Das DVD- und Blu-ray Programm von Criterion für Februar 2010 wurde bekannt gegeben. Unter den Filmen befindet sich auch Max Ophüls “Lola Montez / Lola Montès” [F / BRD 1955], der in der von Marcel Ophüls neu restaurierten französischen Sprachfassung präsentiert wird. Die vom Münchner Filmmuseum rekonstruierte deutsche Premierenfassung wird leider nicht mit auf der DVD/Blu-ray enthalten sein, da Marcel Ophüls sich gegen die deutsche Fassung ausgesprochen hat. Mehr zu den verschiedenen Schnitt- und Tonfassungen hatte ich bereits im Februar geschrieben.

23. Februar 2010
DVD #488: “Wiedersehen in Howards End / Howards End” [GB 1992, James Ivory]
2 Discs
$29.95
2.35:1
English

The pinnacle of the decades-long collaboration between producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, Howards End is a luminous vision of E. M. Forster’s cutting 1910 novel about class divisions in Edwardian England. Emma Thompson won an Academy Award for her dynamic portrayal of Margaret Schlegel, a flighty yet compassionate middle-class intellectual whose friendship with the dying wife (Vanessa Redgrave) of rich capitalist Henry Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins) commences an intricately woven tale of money, love, and death that encompasses the country’s highest and lowest social echelons. With a brilliant, layered script by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who also won an Oscar) and a roster of gripping performances, Howards End is a work of both great beauty and vivid darkness, and one of cinema’s best literary adaptations.

Disc Features

• High-definition digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts and approved by director James Ivory
• New video appreciation of the late Ismail Merchant by director Ivory (available only on the Blu-ray edition)
• Building “Howards End,” a documentary featuring interviews with Ivory, Merchant, Helena Bonham Carter, costume designer Jenny Beavan, and Academy Award–winning production designer Luciana Arrighi
• The Design of “Howards End,” a detailed look at the costume and production designs for the film, including original sketches
• The Wandering Company, a 50-minute documentary about the history of Merchant Ivory Productions
• Original 1992 behind-the-scenes featurette
• Original theatrical trailer

16. Februar 2010
Blu-ray #502: “Revanche” [A 2008, Götz Spielmann]
1 Disc
$39.95
1.85:1
German

A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, Revanche is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works as an assistant in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara. Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop and his seemingly content wife. With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, existential, and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Götz Spielmann
• dts-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• New video interview with Spielmann
• The Making of “Revanche,” a half-hour documentary shot on the film’s set
• Foreign Land, Spielmann’s award-winning student short film, with an introduction by the director
• U.S. theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Wood

16. Februar 2010
DVD #502: “Revanche” [A 2008, Götz Spielmann]
2 Discs
$39.95
1.85:1
German

A gripping thriller and a tragic drama of nearly Greek proportions, Revanche is the stunning, Oscar-nominated international breakthrough of Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works as an assistant in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara. Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop and his seemingly content wife. With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, existential, and surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Götz Spielmann
• New video interview with Spielmann
• The Making of “Revanche,” a half-hour documentary shot on the film’s set
• Foreign Land, Spielmann’s award-winning student short film, with an introduction by the director
• U.S. theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: An essay by critic Michael Wood

16. Februar 2010
Blu-ray #503: “Lola Montez / Lola Montès” [F / BRD 1955, Max Ophüls]
1 Disc
$39.95
2.55:1
English, German, French

Lola Montès is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts Montès’s scandalous past through the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she ends up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola Montès is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a meticulous, one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Uncompressed stereo soundtrack
• Audio commentary featuring Max Ophuls scholar Susan White
• “Max Ophuls ou le plaisir de tourner,” a 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of Ophuls’s collaborators
• Max by Marcel, a new documentary by Marcel Ophuls about his father and the making of Lola Montès
• Silent footage of actress Martine Carol demonstrating the various glamorous hairstyles in Lola Montès
• Theatrical rerelease trailer from Rialto Pictures
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Gary Giddins

16. Februar 2010
DVD #503: “Lola Montez / Lola Montès” [F / BRD 1955, Max Ophüls]
2 Discs
$39.95
2.55:1
English, German, French

Lola Montès is a visually ravishing, narratively daring dramatization of the life of the notorious courtesan and showgirl, played by Martine Carol. With his customary cinematographic flourish and, for the first time, vibrant color, Max Ophuls charts Montès’s scandalous past through the bombastic ringmaster (Peter Ustinov) of the American circus where she ends up performing. Ophuls’s final film, Lola Montès is at once a magnificent romantic melodrama, a meditation on the lurid fascination with celebrity, and a meticulous, one-of-a-kind movie spectacle.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Audio commentary featuring Max Ophuls scholar Susan White
• “Max Ophuls ou le plaisir de tourner,” a 1965 episode of the French television program Cinéastes de notre temps, featuring interviews with many of Ophuls’s collaborators
• Max by Marcel, a new documentary by Marcel Ophuls about his father and the making of Lola Montès
• Silent footage of actress Martine Carol demonstrating the various glamorous hairstyles in Lola Montès
• Theatrical rerelease trailer from Rialto Pictures
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Gary Giddins

16. Februar 2010
Blu-ray #504: “Hunger” [GB 2008, Steve McQueen]
1 Disc
$39.95
2.35:1
English

With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’s final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen
• dts-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
• A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
• “The Provo’s Last Card?” a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the causes and effects of the IRA hunger strikes at the Maze prison and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chris Darke

16. Februar 2010
DVD #504: “Hunger” [GB 2008, Steve McQueen]
1 Disc
$39.95
2.35:1
English

With Hunger, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’s final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, Hunger is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by director Steve McQueen
• Video interviews with McQueen and actor Michael Fassbender
• A short documentary on the making of Hunger, including interviews with McQueen, Fassbender, actors Liam Cunningham, Stuart Graham, and Brian Milligan, writer Enda Walsh, and producer Robin Gutch
• “The Provo’s Last Card?” a 1981 episode of the BBC program Panorama, about the causes and effects of the IRA hunger strikes at the Maze prison and the political and civilian reactions across Northern Ireland
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chris Darke

23. Februar 2010
DVD #505: “Kein Platz für Eltern / Make Way for Tomorrow” [USA 1937, Leo McCarey]
1 Disc
$29.95
1.33:1
English

Leo McCarey’s Make Way for Tomorrow is one of the great unsung Hollywood masterpieces, an enormously moving Depression-era depiction of the frustrations of family, aging, and the generation gap. Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi headline a cast of incomparable character actors, starring as an elderly couple who must move in with their grown children after the bank takes their home, yet end up separated and subject to their offspring’s selfish whims. An inspiration for Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Make Way for Tomorrow is among American cinema’s purest tearjerkers, all the way to its unflinching ending, which McCarey refused to change despite studio pressure.

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer
• Tomorrow, Yesterday, and Today, a new video interview featuring filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich discussing the career of Leo McCarey and his thoughts on Make Way for Tomorrow
• New video interview with critic Gary Giddins in which he talks about McCarey’s artistry and the political and social context of the film
• PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critic Tag Gallagher and filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier, as well as an excerpt from film scholar Robin Wood’s 1998 piece “Leo McCarey and ‘Family Values’”