Criterion Collection - Online Cinematheque

With fifty-six terrific entries and more than six hours of content, it was difficult to pick a winner of the Jeanne Dielman–Criterion Collection Cooking Video Contest, but we finally came to a decision. Selected by Criterion staff members and Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles director Chantal Akerman, first place goes to Jon Pivko’s methodical, menacing meat loaf movie, Cindy Griffith, 42 Carlton Road, Hopewell, NJ. Pivko will receive a new PlayStation 3, Criterion’s reference Blu-ray player. You can see his film below, and then be sure to watch the five honorable mentions. Thanks to everyone who participated and made the contest such a great success, including our Audience Award winner and runners-up.

Grand Prize winner:

CINDY GRIFFITH, 42 CARLTON ROAD, HOPEWELL, NJ

Click through to watch the honorable mentions.  

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Chantal Akerman

1975

201 min

Color

1.66:1

The announcement of the Grand Prize winner in our Jeanne Dielman–Criterion Collection Cooking Video contest on YouTube has been delayed until next week to accommodate the schedule of our esteemed juror, director Chantal Akerman. But in the Audience Award category, your votes are in, the numbers have been crunched, and the winner of a $100 gift certificate is . . .

AMY ELIZABETH, 23 COMMERCE STREET  

. . . in town for a special screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center of his 1974 Boston crime caper The Friends of Eddie Coyle.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

Peter Yates

1973

102 min

Color

1.85:1

Some of you might have seen the news item on our website regarding the Jacques Tati “centennial-plus” and the exhibits around Paris paying homage to the inventive filmmaker. I had the good fortune to be in the City of Lights on official Criterion business last week and made a couple of excursions to check it all out.

The first was to Le104, an impressive art space in the nineteenth arrondissement, a district I seldom go to. I took the metro there and got off one station too early by mistake, which made for a lovely walk through this ethnically diverse neighborhood. Nothing could have prepared me for Le104’s massiveness, much less for the re-creation of Tati’s Villa Arpels from Mon oncle. It was much more impressive than I had imagined: the squares of colorful gravel seemingly splashing off the sides of the modern white villa as the fish-sculpture centerpiece spouted water just like in the film. I stood there awestruck for a while, seeing this amazing ahead-of-its-time invention life-size before me, and then walked around it. You weren’t allowed to go in, but the many windows let you see that every little detail of the interior had been meticulously reproduced, from the (post)modern appliances in the kitchen to the seemingly uncomfortable furniture of the living room.  

M. Hulot’s Holiday

Jacques Tati

1953

87 min

Black and White

1.33:1

Playtime

Jacques Tati

1967

124 min

Color

1.85:1

Mon oncle

Jacques Tati

1958

116 min

Color

1.37:1

Last Year at Marienbad

Alain Resnais

1961

94 min

Black and White

2.35:1

Sea horses or octopuses?

Criterion’s own Danny Walton was featured in his hometown Times-Picayune for a film he recently shot on location in the New Orleans area, his thesis project for the School of Visual Arts, here in New York City. It was a personal project all around, shot on numerous locations in and around the city—including his former high school—and featuring Danny’s sister in the starring role. He was able to be so ambitious in part because of local help, which the article proudly highlights, as well as recounting the trials Danny went through in the months preceding the shoot. It’s quite a story, and we here at Criterion are very proud of him as well!

On January 12, French cinema lost one of its truest enablers. Claude Berri was as well-known for his support of cinema, both financial and critical, as he was for his own filmmaking. The actor turned director-writer-producer made twenty-three films (the multi-award-winning Manon of the Spring and Jean de Florette among them); produced with his company, Renn Productions, more than fifty (Roman Polanski’s Tess, Claude Miller’s The Little Thief, etc.), including some of the biggest-grossing films in French history; and served as president of the Cinémathèque française from 2003 to 2007.

His filmmaking career began with the short Le poulet (1965), about a boy whose parents bring home a new rooster to raise, for its nutritional value. But the little boy takes a liking to him and begins to tease his parents that the rooster is in fact laying eggs. This debut won Berri his only Academy Award and international fame overnight. In many ways, it set the tone for his first feature, The Two of Us (1967), for which Berri transformed his personal childhood experience of living undercover during the Nazi occupation of France into a surprisingly gentle and endearing film. For safekeeping, a Jewish boy is sent to live in the countryside with an older couple. Though the man, played by the great Michel Simon, is in fact a supporter of Vichy France and his dear Marshal Pétain, the unlikely twosome become friends and (to an extent) confidants.

In January of 2007, Berri agreed to be interviewed for our DVD release of The Two of Us, accompanied by Le poulet. It had been well over a year since our first letter of interest to him, during which time Berri had been recovering from a stroke and relearning to speak after the resulting paralysis. Yet he was still pushing forward with a new film production (Ensemble, c’est tout, with Audrey Tautou, released in 2007).

Our shot was set up and ready to go when Mr. Berri arrived. After a few urgent phone calls, he was able to sit down for the video interview. He told us sweet anecdotes about working with Simon, finding the young Alain Cohen, and returning to a story he himself had lived during the occupation. The interview lasted about forty-five minutes, and as soon as the camera stopped rolling, he was out the door to his next appointment, but not before a very sincere thank-you to us for keeping the spirit of his work alive. Claude Berri clearly never stopped working and made cinema his life.

The Two of Us

Claude Berri

1967

87 min

Black and White

1.66:1

More than a year ago, Peter and I were in the midst of discussions about how we wanted to launch the Criterion cinematheque. Over time, those discussions expanded to include every department at Criterion. We wanted to have a single website that continued to sell our DVDs and merchandise but that was also driven by content, and would enable our community to begin experiencing these films online. Over the course of the next year, we found a wonderful partner in the Auteurs, explored ways that our viewers could watch films that were new to them without having to make the full commitment to the DVD (that’s how our $5 “try before you buy” was born), developed a whole new way to introduce content to the site (the Current), and began a redesign and site-rebuilding project. As you know, we launched the site on November 25, and the feedback has been terrific.

Before we publish a DVD, we test it, watch it on a dozen different TVs, and hit every button on the remote (a couple of times), and we tried to be as thorough with the website. But we realized that if we tried to make sure everything was perfect, we would never launch. I think we came close, but a few things didn’t work the way we had hoped. We’ve addressed most of them already, and here’s a look at what we found.  

Technical director Lee Kline, just back from Paris, where he worked on Last Year at Marienbad with Alain Resnais, reports:

I was a little nervous to show Alain Resnais our new transfer of Marienbad, but I pushed hard to have him come into Scanlab, one of the very good French labs we use. It was important that this film look right on video, and I needed some guidance. As it turned out, he couldn’t have been nicer or more helpful. We watched the whole film together in HD, and he definitely wanted it to be brighter and less contrasty. Before he came in, I had been going in the other direction, since the print I viewed appeared to have a fair amount of contrast. But Resnais was clear that it should not be a very cold-looking film, and he liked going from dark to light very dramatically. The added contrast was only taking away from the needed warmth. As for the overexposed footage, we nailed that one right on the head.

We talked about picture restoration, and he’s good with cleaning up the film as needed. For audio, though, he really wants to have a track that’s unrestored on the DVD, one closer to what people would have heard in theaters back in the sixties. He has suggested doing two tracks—one unrestored, the other restored—and letting people choose. He’s fine with putting in a card that says why there is a choice.

He signed his name several times for me, and I have a few sheets of paper with different choices. I promised to show him everything before we put out the DVD, so he really knew what he was approving! He would like a DVD of the movie to see the final grading.

Resnais is a very dapper man—he was dressed in a bright red shirt, dark tie, and what appeared to be a long Moncler puffy overcoat. His English is great, and he’s looking forward to the interview next week. He purchased many Criterion laserdiscs back in the day and hated VHS. Earlier I happened to be working in the same room on In the Realm of the Senses—a slightly awkward film to be color correcting. Resnais saw a few minutes of it, and I jokingly told him, “I hope we haven’t made the organs too magenta.” He just smiled.