Wie jedes Jahr im Dezember geht es bei Criterion auch 2011 etwas ruhiger zu. Nur vier neue Titel werden auf Blu-ray erscheinen, drei davon sind bereits auf DVD erhältlich. Gerade bei den beiden Seijun-Suzuki-Filmen “Tokyo Drifter – Der Mann aus Tokio [aka: Abrechnung in Tokio] / Tôkyô nagaremono” [J 1966] und ”Beruf Mörder / Koroshi no rakuin / Branded to Kill” [J 1967] ist eine Aufwertung im Bereich der Bildqualität notwendig, konnten die bisherigen DVDs – die immerhin aus dem Jahr 1999 stammen – doch eigentlich noch nie richtig überzeugen. Aus diesem Grund gibt es davon auch gleich DVD-Neuauflagen, basierend auf den neuen Mastern. Mit “Eine Dame verschwindet / The Lady Vanishes” [GB 1938] wird erst der vierte Film von Alfred Hitchcock auf Blu-ray präsentiert. Dieser liegt bei Criterion bereits als DVD-Neuauflage vor. Völlig neu innerhalb der Criterion Collection ist mit “Serenade zu dritt / Design for Living” [USA 1933] ein weiterer Film von Ernst Lubitsch.
 
6. Dezember 2011
Blu-ray #3: “Eine Dame verschwindet / The Lady Vanishes” [GB 1938, Alfred Hitchcock]
1 Disc
$39.95
1.33:1
English

In Alfred Hitchcock’s most quick-witted and devilish comic thriller, the beautiful Margaret Lockwood, traveling across Europe by train, meets a charming old spinster (Dame May Whitty), who them seems to disappear into thin air. The younger woman turns investigator and finds herself drawn into a complex web of mystery and high adventure. Also starring Michael Redgrave, The Lady Vanishes remains one of the great filmmaker’s purest delights.

• High-definition digital restoration
• Audio commentary by film historian Bruce Eder
• Crook’s Tour, a 1941 feature-length adventure film starring Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as Charters and Caldicott, their beloved characters from The Lady Vanishes
• Excerpts from François Truffaut’s legendary 1962 audio interview with director Alfred Hitchcock
• Mystery Train, a video essay about Hitchcock and The Lady Vanishes by Hitchcock scholar Leonard Leff
• Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes photos and promotional art
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Geoffrey O’Brien and Hitchcock scholar Charles Barr

 
13. Dezember 2011
Blu-ray + DVD #38: “Beruf Mörder / Koroshi no rakuin / Branded to Kill” [J 1967, Seijun Suzuki]
Blu-ray: 1 Disc | $39.95
DVD: 1 Disc | $29.95
2.35:1
Japanese

When Japanese New Wave bad boy Seijun Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece to the executives at his studio, he was promptly fired. Branded to Kill tells the ecstatically bent story of a yakuza assassin (chipmunk-cheeked superstar Joe Shishido) with a fetish for sniffing boiled rice who botches a job and ends up a target himself. This is Suzuki at his most extreme—the flabbergasting pinnacle of his sixties pop-art aesthetic.

• New high-definition digital restoration
• Uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
• Interview with Suzuki from 1997
• New interview with actor Joe Shishido
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic and historian Tony Rayns, author of Branded to Thrill: The Delirious Cinema of Suzuki Seijun, and a statement by the film’s art director, Sukezo Kawahara

 
13. Dezember 2011
Blu-ray + DVD #39: “Tokyo Drifter – Der Mann aus Tokio [aka: Abrechnung in Tokio] / Tôkyô nagaremono” [J 1966, Seijun Suzuki]
Blu-ray: 1 Disc | $39.95
DVD: 1 Disc | $29.95
2.35:1
Japanese

In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Phoenix Tetsu’s attempt to go straight is squashed when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. This onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors got director Seijun Suzuki in trouble with Nikkatsu studio heads, who were put off by his anything-goes, in-your-face aesthetic, equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.

• New high-definition digital restoration
• Uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Video piece featuring new interviews with director Seijun Suzuki and assistant director Masami Kuzuu
• Interview with Suzuki from 1997
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Howard Hampton

6. Dezember 2011
Blu-ray + DVD #592: “Serenade zu dritt / Design for Living” [USA 1933, Ernst Lubitsch]
Blu-ray: 1 Disc | $39.95
 DVD: 1 Disc | $29.95
1.33:1
English

Gary Cooper, Fredric March, and Miriam Hopkins play a trio of Americans in Paris who enter into a very adult “gentleman’s” agreement, in this continental pre-Code comedy freely adapted by Ben Hecht from a play by Noël Coward, and directed by Ernst Lubitsch. A risqué relationship comedy and a witty take on creative pursuits, it concerns a commercial artist (Hopkins) unable—or unwilling—to choose between the equally dashing painter (Cooper) and playwright (March) she meets on a train en route to the City of Light. Design for Living is Lubitsch at his most adroit, an entertainment at once debonair and racy, featuring three stars at the height of their allure.

• New high-definition digital restoration
• Uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• “The Clerk,” starring Charles Laughton—director Ernst Lubitsch’s segment of the 1932 film If I Had a Million, which he made just before Design for Living
• Selected-scene commentary by film professor William Paul
• Play of the Week: A Choice of Coward, a 1964 British television production of the play Design for Living, introduced on camera by playwright Noël Coward
• New interview with film scholar and screenwriter Joseph McBride on Lubitsch and Ben Hecht’s screen adaptation of the Coward play
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Kim Morgan