The Third Man Returns To Blu-ray This September From Lionsgate And Studio Canal

To all the fans of Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man‘ (listen to our recent episode, discussing the film with Quint from Aint It Cool News) who are upset that Criterion had to discontinue their wonderful presentation of the film will be happy to find out that StudioCanal, along with Lionsgate Home Video, will be releasing the film alongside another recent classic, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s ‘Delicatessen‘ on September 21st on Blu-Ray.

‘The Third Man‘ comes with new special features different from the Criterion version. The Blu-ray Disc is adorned with special features including a new audio commentary with assistant director Guy Hamilton, actor Simon Callow and crew member Angela Allen; a new The Third Man interactive Vienna Tour; and a 20-page collectible booklet written by film historian Charles Drazin. The Disc also features “The Third Man on the Radio,” audio interviews with Joseph Cotton and Graham Greene, an alternative opening with voiceover from Joseph Cotton, an interview and zither performance from Cornelia Mayer, plus a stills gallery and original trailers. The Blu-ray Disc is presented in 1080P High Definition Full Screen format with 2.0 Monaural DTS-HD Master Audio.

‘Delicatessen‘ comes with all new bonus features, which include a new retrospective documentary with Jean-Pierre Jeunet, a making-of featurette and a 20-page collectible booklet written by Empire contributing editor Kim Newman. The Disc also features an audio commentary with the director and The Archives of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The Blu-ray Disc is presented in 1080P High Definition Widescreen Format with 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio.

As a sidenote to this story, here’s hoping StudioCanal’s second line of films in their classic Blu-ray line fulfill their potential, unlike their Blu-Ray of ‘Ran‘ which had subtitle problems with grammatical and completely incorrect translation on screen. Especially with a film like ‘Delicatessen’, which is a visual and wonderfully verbal dark comedy.

Source: Home Theater Forum

4 comments

Cinema Cathedral says:

July 2, 2010 at 2:05 pm

“…will be happy to find out that StudioCanal, along with Lionsgate Home Video, will be releasing the film…”

Sorry, but Studio Canal and Lionsgate can go screw themselves. I'm not supporting the companies which have been gutting the Criterion Collection this year, arguably the best 'collection' of films released on dvd/Blu along with UK's Masters of Cinema. A lot of us Criterion completionists are pissed about this, especially since it comes during an awful economy (aka my unemployment, in my case) and therefore makes it fairly improbable to buy these movies before they disappear off CC's site. Now I'm going to have to scour ebay add exhorbitant prices to pick up the missing Criterion titles, always wondering if the discs acquired that way are indeed legit or very clever fakes, which is my concern with some OOP Hitchcocks and Warhol's Frankenstein movie which I bought from the auction site after they got deleted. First they came for RAN before the planned Blu-Ray was released and I said noth—…well, I was quite vocal about it…then they came for THE THIRD MAN and I said…well quite a bit about that one too since it happened out of the blue and I'd been skipping the remaster of an all-time favorite until I have a Blu-Ray machine to play it on. Now they've been regularly gutting wide swaths of Criterion titles and who knows what title is next. I hate Studio Canal now almost as much as I hate Harvey Scissorhands (the Carl Macek of arthouse/foreign) for his annoying re-edits of foreign films for all those years.
DaveBlakeslee says:

July 4, 2010 at 1:37 pm

I appreciate your zeal and share your enthusiastic support of Criterion, and even some of your anger at StudioCanal (even though business is business, they never had to sell the rights for any of their films to Criterion in the first place. But on the balance, I'm glad that another version of The Third Man on bluray is coming out soon. The new special features look pretty good, and this is too important of a movie to have hanging out there in OOP limbo for very long. The bright side for those who don't have Criterion editions of The Third Man is that I think the prices will have to come down somewhat when there's a perfectly good alternative out there on the market. And I've seen the regular DVDs available for reasonable prices in the secondary market – it's just the Blurays that are asking $50-60 (and woe to the suckers who are paying that kind of price for 'em!)
Cinema Cathedral says:

July 7, 2010 at 5:27 pm

Since it's in my top ten, I agree wholeheartedly that “The Third Man” shouldn't be out of print for any period of time, but let me dwell in my fantasy world where this Lionsgate/Studio Canal experiment dies a horrible death and the titles magically migrate back to Criterion (and speaking of titles which should exist on dvd, maybe someday Criterion will get “Johnny Guitar”, I can hope). I have been known to be one to hold a grudge against a company (during and even for years after the DIVX vs. DVD format wars, I avoided buying anything at Circuit City except for some dirt cheap 'loss leader' dvds on sale where I knew that they must be losing money to get people into the store. I cheered when Circuit City went under.). I'll be one of those $uckers wanting “The Third Man” CC Blu-ray. I already paid $80-100 each for 3 OOP CC Hitchcock titles on ebay — with the really great films I don't mind it too much, the real problem for me is the question of authenticity of said discs purchased off ebay sellers since bootlegs seem to exist when discs go up in value. I'm about to miss out on MoC's “Gandahar” disc which is going out of print. I think the only other title that MoC has lost is a Nic Ray film, “The Savage Innocents”. I don't want to think about a few titles I missed out due to license lapses back in my old anime days, but AnimEigo's loss of “Kimagure Orange Road” still irks me (likewise Disney/Buena Vista's annoying unwillingness to ever release Studio Ghibli's “Only Yesterday” in America, which they apparently have the license rights to do).
Ron Wetzel says:

May 25, 2011 at 9:57 pm

I have bought two (2) Lions gate The Third Man blu ray dvd’s and neither will play. I had a Sony 550 blu ray player and thought maybe it was outdated, bought a new 1911 Sony model BDP S780 and it will still not play either of the “The Third Man blu ray discs”. I would love to see this movie but 2 discs and a new blu ray player later I have not seen it. It’s the only disc either of my blu rays have refused to play.Any ideas would be appreciated.