The Criterion Collection has announced nine titles for Blu-ray release in October. On October 8th, the studio will release René Clair's I Married A Witch (1942). On October 15th, the studio will release Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1960). On October 22, it will release a box set with five films directed by John Cassavetes and Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944). And on October 29th, the studio will release Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte (1961).
I Married a Witch -
Veronica Lake casts a seductive spell as a charmingly vengeful sorceress in this supernatural screwball classic. Many centuries after cursing the male descendants of the Salem puritan who sent her to the stake, this blonde bombshell with a broomstick finds herself drawn to one of them—a prospective governor (Fredric March) about to marry a spoiled socialite (Susan Hayward). This most delightful of the films the innovative French director René Clair made in Hollywood is a comic confection bursting with playful special effects and sparkling witticisms.
Special Features:
New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Audio interview with director René Clair
Original Trailer
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Guy Maddin and a 1970 interview with Clair
Eyes without a Face -
At his secluded chateau in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor (Pierre Brasseur) attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter's disfigured countenance—at a horrifying price. Eyes Without a Face, directed by the supremely talented Georges Franju, is rare in horror cinema for its odd mixture of the ghastly and the lyrical, and it has been a major influence on the genre in the decades since its release. There are images here—of terror, of gore, of inexplicable beauty—that once seen are never forgotten.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Blood of the Beasts, Georges Franju's 1949 documentary about the slaughterhouses of Paris (new high-definition digital restoration on the Blu-ray edition)
Archival interviews with Franju on horror, cinema, and the making of Blood of the Beasts
New interview with actor Edith Scob (Blu-ray only)
Excerpt from Les Grands-pères du crime, a 1985 documentary about Eyes Without a Face writers Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac
Trailers
Stills gallery of rare production photos and promotional material (DVD only)
Plus: A booklet featuring essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and film historian David Kalat
John Cassavetes: Five Films -
John Cassavetes was a genius, a visionary, and the progenitor of American independent film, but that doesn't begin to get at the generosity of his art. A former theater actor fascinated by the power of improvisation, Cassavetes brought his search for truth in performance to the screen. The five films in this collection—all of which the director maintained total control over by financing them himself and making them outside the studio system—are electrifying and compassionate creations, populated by all manner of humanity: beatniks, hippies, businessmen, actors, housewives, strippers, club owners, gangsters, children. Cassavetes has often been called an actor's director, but this body of work—even greater than the sum of its extraordinary parts—shows him to be an audience's director.
Shadows -
John Cassavetes' directorial debut revolves around an interracial romance between Lelia (Lelia Goldoni), a light-skinned black woman living in New York City with her two brothers, and Tony (Anthony Ray), a white man. The relationship crumbles when Tony meets Lelia's brother Hugh (Hugh Hurd), a talented dark-skinned jazz singer struggling to find work, and discovers the truth about Lelia's racial heritage. Shot on location in Manhattan with a cast and crew made up primarily of amateurs, Cassavetes' Shadows is a visionary work that is widely considered the forerunner of the American independent film movement.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer
Video interviews with actress Lelia Goldoni and associate producer Seymour Cassel
Rare silent 16 mm footage of John Cassavetes and Burt Lane's acting workshop
Restoration demonstration
Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
Theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Gary Giddins and a 1961 article by Cassavetes
Faces -
The disintegration of a marriage is dissected in John Cassavetes' searing Faces. Shot in high-contrast 16 mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty marriage in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly powerful, nervy performances from Marley, Carlin, and Cassavetes regulars Gena Rowlands and Seymour Cassel, Faces confronts suburban alienation and the battle of the sexes with a brutal honesty and compassion rarely matched in cinema.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer
Seventeen-minute alternate opening sequence, from an early edit of the film
Episode of the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps, from 1968, dedicated to Cassavetes, featuring rare interviews and behind-the-scenes footage
Making "Faces", a 2004 documentary including interviews with actors Lynn Carlin, Seymour Cassel, and Gena Rowlands and director of photography Al Ruban
Lighting & Shooting the Film, a study of the techniques and equipment used on Faces by Al Ruban
English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by Stuart Klawans
A Woman Under the Influence -
John Cassavetes' devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family's struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple deeply in love yet unable to express that love in terms the other can understand, the film is an uncompromising portrait of domestic turmoil. The Criterion Collection is proud to present one of the benchmark films of American independent cinema—a heroic document from a true maverick director.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer
Audio commentary featuring longtime John Cassavetes collaborators Michael Ferris (camera operator) and Bo Harwood (sound recordist/composer)
Video conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Peter Falk
Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted in 1975
Trailer
Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
PLUS: An essay by film critic Kent Jones and an interview with Cassavetes from 1975
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie -
John Cassavetes engages film noir in his own inimitable style with The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Ben Gazzara brilliantly portrays gentlemen's club owner Cosmo Vitelli, a man dedicated to pretenses of composure and self-possession. When he runs afoul of a group of gangsters, Cosmo is forced to commit a horrible crime in a last-ditch effort to save his beloved club and his way of life. Suspenseful, mesmerizing, and idiosyncratic, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is a thought-provoking examination of desperation and masculine identity.
Special Features:
Restored high-definition digital transfer of John Cassavetes' original 135-minute edit of the film
Restored high-definition digital transfer of Cassavetes' 108-minute edit for the 1978 theatrical rerelease
Video interviews with star Ben Gazzara and producer Al Ruban
Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson, conducted after the film's release
Stills gallery featuring rare behind-the-scenes production photos
Opening Night -
Broadway actress Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) rehearses for her latest play, about a woman unable to admit that she is aging. When she witnesses the accidental death of an adoring young fan, she begins to confront the personal and professional turmoil she faces in her own life. Featuring a moving performance by Rowlands (and with some scenes shot on stages with live audiences reacting freely to the writing and performing), John Cassavetes' Opening Night exposes the drama of an actress who at great personal cost makes a part her own.
Special Features:
New high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound, and enhanced for widescreen televisions
New video conversation between actors Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara
New video interview with director of photography and producer Al Ruban
Audio interview with Cassavetes by film historians Michel Ciment and Michael Wilson conducted after the film's release
Trailers
English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired
Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
The Uninvited -
A pair of siblings (Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey) from London purchase a surprisingly affordable, lonely cliff-top house in Cornwall, only to discover that it actually carries a ghostly price; soon they're caught up in a bizarre romantic triangle from beyond the grave. Rich in atmosphere, The Uninvited, directed by Lewis Allen, was groundbreaking for the seriousness with which it treated the haunted-house genre, and it remains an elegant and eerie experience, featuring a classic score by Victor Young. A tragic family past, a mysteriously locked room, cold chills, bumps in the night—this gothic Hollywood classic has it all.
Special Features:
New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New visual essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme
La Notte -
This psychologically acute, visually striking modernist work was director Michelangelo Antonioni's follow-up to the epochal L'avventura. Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau star as a novelist and his frustrated wife who, over the course of one night, confront their alienation from each other and the achingly empty bourgeois Milan circles in which they travel. Antonioni's muse Monica Vitti smolders as an industrialist's tempting daughter. Moodily sensual cinematography and subtly expressive performances make La notte an indelible illustration of romantic and social deterioration.
Special Features:
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New interview with film critic Adriano Aprà and film historian Carlo Di Carlo
New interview with professor Giuliana Bruno on the role of architecture in La notte
Trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Richard Brody and a 1961 article by director Michelangelo Antonioni
