| This week we present Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s monumental Berlin Alexanderplatz, on DVD for the first time in the United States. The legendary German director had already made forty films by the time he began wrestling with this adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel about Weimar-era Berlin—which would become a fifteen-and-a-half-hour event, first shown, controversially, on German television. Criterion pays tribute to this masterwork with a deluxe seven-disc set, featuring a new high-definition digital transfer, documentaries on the making of the film and its restoration, Phil Jutzi’s 1931 feature-length adaptation of Döblin’s novel, and more! Happy viewing! |
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BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ Rainer Werner Fassbinder “The Mt. Everest of modern cinema!” —Andrew Sarris |
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THE LADY VANISHES Alfred Hitchcock “The quintessence of screen suspense.” —Pauline Kael
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SAWDUST AND TINSEL Ingmar Bergman “Uniquely Bergman, it’s a masterpiece that encapsulates much that was to come.” —John Simon |
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DRUNKEN ANGEL |
TOP TEN CRITERIONS BY BILL PLYMPTON
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Cartoonist, filmmaker, and animator Bill Plympton, whose illustrations have appeared in the pages of the New York Times, the Village Voice, and Vanity Fair, and whose short films became famous on MTV in the eighties, directed the documentary Walt Curtis: The Peckerneck Poet, featured on Criterion’s recent DVD release of Gus Van Sant’s Mala Noche. Click here to read Bill Plympton's thoughts on his top ten Criterion picks. 1. This Is Spinal Tap 2. Ace in the Hole 3. Brazil 4. The Third Man 5. The Horse’s Mouth 6. The Wages of Fear 7. The Bank Dick 8. Beauty and the Beast 9. Man Bites Dog 10. Mon oncle |
COMING IN DECEMBER
Two-Lane Blacktop
Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks
How many children first discovered cinema through Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon? Long unavailable except in bootlegs and tattered 16 mm prints, The Red Balloon is returning to theaters nationwide, accompanied by White Mane, Lamorisse's action-packed classic about a boy and a wild stallion, both newly restored for a new generation.
The New York Times raved on Sunday that "White Mane (1953) and The Red Balloon (1956) are among the world’s most famous and most honored films for children . . . But kids’ stuff they are not . . . The tone of both films is that of openmouthed wonder." The Red Balloon is "touching and ingenious," and "if you haven’t seen the film since attaining the age of reason, you might have forgotten how dryly brilliant its (mostly) silent comedy is . . . Both pictures have the economy, the clarity of purpose, and the pleasing symmetry of a sonnet." In White Mane, "you sense, as in few other films, the real terrors of nature . . . And Lamorisse, these movies show, really was a remarkable artist: one of the cinema’s best poets and a fearless explorer of the scary and exhilarating outbacks of the imagination."
The Red Balloon and White Mane open Friday at New York's Film Forum and nationwide on November 23, in ten cities, including Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. The tour will continue through the holidays. Don't miss them on the big screen! Click here for town and theater info, and look for Criterion releases of both films this spring.
From our friends at Waterloo Video in Austin, Texas
Also, don’t forget about the gift that keeps on giving. Following last holiday season’s best-selling run, Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films is still the gift of choice for the cinephile in your life. Including fifty classic movies, packaged with a gloriously designed hardcover book, Essential Art House is available now at the Criterion store. And our exclusive deal—spend $500 and get a free $50 Criterion gift certificate for your next purchase—counts when you buy Essential Art House. “There’s not a richer gift . . . for someone ready to experience the wonders of movies beyond Hollywood than this sumptuous set.” (Time)
Congratulations to CB Kirk, the winner of our October newsletter contest, in which viewers were asked to match films from the collection with the city where they take place. Kirk will receive a free Criterion DVD of his choice, and runners-up Dicky Bahto and Justin Little will receive Criterion T-shirts.
And then there was our trickier bonus question, asking you to identify the shortest route covering all ten cities, and to calculate the total mileage. Since so many of you took the time to figure out the correct path (starting and ending points in Rome and Taipei) and distance (approximately 14,570 miles), we awarded $50 Criterion gift certificates to three winners instead of one. Congratulations to Jeffrey Grieshober, Victor Leung, and Charlie Cockey. For more information, click here to read Jonathan Turell’s November 13 blog entry.