Philip Seymour Hoffman). Fueled by the careening momentum of a baroque-futurist score by Jon Brion, the Cannes-award-winning Punch-Drunk Love channels the spirit of classic Hollywood and the whimsy of Jacques Tati into an idiosyncratic ode to the delirium of new romance.

 

  • Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised by director Paul Thomas Anderson, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
  • Blossoms & Blood, a short 2002 piece by Anderson featuring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, along with music by Jon Brion
  • New interview with Brion
  • New piece featuring behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for the film’s soundtrack
  • New conversation between curators Michael Connor and Lia Gangitano about the art of Jeremy Blake, used in the film
  • Additional artwork by Blake
  • Cannes Film Festival press conference from 2002
  • NBC News interview from 2000 with David Phillips, the “pudding guy”

Written on the Wind

 

The Technicolor expressionism of Douglas Sirk reached a fever pitch with this operatic tragedy, which finds the director pushing his florid visuals and his critiques of American culture to their subversive extremes. Alcoholism, nymphomania, impotence, and deadly jealousy—these are just some of the toxins coursing through a massively wealthy, degenerate Texan oil family. When a sensible secretary (Lauren Bacall) has the misfortune of marrying the clan’s neurotic scion (Robert Stack), it drives a wedge between him and his lifelong best friend (Rock Hudson) that unleashes a maelstrom of psychosexual angst and fury. Featuring an unforgettably debauched, Oscar-winning supporting performance by Dorothy Malone and some of Sirk’s most eye-popping mise-en-scène, Written on the Wind is as perverse a family portrait as has ever been splashed across the screen.

 

  • ONew 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Acting for Douglas Sirk, a 2008 documentary featuring archival interviews with Sirk; actors Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone; and producer Albert Zugsmith
  • New interview with film scholar Patricia White about the film and melodrama
  • Trailer
  • Trailer for All That Heaven Allows
  • The Melodrama Archive: An annotated filmography of director Douglas Sirk with hundreds of behind-the-scenes and production photos, plus vintage lobby cards
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by filmmaker and critic Blair McClendon

The Damned

 

The most savagely subversive film by the iconoclastic auteur LUCHINO VISCONTI (The Leopard) employs the mechanics of deliriously stylized melodrama to portray Nazism’s total corruption of the soul. In the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power, the wealthy industrialist von Essenbeck family and their associates – including the scheming social climber Friedrich (The Night Porter’s DIRK BOGARDE), the incestuous matriarch Sophie (Winter Light’s INGRID THULIN), and the perversely cruel heir Martin (The Godfather: Part III’s HELMUT BERGER, memorably donning Dietrich-like drag in his breakthrough role)—descend into a self-destructive spiral of decadence, greed, perversion, and all consuming hatred as they vie for power, over the family business and over one another. The heightened performances and Visconti’s luridly expressionistic use of Technicolor conjure a garish world of decaying opulence in which one family’s downfall comes to stand for the moral rot of a nation.

 

  • New 2K digital restoration by the Cineteca di Bologna and Institut Lumière, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Alternate Italian-language soundtrack
  • Interview from 1970 with director Luchino Visconti about the file
  • Archival interviews with actors Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, and Charlotte Rampling
  • Visconti: Man of Two Worlds, a 1969 behind-thescenes documentary
  • New interview with scholar Stefano Albertini about the sexual politics of the film
  • New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by scholar D. A. Miller

In Cold Blood

 

Truman Capote’s best seller, a breakthrough narrative account of real-life crime and punishment, became an equally chilling film in the hands of writer-director RICHARD BROOKS (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof). Cast for their unsettling resemblances to the killers they play, ROBERT BLAKE (Lost Highway) and SCOTT WILSON (The Great Gatsby) give authentic, unshowy performances as Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, who in 1959 murdered a family of four in Kansas during a botched robbery. Brooks brings a detached, documentary-like starkness to this uncompromising view of an American tragedy and its aftermath; at the same time, stylistically In Cold Blood is a filmmaking master class, with clinically precise editing, chiaroscuro black-and-white cinematography by the great CONRAD L. HALL (American Beauty), and a menacing jazz score by Quincy Jones.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack • New interview with cinematographer John Bailey on the film’s cinematography
  • New interview with film historian Bobbie O’Steen on the film’s editing • New interview with film critic and jazz historian Gary Giddins on the film’s music by Quincy Jones
  • New interview with writer Douglass Daniel on director Richard Brooks • Interview with Brooks from 1988 from the French television series Cinéma cinemas
  • Interview with actor Robert Blake from 1968 from the British television series Good Evening with Jonathan King
  • With Love from Truman, a short 1966 documentary featuring novelist Truman Capote, directed by Albert and David Maysles
  • Two archival NBC interviews with Capote: one following the author on a 1966 visit to Holcomb, Kansas, and the other conducted by Barbara Walters in 1967
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara

Death in Venice

 

Based on the classic novella by Thomas Mann, this late-career masterpiece from Luchino Visconti is a meditation on the nature of art, the allure of beauty, and the inescapability of death. A fastidious composer reeling from a disastrous concert, Gustav von Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde, in an exquisitely nuanced performance) travels to Venice to recover. There, he is struck by a vision of pure beauty in the form of a young boy named Tadzio (Björn Andrésen), his infatuation developing into an obsession even as rumors of a plague spread through the city. Setting Mann’s story of queer desire and bodily decay against the sublime music of Gustav Mahler, Death in Venice is one of cinema’s most exalted literary adaptations, as sensually rich as it is allegorically resonant.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Luchino Visconti: Life as in a Novel, a 2008 documentary about the director, featur­ing Visconti; actors Burt Lancaster, Silvana Mangano, and Marcello Mastroianni; filmmakers Francesco Rosi and Franco Zeffirelli; and others
  • Alla ricerca di Tadzio, a 1970 short film by Visconti about his efforts to cast the role of Tadzio
  • New program featuring literature and cinema scholar Stefano Albertini
  • Interview from 2006 with costume designer Piero Tosi
  • Excerpt from a 1990 program about the music in Visconti’s films, featuring Bogarde and actor Marisa Berenson
  • Interview with Visconti from 1971
  • Visconti’s Venice, a short 1970 behind-the-scenes documentary featuring Visconti and Bogarde
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Dennis Lim

Vivre sa Vie

 

Vivre sa vie was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna Karina, Godard’s greatest muse, plays Nana, a young Parisian who aspires to be an actress but instead ends up a prostitute; her downward spiral is depicted in a series of discrete tableaux of daydreams and dances. Featuring some of Karina and Godard’s most iconic moments— from her movie theatre vigil with The Passion of Joan of Arc to her seductive pool-hall strut—Vivre sa vie is a landmark of the French New Wave that still surprises at every turn.

 

  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary featuring film scholar Adrian Martin
  • Video interview with film scholar Jean Narboni, conducted by historian Noël Simsolo
  • Television interview from 1962 with actress Anna Karina
  • Excerpts from a 1961 French television exposé on prostitution
  • Illustrated essay on La prostitution, the book that served as inspiration for the film
  • Stills gallery
  • Director Jean-Luc Godard’s original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson, interviews with Godard, a reprint by critic Jean Collet on the film’s soundtrack, and Godard’s original scenario

The Great Dictator

 

In his notorious masterpiece The Great Dictator, CHARLIE CHAPLIN (City Lights, Modern Times) offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin (in his first pure talkie) brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomanian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring JACK OAKIE (Thieves’ Highway, Lover Come Back) and PAULETTE GODDARD (Modern Times, The Women) in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned plea for tolerance.

 

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • New audio commentary by Charlie Chaplin historians Dan Kamin and Hooman Mehran
  • The Tramp and the Dictator (2001), a documentary narrated by filmmaker Kenneth Branagh and featuring interviews with author Ray Bradbury, director Sidney Lumet, historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., screenwriter Budd Schulberg, and a host of others
  • Two new visual essays, by Chaplin archivist Cecilia Cenciarelli and Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance
  • On-set, colour production footage shot by Chaplin’s half-brother, Sydney
  • Deleted scene from Chaplin’s 1919 film Sunnyside
  • Theatrical trailer
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Wood and a 1940 article by Chaplin on the film

Black Girl

 

OUSMANE SEMBÈNE (Xala, Faat Kiné) was one of the greatest and most groundbreaking filmmakers who ever lived, as well as the most internationally renowned African director of the twentieth century— but his name deserves to be better known in the rest of the world. He made his feature debut in 1966 with the brilliant and stirring Black Girl. Sembène, who was also an acclaimed novelist in his native Senegal, transforms a deceptively simple plot—about a young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple and finds that life in their small apartment becomes a prison, both figuratively and literally—into a complexly layered critique of the lingering colonialist mind-set of a supposedly postcolonial world. Featuring a moving central performance by M’BISSINE THÉRÈSE DIOP, Black Girl is a harrowing human drama as well as a radical political statement—and one of the essential films of the 1960s.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration, done by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project with Cineteca di Bologna, along with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • 4K restoration of Borom sarret, Ousmane Sembène’s 1963 debut short film
  • New interviews with scholars Manthia Diawara and Samba Gadjigo
  • Excerpt from a 1966 broadcast of JT 20h, featuring Sembène discussing his Prix Jean Vigo win for Black Girl
  • New interview with actor M’Bissine Thérèse Diop
  • Sembène: The Making of African Cinema, a 1994 documentary by Diawara and wa Thiong’o
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: Essay by critic Ashley Clark

Pale Flower

 

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited and laced with a fever-dreamlike score by Toru Takemitsu (Woman in the Dunes, Ran), this breakthrough gangster romance from Masahiro Shinoda (Samurai Spy, Double Suicide) announced an idiosyncratic major filmmaking talent. The pitch-black Pale Flower (Kawaita hana) is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.

 

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • New video interview with director Masahiro Shinoda
  • Selected-scene audio commentary by film scholar Peter Grilli, co producer of Music for the Movies: Toru Takemitsu
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A new essay by film critic Chuck Stephens

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion

 

The provocative Italian filmmaker ELIO PETRI’s most internationally acclaimed work is this remarkable, visceral, Oscar-winning thriller. Petri maintains a tricky balance between absurdity and realism in telling the Kafkaesque tale of a Roman police inspector (A Fistful of Dollars’ GIAN MARIA VOLONTE, in a commanding performance) investigating a heinous crime-which he committed himself. Both a penetrating character study and a disturbing commentary on the draconian crackdowns by the Italian government in the late 1960s and early ’70s, Petri’s kinetic portrait of surreal bureaucracy is a perversely pleasurable rendering of controlled chaos.

 

  • New 4K digital restoration by the Film Foundation, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Archival interview with director Elio Petri, conducted by critic and filmmaker Alexandre Astruc
  • Elio Petri: Notes About a Filmmaker (2005), a ninety-minute documentary on the director’s career, featuring interviews with friends, collaborators, and filmmakers
  • Interview with film scholar Camilla Zamboni from 2013
  • Investigation of a Citizen Named Volonté (2008), a sixty-minute documentary about actor Gian Maria Volonté
  • Music in His Blood, an interview with composer Ennio Morricone from 2010, conducted by film critic Fabio Ferzetti
  • Trailers
  • New English subtitle translation
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Evan Calder Williams and excerpts from a 2001 book by author and screenwriter Ugo Pirro

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