Criterion New Release Tuesday – April 20, 2010 – Summer Hours and Vivre Sa Vie [Criterion Collection New Releases]

Vivre sa vie

Criterion # 512 (Available on DVD and Blu-ray)

Finally! If we count the poster in the Criterion store and the Janus tour of this film as our first indications of a Criterion release of Vivre Sa Vie, then we’ve been anticipating this release for over two years. I watched this film shortly after I watched Pierrot Le Fou for the first time, and have always thought of the two as sister films of sorts. The despair that Anna Karina exhibits in this role is haunting and harrowing. The inclusion of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc and the Michael Mann-esque final scene of the film make this a stand-out feature, and a must-have in any cinephile’s catalog.

On a more editorial note, I loathe the cover art. It just looks lazy to me. Criterion, take the poster from your store and slap your C on the upper left-hand corner, pretty please.

“Vivre sa vie was a turning point for Jean-Luc Godard and remains one of his most dynamic films, combining brilliant visual design with a tragic character study. The lovely Anna Karina, Godard’s greatest muse, plays Nana, a young Parisian who aspires to be an actress but instead ends up a prostitute; her downward spiral is depicted in a series of discrete tableaux of daydreams and dances. Featuring some of Karina and Godard’s most iconic moments’”from her movie theater vigil with The Passion of Joan of Arc to her seductive pool-hall strut’”Vivre sa vie is a landmark of the French New Wave that still surprises at every turn.”

Disc Features

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer (with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Audio commentary featuring film scholar Adrian Martin
• Video interview with film scholar Jean Narboni, conducted by historian Noël Simsolo
• Television interview from 1962 with actress Anna Karina
• Excerpts from a 1961 French television exposé on prostitution
• Illustrated essay on La prostitution, the book that served as inspiration for the film
• Stills gallery
• Director Jean-Luc Godard’s original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Michael Atkinson, interviews with Godard, a reprint by critic Jean Collet on the film’s soundtrack, and Godard’s original scenario

Summer Hours

Criterion # 513 (Available on DVD and Blu-ray)

“Widely hailed by critics as 2009’s best film, Summer Hours is the great contemporary French filmmaker Olivier Assayas’s most personal film to date. Three siblings, played by Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, and Jérémie Renier, must decide what to do with the country estate and objects they’ve inherited from their mother. From this simple story, Assayas creates a nuanced, exquisitely made drama about the material of globalized modern living. Naturalistic and unsentimental yet suffused with genuine warmth, this is that rare film that pays respect to family by treating it with honesty.”

You can hear Rudie discuss Summer Hours here. For his best of 2009, Rudie wrote this about Summer Hours:

Summer Hours is an exceptional film about family, loss and memories. The story is of three siblings, played by Jeremie Renier, Juliette Binoche and Charles Berling, coming to terms with the loss of their mother and what exactly to do with her house in the French Countryside. This film tells its story through the objects in this house. Through their connections to these objects, their memories and a sense of nostalgia over powers them. Olivier Assayas plays this film so delicately, in lesser hands it would be too melodramatic but rather it comes off has heartfelt and realistic. This is a special sort of film that plays with the subtleties of life. I can easily see this film joining The Criterion Collection.

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Olivier Assayas and cinematographer Eric Gautier (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• New video interview with Assayas
• A short documentary featuring interviews with Assayas and actors Charles Berling and Juliette Binoche, and showing the cast and crew on set
• Inventory, an hour-long documentary by Olivier Gonard, shot partly in Paris’s Musée d’Orsay, that examines the film’s approach to art
• Theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Kent Jones