May 2011 Criterion Collection Titles Announced!

Diabolique

Henri Georges Clouzot

Criterion 35, on DVD and Blu-ray May 17th.

Before Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Repulsion, there was Diabolique. This thriller from Henri?Georges Clouzot, which shocked audiences in Europe and the U.S., is the story of two women’”the fragile wife and the willful mistress of a sadistic school headmaster’”who hatch a daring revenge plot. With its unprecedented narrative twists and unforgettably scary images, Diabolique is a heart-grabbing benchmark in horror filmmaking, featuring outstanding performances by Simone Signoret, Vera Clouzot, and Paul Meurisse.

Solaris

Andrei Tarkovsky

Criterion 164, on DVD and Blu-ray May

Ground control has been receiving strange transmissions from the three remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to investigate, he experiences the strange phenomena that afflict the Solaris crew, sending him on a voyage into the darkest recesses of his own consciousness. In Solaris, legendary Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky creates a brilliantly original science-fiction epic that challenges our preconceived notions of love, truth, and humanity itself.

http://www.criterion.com/films/553-solaris

Smiles Of A Summer Night

Ingmar Bergman

Criterion 237, on Blu-ray May 3rd.

After fifteen films of mostly local acclaim, the 1956 prize-winning comedy Smiles of a Summer Night at last ushered in an international audience for director Ingmar Bergman. Set in turn-of-the-century Sweden, four women and four men attempt to juggle the laws of attraction amidst their daily bourgeois life. When a weekend in the country brings them all face to face, the women ally to force the men’s hands in their matters of the heart, exposing their pretensions and insecurities along the way. Chock full of flirtatious propositions and sharp-witted wisdom delivered by such legends of the Swedish screen as Gunnar Björnstrand, Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Ulla Jacobsson, Smiles of a Summer Night is one of film history’s great tragicomedies, a bittersweet view of the transience of human carnality.

Fat Girl

Catherine Breillat

Criterion 259, on Blu-ray May 3rd

Twelve-year-old Anaïs is fat. Her sister, Elena, is a teenage beauty. While on vacation with their parents, Anaïs tags along with Elena as she explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student, who seduces her with promises of love, and the ever-watchful Anaïs bears witness to the corruption of her sister’s innocence. Precise and uncompromising, Catherine Breillat’s Fat Girl is a bold dissection of sibling rivalry and female adolescent sexuality from one of contemporary cinema’˜s most controversial directors.

Disc Features

• High-definition digital restoration (with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition)
• Behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Fat Girl
• Two interviews with director Catherine Breillat, one conducted the night after the film’s world premiere at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, the other a look back at the film’s production and alternate ending
• French and U.S. theatrical trailers
• Plus: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau, a 2001 interview with Breillat, and a piece by Breillat on the title

Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin

Criterion 565, on DVD and Blu-ray May 24th

In his notorious masterpiece The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin (in his first pure talkie) brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish ‘Tomanian’ dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie and Paulette Goddard in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned speech.

http://www.criterion.com/films/27605-great-dictator

http://www.criterion.com/people/117426-charlie-chaplin

Something Wild

Jonathan Demme

Criterion 563, on DVD and Blu-ray May 10th

A straitlaced businessman meets a quirky, free-spirited woman at a downtown New York greasy spoon. Her offer of a ride back to his office results in a lunchtime motel rendezvous’”just the beginning of a capricious interstate road trip that brings the two face-to-face with their hidden selves. Featuring a killer soundtrack and electric performances from Jeff Daniels, Melanie Griffith, and Ray Liotta, Something Wild, directed by oddball American auteur Jonathan Demme, is both a kinky comic thriller and a radiantly off-kilter love story.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• New, restored digital transfer, supervised by director of photography Tak Fujimoto and approved by director Jonathan Demme, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New video interviews with Demme and writer E. Max Frye
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film critic David Thompson

Pale Flower

Masahiro Shinoda

Criterion 564, on DVD and Blu-ray May 17th

In this cool, seductive jewel of the Japanese New Wave, a yakuza, fresh out of prison, becomes entangled with a beautiful yet enigmatic gambling addict; what at first seems a redemptive relationship ends up leading him further down the criminal path. Bewitchingly shot and edited and laced with a fever-dream-like score by Toru Takemitsu, Masahiro Shinoda’s breakthrough gangster romance announced an idiosyncratic major filmmaking talent. The pitch-black Pale Flower (Kawaita hana) is an unforgettable excursion into the underworld.