The Criterion Collection announced yesterday their September new releases, consisting of four brand-new titles and one Blu-ray update.
American artist David Lynch finally joins the collection, as many film aficionados have been hoping for years. Lynch's debut feature, Eraserhead, is getting the Criterion treatment, with a Blu-ray and a DVD edition coming (there will be no dual format in September). In terms of extras, Eraserhead will come together with the making-of documentary Eraserhead Stories, six Lynch short films (all of them previously released on the "The Short Films of David Lynch" DVD), and both new and archival interviews.
Two Criterion favorites are part of September's lineup also. I'm talking about Roman Polanski and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who in conjunct have now almost twenty films in the collection. Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul gets the Blu-ray update, after being released on Criterion DVD back in 2003. On the other hand, Polanski's William Shakespeare adaptation, 1971's Macbeth, is set to hit stores for the first time under the Criterion label.
The other brand-new titles are two black-and-white films from the early sixties: the British/American The Innocents (1961) and the French Sundays and Cybèle (1962). The first one is Jack Clayton's classic, co-written by Truman Capote, and considered by Martin Scorsese as one of the scariest horror movies of all time. The latter is Serge Bourguignon's drama, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Details of each September release are displayed in the gallery below.
Eraserhead (David Lynch, US, 1977)
Disc Features (Spine #725):
*New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
*“Eraserhead” Stories, a 2001 documentary by David Lynch on the making of the film
*New high-definition restorations of six short films by Lynch: Six Figures Getting Sick (1966), The Alphabet (1968), The Grandmother (1970), The Amputee, Part 1 and Part 2 (1974), and Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996), all with video introductions by Lynch
*New and archival interviews with cast and crew
*Trailer
Release date: 16 Sep 2014
Macbeth (Roman Polanski, UK, 1971)
Disc Features (Spine #726):
*New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
*New documentary about the making of the film, featuring interviews with director Roman Polanski, producer Andrew Braunsberg, assistant executive producer Victor Lownes, and stars Francesca Annis and Martin Shaw
*Polanski Meets Macbeth, a 1971 documentary by Frank Simon featuring rare footage of the film’s cast and crew at work
*Theatrical trailers
*More!
*PLUS: An essay by critic Terrence Rafferty
Release date: 23 Sep 2014
The Innocents (Jack Clayton, US, 1961)
Disc Features (Spine #727):
*New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
*Audio commentary featuring cultural historian Christopher Frayling
*New interview with cinematographer John Bailey on director of photography Freddie Francis and the look of the film
*Archival interviews with editor James Clark, Francis, and script supervisor Pamela Francis
*Trailer
*More!
*PLUS: An essay by critic Maitland McDonagh
Release date: 23 Sep 2014
Ali: Fears Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Germany, 1974)
Disc Features (Spine #198):
*New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
*Introduction from 2003 by filmmaker Todd Haynes
*Interviews from 2003 with actor Brigitte Mira and editor Thea Eymèsz
*Shahbaz Noshir’s 2002 short Angst isst Seele auf, which reunites Mira, Eymèsz, and cinematographer Jürgen Jürges to tell the story, based on real events, of an attack by neo-Nazis on a foreign actor while on his way to a stage performance of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s screenplay
*Signs of Vigorous Life: New German Cinema, a 1976 BBC program about the national film movement of which Fassbinder was a part
*Scene from Fassbinder’s 1970 film The American Soldier that inspired Ali
*Trailer
*PLUS: An essay by critic Chris Fujiwara
Release date: 30 Sep 2014
Sundays and Cybèle (Serge Bourguignon, France, 1962)
Disc Features (Spine #728):
*New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
*New interviews with director Serge Bourguignon and actor Patricia Gozzi
*Le sourire (1960), Bourguignon’s Palme d’Or–winning short documentary
*Trailer
*New English subtitle translation
*PLUS: An essay by critic Ginette Vincendeau
Release date: 30 Sep 2014