The Criterion Collection Newsletter July 2010
The Only Son/There Was a Father:
Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu
July 13 • We’re kicking the month off with a couple of real lost treasures. These major early works by the untouchable master of Japanese family drama, Yasujiro Ozu, have only rarely been screened in the United States. Made from the best possible surviving materials, this special edition two-DVD set elucidates a crucial period in the career of one of cinema’s greats. Included are Ozu’s first talkie, the 1936 The Only Son, which film critic and theorist Noël Burch considered the director’s “supreme achievement,” and There Was a Father, made during the height of World War II in 1942, and called by Japanese cinema expert Donald Richie “one of Ozu’s most perfect films.”
A mother and her grown child, close but so far apart. Watch a clip from The Only Son, quintessential Ozu.
Black Narcissus
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
July 20 • Some grandiose statements are just flat-out true: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s collaborations with the brilliant cinematographer and painter Jack Cardiff were the zenith of Technicolor. And it’s difficult to imagine anything surpassing the expressionistic heights of the magnificent 1946 melodrama Black Narcissus, about a group of nuns losing their grip on reality while establishing a convent in the Himalayas, and starring, among others, Deborah Kerr, Jean Simmons, and Sabu. Nor are you likely to find a more miraculous example of movie magic than production designer Alfred Junge’s majestic re-creation of the Himalayas in England’s Pinewood Studios.
The Red Shoes
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
July 20 • Right after Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger turned to The Red Shoes—which, dainty though the title may seem, is no less of a freak-out. On first viewing, you might be surprised to discover that The Red Shoes— based on the Hans Christian Andersen fable, about a girl who can’t stop dancing after lacing herself into some bewitched footwear—is as much a psychological horror film as a musical. Now you can immerse yourself in this wondrous world with Blu-ray and DVD editions of the dazzling and acclaimed recent restoration, made possible in part by Martin Scorsese, who calls the movie “truly one of the most beautiful Technicolor films ever made.”
The Secret of the Grain
Abdellatif Kechiche
July 27 • No contemporary French filmmakers are representing their country’s cultural climate quite the way Tunisian-born Abdellatif Kechiche is. Americans may not have heard much about The Secret of the Grain, but in France it was a box-office smash and won numerous César awards, including best picture, and Cahiers du cinema has called it one of the ten best films of the decade. A multigenerational epic about a North African immigrant trying to open a fish and couscous restaurant, and his extended, largely estranged French-Arab family, The Secret of the Grain is full of earthy, sensory pleasures, brilliantly staged by Kechiche with documentary-like authenticity.
Frederick Elmes’s
Criterion Top 10Frederick Elmes has served as cinematographer on some of the most acclaimed American movies of the past four decades, including Eraserhead, River’s Edge, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Broken Flowers, and Synecdoche, New York. Criterion Collection films he shot include Night on Earth, The Ice Storm, and Ride with the Devil. In compiling his top ten list, Elmes chose those films, he says, “that influenced me most.”
Handcrafted Jarmusch Posters Now you can make your walls a little more mysterious. Criterion is proud to offer new, limited-edition posters of our Mystery Train cover, designed and handcrafted by the letterpress artisans at Yee-Haw Industries in Knoxville, Tennessee. These posters are available only at criterion.com. Click here for ordering info.
From the Current
Who knew that Two-Lane Blacktop director Monte Hellman was such a spy thriller aficionado? Read his profession of love for Night Train to Munich.
Eclipse Series 22: Presenting Sacha Guitry
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Posted via email from Dogmeat