The Criterion Collection has announced seven titles for Blu-ray release in September. On September 10th, the studio will release Edouard Molinaro's
La Cage aux Folles (1978) and Martin Ritt's
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). On September 17th, the studio will release Ingmar Bergman's
Autumn Sonata (1978) and Richard Linklater's
Slacker (1991). And on September 24th, it will release thee films by Roberto Rossellini starring Ingrid Bergman.
La Cage aux Folles
Renato (Ugo Tognazzi) and Albin (Michel Serrault)—a middle-aged gay couple who are the manager and star performer at a glitzy drag club in St. Tropez—agree to hide their sexual identities, along with their flamboyant personalities and home decor, when the ultraconservative parents of Renato's son's fiancee come for a visit. This elegant comic scenario kicks off a wild and warmhearted farce about the importance of nonconformity and the beauty of being true to oneself. A modest French comedy that became a breakout art-house smash in America, Edouard Molinaro's
La Cage aux Folles inspired a major Broadway musical and the blockbuster remake The Birdcage. But with its hilarious performances and ahead-of-its-time social message, there's nothing like the audacious, dazzling original movie.
Special Features:
- New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New interview with director Edouard Molinaro
- Archival footage featuring actor Michel Serrault and Jean Poiret, writer and star of the original stage production of La Cage aux Folles
- New interview with Laurence Senelick, author of The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre
- French and U.S. trailers
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Ehrenstein
- More!
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
The acclaimed, best-selling novel by John le Carré, about a Cold War spy on one final dangerous mission in East Germany, is transmuted by director Martin Ritt into a film every bit as precise and ruthless as the book. Richard Burton is superb as Alec Leamas, whose relationship with a beautiful librarian, played by Claire Bloom, puts his assignment in jeopardy.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a hard-edged and tragic thriller, suffused with the political and social consciousness that defined Ritt's career.
Special Features:
- New, high-definition digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New, exclusive, wide-ranging interview with author John le Carré
- Selected-scene commentary featuring director of photography Oswald Morris
- The Secret Center: John le Carré, a 2000 BBC documentary on the author's life and work
- Interview with actor Richard Burton from a 1967 episode of the BBC series Acting in the '60s, conducted by critic Kenneth Tynan
- Audio conversation from 1985 between director Martin Ritt and film historian Patrick McGilligan
- Gallery of set designs
- Trailer
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Sragow
Autumn Sonata
Autumn Sonata was the only collaboration between cinema's two great Bergmans—Ingmar, the iconic director of The Seventh Seal, and Ingrid, the monumental star of Casablanca. The grand dame, playing an icy concert pianist, is matched beat for beat in ferocity by the filmmaker's recurring lead Liv Ullmann as her eldest daughter. Over the course of a long, painful night that the two spend together after an extended separation, they finally confront the bitter discord of their relationship. This cathartic pas de deux, evocatively shot in burnished harvest colors by the great Sven Nykvist, ranks among Ingmar Bergman's major dramatic works.
Special Features:
- New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Introduction by director Ingmar Bergman from 2003
- Audio commentary featuring Bergman expert Peter Cowie
- The Making of "Autumn Sonata," a three-and-a-half-hour program examining every aspect of the production
- New interview with actor Liv Ullmann
- A 1981 conversation between actor Ingrid Bergman and critic John Russell Taylor at the National Film Theatre in London
- Trailer
- English-dubbed track
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme
Slacker
Slacker, directed by Richard Linklater, presents a day in the life of a loose-knit Austin, Texas, subculture populated by eccentric and overeducated young people. Shooting on 16 mm for a mere $3,000, writer-producer-director Linklater and his crew of friends threw out any idea of a traditional plot, choosing instead to create a tapestry of over a hundred characters, each as compelling as the last. Slacker is a prescient look at an emerging generation of aggressive nonparticipants, and one of the key films of the American independent film movement of the 1990s.
Special Features:
- New, restored high-definition digital film transfer, supervised by director Richard Linklater and director of photography Lee Daniel, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Three audio commentaries, featuring Linklater and members of the cast and crew
- It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (1988), Linklater's first full-length feature, with commentary by the director
- Woodshock, a 1985 16 mm short by Linklater and Daniel
- Casting tapes featuring select "auditions" from the more-than-100-member cast
- "The Roadmap," the working script for Slacker, including fourteen deleted scenes and alternate takes (DVD)
- Deleted scenes and alternate takes (Blu-ray)
- Footage from the Slacker tenth-anniversary reunion
- Early film treatment
- Home movies
- Ten-minute trailer for a 2005 documentary about the landmark Austin café Les Amis
- Original theatrical trailer
- Stills gallery featuring hundreds of rare behind-the-scenes production and publicity photos (DVD only)
- Slacker culture essay by Linklater (DVD only)
- Information about the Austin Film Society, founded in 1985 by Linklater with Daniel, including early flyers from screenings (DVD only)
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by author and filmmaker John Pierson and Michael Barker, as well as reviews, production notes, and an introduction to It's Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books by director Monte Hellman
3 Films by Roberto Rossellini Starring Ingrid Bergman
In the late 1940s, the incandescent Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman found herself so moved by the revolutionary neorealist films of Roberto Rossellini that she sent the director a letter, introducing herself and offering her talents. The resulting collaboration produced a series of films that are works of both sociopolitical concern and metaphysical melodrama, each starring Bergman as a woman experiencing physical dislocation and psychic torment in postwar Italy. It also famously led to a scandalous affair and eventual marriage between filmmaker and star, and the focus on their personal lives in the press unfortunately overshadowed the extraordinary films they made together.
Stromboli, Europe '51, and
Journey to Italy are intensely personal portraits that reveal the director at his most emotional and the glamorous actor at her most anguished, and that capture them and the world around them in transition.
Stromboli
The first collaboration between Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman is a devastating portrait of a woman's existential crisis, set against the beautiful and forbidding backdrop of a volcanic island. After World War II, a Lithuanian refugee (Bergman) marries a simple Italian fisherman (Mario Vitale) she meets in a prisoner of war camp and accompanies him back to his isolated village on an island off the coast of Sicily. Cut off from the world, she finds herself crumbling emotionally, but she is destined for a dramatic epiphany. Balancing the director's trademark neorealism (exemplified here in a remarkable depiction of the fishermen's lives and work) with deeply felt melodrama, Stromboli is a revelation.
Special Features:
- New digital film restoration of the English-language version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New, restored 2K digital film transfer of the Italian-language version, Stromboli terra di Dio, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Archival television introduction by director Roberto Rossellini
- New interview with film critic Adriano Aprà
- Rossellini Under the Volcano, a 1998 documentary that returns to the island of Stromboli fifty years after the making of Stromboli
- New English subtitle translation
Europe '51
Ingrid Bergman plays a wealthy, self-absorbed socialite in Rome racked by guilt over the shocking death of her young son. As a way of dealing with her grief and finding meaning in her life, she decides to devote her time and money to the city's poor and sick. Her newfound, single-minded activism leads to conflicts with her husband and questions about her sanity. The intense, often unfairly overlooked Europe '51 was, according to Rossellini, a retelling of his own The Flowers of St. Francis from a female perspective. This unabashedly political but sensitively conducted investigation of modern sainthood was the director's favorite of his films.
Special Features:
- New digital film restoration of the English-language version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- New digital film restoration of the Italian-language version, Europa '51, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Archival television introduction by director Roberto Rossellini
- New interview with critic Adriano Aprà
- New interview with film historian Elena Degrada about the different versions of Europe '51
- New interviews with Isabella Rossellini and Ingrid Rossellini, daughters of Roberto Rossellini and Bergman (DVD)
- My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a 2005 short film, directed by Guy Maddin and starring Isabella Rossellini (DVD)
- New interview with Fiorella Mariani, Rossellini's niece, featuring home movies shot by Bergman (DVD)
- The Chicken, a 1952 short film by Roberto Rossellini, starring Bergman (DVD)
- New English subtitle translation
Journey to Italy
Among the most influential dramatic works of the postwar era, Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy charts the declining marriage of a couple (Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders) from England while on a trip in the countryside near Naples. More than just an anatomy of a relationship, Rossellini's masterpiece is a heartrending work of emotion and spirituality. Considered a predecessor to the existentialist films of Michelangelo Antonioni; hailed as a groundbreaking modernist work by the legendary film journal Cahiers du cinéma; and named by director Martin Scorsese as one of his favorite films, Journey to Italy is a breathtaking cinematic benchmark.
Special Features:
- New, restored 2K digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
- Archival television introduction by director Roberto Rossellini
- Audio commentary featuring film scholar Laura Mulvey
- New visual essays about Rossellini by scholars Tag Gallagher and James Quandt
- New interview with critic Adriano Aprà
- Ingrid Bergman Remembered, a 1996 documentary on the actor's life, narrated by her daughter Pia Lindstrom
- A Short Visit with the Rossellini Family, a six-minute film shot on Capri while the family was there during the production of Journey to Italy
- New interviews with Isabella Rossellini and Ingrid Rossellini, daughters of Roberto Rossellini and Bergman (Blu-ray)
- Rossellini Through His Own Eyes, a 1992 documentary on the filmmaker's approach to cinema, featuring archival interviews with Rossellini and actor Ingrid Bergman (Blu-ray)
- New interview with Fiorella Mariani, Rossellini's niece, featuring home movies shot by Bergman
- My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a 2005 short film, directed by Guy Maddin and starring Isabella Rossellini (Blu-ray)
- The Chicken, a 1952 short film by Roberto Rossellini, starring Bergman (Blu-ray)