It’s the 50th anniversary of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless and along with Rialto Pictures’s restoration that was recently released in four theaters and will expand throughout the year, Criterion will be releasing the film on Blu-ray on September 14 and the rest of the month holds a lot in store as well. The features will mirror those on the 2007 two-disc DVD edition, but for a complete list click here.
As has been known, it is now confirmed Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line will be released on a two-disc DVD and single-disc Blu-ray on September 28. I saw Malick’s adaptation of James Jones’s 1962 novel about the World War II battle for Guadalcanal for the first time last November and loved it and on Blu-ray, as with any Malick film, this will look amazing. Among the features you will get an audio commentary with director of photography John Toll, production designer Jack Fisk and producer Grant Hill, outtakes, interviews and even World War II newsreels featuring footage from Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands. For the complete list of features click here.
Next are a couple of films I am less familiar with starting with Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence starring David Bowie and serving as actor-director Takeshi Kitano’s (Zatoichi) first dramatic role. The film makes for the month’s second World War II feature in which Bowie plays a high-ranking British officer interned by the Japanese as a POW. My first experience with Oshima’s work came courtesy of Criterion and their Blu-ray presentation of In the Realm of Senses, which I reviewed click here.
Finally, there is Charade, a darkly comedic thriller starring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau and James Coburn. This is another one of Criterion’s previously released DVD titles getting the Blu-ray treatment and it will arrive on September 21 with an audio commentary with director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Peter Stone and a few others. For a complete list of features click here.
Strangely, this is the first time Criterion’s monthly slate hasn’t also included any DVD-only titles other than the Eclipse Series release “The Actuality Dramas of Allan King,” a Canadian director I personally hadn’t heard of.
