Three of our all-time most requested titles are finally coming to Criterion this November. Each is the result of impeccable casting intuition, from the talented leading women Louise Brooks and Irène Jacob to The Fallen Idol’s “just plain kid” Bobby Henrey. All three masterpieces are unthinkable without these discoveries.
Also, look out for our new blog, “On Five,” which debuted last week at criterion.com.
Happy viewing!
Essential Art House Now Available!
The perfect holiday gift for the film lover in your life, Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films is now available at the discounted price of $650, with free UPS Ground shipping, at janusfilms.com. You can also purchase Essential Art House at select retailers, including amazon.com, dvdplanet.com, and barnesandnoble.com. And hot off the presses: The New York Times has today published a feature story on Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films. Click here to read the article.
Grey Gardens Returns
We receive many letters from Criterion customers about our rereleases. Although 99 percent of the time we put forth completely revamped editions, with new transfers and supplements, next month our return to Grey Gardens is a little different. For those just meeting these extraordinary women, in December we will offer a two-disc box set containing the Criterion release of the Maysles brothers’ original 1976 cult classic documentary, along with The Beales of Grey Gardens, its 2006 theatrical follow-up, culled from hours of never-before-seen footage. Additionally, we will be offering The Beales of Grey Gardens separately, as its own release—it’s a must-have for Beales fans. Look for more info about these releases in next month’s newsletter.
“These are not necessarily my favorite films, nor the best DVDs that Criterion has published. (What, no Kurosawa, no Renoir, no Fellini!?) They are, though, films that continue to surprise me each time I watch them.”
To read Cowie’s thoughts on his top ten selections, click here.
1. The Seventh Seal
(Ingmar Bergman)
2. L’avventura
(Michelangelo Antonioni)
3. The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel)
4. The Vanishing
(George Sluizer)
5. Häxan
(Benjamin Christensen)
6. Children of Paradise
(Marcel Carné)
7. Bob le flambeur
(Jean-Pierre Melville)
8. Tokyo Story
(Yasujiro Ozu)
9. Ashes and Diamonds
(Andrzej Wajda)
10. Crazed Fruit
(Kô Nakahira)
Peter Cowie has provided commentaries for around a dozen Criterion titles. His latest book, Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever, is being released this month from Rizzoli.
STREET DATE: 11/7
Producer Alexander Korda has always been given credit for discovering The Fallen Idol’s child star, eight-year-old Bobby Henrey. But the truth is that Henrey got the part only after Bill O’Bryen, a production executive at London Films, saw his picture on the cover of A Village in Piccadilly, a book written by his mother, Madeleine Henrey, about their experiences living in England as refugees from Nazi-occupied France. After O’Bryen came calling, Mrs. Henrey allowed Bobby to take a screen test, on the condition that she could be present during filming should he get the part. Henrey, who as the stubborn, naive Phillipe gives one of cinema’s great kid performances, went on to star in just one other film, Karl Hartl’s The Wonder Kid (1950), while his mother later wrote a book about the experience called A Film Star in Belgrave Square.
STREET DATE: 11/28
Georg Wilhelm Pabst was as much an expert at discovering female stars as he was a master of expressionist filmmaking: Brigitte Helm, Greta Garbo, and, of course, Louise Brooks were all cast by the filmmaker before they were well-known. He was so sure of Brooks’s untapped talents, in fact, that he chose her over Marlene Dietrich (two years before Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel would make Dietrich an international sex symbol) for the lead role of Lulu in Pandora’s Box. Dietrich was literally waiting in Pabst’s office, about to sign the contract, when Paramount called and informed the director that Brooks was available. “Dietrich was too old and too obvious—one sexy look and the picture would become a burlesque,” Pabst later said. His instincts were corroborated years later when Cinémathèque française founder Henri Langlois famously exclaimed, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!”
STREET DATE: 11/21
As with G. W. Pabst, Krzysztof Kieslowski knew a thing or two about picking an ingenue. But the young French actress Irène Jacob was not his first choice for the starring role(s) in The Double Life of Véronique. He originally wanted American actress Andie MacDowell, having seen her in Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape. When MacDowell backed out, Kieslowski hired the virtually unknown Jacob. She learned fluent Polish for the role—although her Polish dialogue was dubbed in the final soundtrack—and went on to win best actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1991.
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Last month, we lost one of cinema’s great iconoclasts: Italian master Gillo Pontecorvo (1919–2006), who changed the face of political filmmaking with The Battle of Algiers, his epic, vérité-style re-creation of the Algerian struggle for independence from occupying France. Blistering, thought-provoking, and still terrifyingly relevant in the current political climate, the film won the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion and put Pontecorvo on the map of international cinema for decades to come. Criterion’s three-disc special edition of the film remains a testament to the late director’s uncompromising masterwork.
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Two Takes
New two-disc box set:
Grey Gardens and The Beales of Grey Gardens
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