The Criterion Collection Newsletter

Janus Films has released a new 35mm print of Gus Van Sant’s debut feature, the gorgeously shot eighties indie Mala noche, which opened at New York’s IFC Center on June 1. A hauntingly beautiful black-and-white meditation on lust, love, obsession, and class, set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film will play nationwide throughout the summer and fall. Other confirmed venues include the Brattle Theatre, in Boston (June 15–21); San Francisco’s Castro Theatre (June 29–July 5); and the Orpheum, in Madison, Wisconsin (July 27–August 9).

With Gus Van Sant’s Mala noche getting its first proper theatrical release, and his latest, Paranoid Park, earning raves at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, take another look at the filmmaker’s similarly poetic, dreamlike evocation of Portland’s gritty underworld, My Own Private Idaho, with unforgettable performances from River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves.

Three Films by Hiroshi Teshighara:
   Pitfall
   Woman in the Dunes
   The Face of Another
Ace in the Hole
Ivan's Childhood
Les enfants terribles
Eclipse Series 4: Raymond Bernard


This month, we’re pleased to introduce four phenomenal filmmakers into the collection: Chris Marker, Lindsay Anderson, Claude Berri, and Dusan Makavejev. Though wildly different in temperament and artistry, these filmmakers each carved out an unmistakable niche in world cinema, some winning international awards, others shocking the establishment. As always, happy viewing!		Janus Films has released a new 35mm print of Gus Van Sant’s debut feature, the gorgeously shot eighties indie Mala noche, which opened at New York’s IFC Center on June 1. A hauntingly beautiful black-and-white meditation on lust, love, obsession, and class, set in Van Sant’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the film will play nationwide throughout the summer and fall. Other confirmed venues include the Brattle Theatre, in Boston (June 15–21); San Francisco’s Castro Theatre (June 29–July 5); and the Orpheum, in Madison, Wisconsin (July 27–August 9). With Gus Van Sant’s Mala noche getting its first proper theatrical release, and his latest, Paranoid Park, earning raves at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, take another look at the filmmaker’s similarly poetic, dreamlike evocation of Portland’s gritty underworld, *My Own Private Idaho*, with unforgettable performances from River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. Three Films by Hiroshi Teshighara: Pitfall Woman in the Dunes The Face of Another Ace in the Hole Ivan's Childhood Les enfants terribles Eclipse Series 4: Raymond Bernard

STREET DATE: 6/26	Chris Marker has long been regarded as one of the world’s most enigmatic filmmakers, but his radical sci-fi short La jetée (presented here with his mind-bending *Sans soleil) has been surprisingly influential in pop culture. The time travelogue was “remade” as Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, inspired Mark Romanek’s music video for David Bowie’s “Jump They Say,” and was even honored by a tiny bar, called La Jetée*, in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo. Marker is particularly fond of this last homage, as he notes in an interview featured in our special Criterion edition: “To think that for forty years lots of Japanese have been getting happily plastered every night beneath my images is worth any Academy Award . . .”
STREET DATE: 6/19	Malcolm McDowell made his film debut in Lindsay Anderson’s *If...., in which rebellious British boarding schoolers take on the power-tripping establishment. When he was then cast in A Clockwork Orange, McDowell confided to Anderson that he was nervous about shooting Kubrick’s film, as he didn’t know how to play the difficult role of Alex. In response, Anderson told him to rewatch the scene in If....* in which he is cane whipped by his superiors. As he walks into the gym, there is a close-up on his face, impish, devil-may-care. “That’s how you play Alex,” Anderson suggested. As he tells on the DVD’s commentary track, McDowell followed his advice, to this day crediting Anderson with helping direct his Clockwork performance.
STREET DATE: 6/12	Though not involved in the making of the film, François Truffaut greatly aided the success of Claude Berri’s sweet-natured reminiscence of being a Jewish child during World War II, *The Two of Us. After seeing the film, Truffaut wrote a glowing, three-page review in L’observateur*, which Berri believes helped his film to win acclaim, including its award for best actor (Michel Simon) at the Berlin Film Festival later that year. The two filmmakers became good friends soon after, with Truffaut later serving as best man at Berri’s wedding.
STREET DATE: 6/19	After Dusan Makavejev made several films that tested censorship limits in Tito’s Yugoslavia, his controversial treatise on politics and pornography, *WR: Mysteries of the Organism*, finally went too far. The film was declared “ideologically harmful” and was banned nationally, and Makavejev was forced into exile. One of the most contentious scenes juxtaposes images of Stalin with a phallus being cast in plaster. Makavejev responds in an interview on the DVD, “I find Stalin a terribly pornographic figure. Any man responsible for killing all his friends and associates, for putting millions into concentration camps, and then saying, ‘Now we are happy,’ is obviously indulging in a kind of pornography.”
STREET DATE: 6/19	For Makavejev’s wild black comedy of sexual liberation, Sweet Movie, Kees Hoekert and Robert Jasper Grootveld, artists and leaders of the anarchist Provo movement, designed a boat with a prow adorned with a huge likeness of Karl Marx’s head. Hoekert also volunteered his young son to act in the film, saying, “I thought it would be a great adventure . . . A two-day tour with a prostitute on a boat with a head of Karl Marx . . . what a dream!” Yet when Hoekert heard about the film’s violent ending, he and Grootveld (along with an American friend named “Mickey Mouse”) rebelled, storming and occupying the boat, smashing windows, issuing orders to crew members to abandon ship, and bringing filming to a brief halt. Regarding the momentary row, Makavejev says in an interview on the DVD, “Apparently, I not only rented their boat but activated all their fantasies. Oh, well, there are different trips for different ships.”
For further information on Criterion and our products, please visit our website at www.criterion.com. The Criterion Collection Newsletter is e-mailed every month. If you are not already on our e-mailing list and would like to be added, please consult our Newsletter sign-up page. Click here if you wish to be removed from Criterion's e-mailing list. © 2007 The Criterion Collection