The Criterion Collection has announced two new titles and four Blu-ray upgrades set for release in June.
Debuting in the collection are both Richard Lester’s iconic Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night and Georges Franju’s 1963 adaptation of the pulp hero Judex. Upgrading to Blu-ray are Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’eclisse, Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock and Peter Davis’s documentary Hearts and Minds, returning to the collection after years of being out of print.
Special features for the new releases are listed as follows:
A HARD DAY’S NIGHT
– New 4K digital film restoration, approved by director Richard Lester, with two audio options—a monaural soundtrack and a new 5.1 surround soundtrack made by Apple Records—presented in uncompressed monaural and DTS-HD Master Audio on the Blu-ray
– Audio commentary featuring various members of the film’s cast and crew
-“In Their Own Voices,” a new piece combining interviews with the Beatles from 1964 with behind-the-scenes footage and photos
– “You Can’t Do That: The Making of ‘A Hard Day’s Night,'” a 1994 documentary program by producer Walter Shenson
– “Things They Said Today,” a 2002 documentary about the film featuring Lester, music producer George Martin, writer Alun Owen, cinematographer Gilbert Taylor, and others
– New piece about Lester’s early work, featuring a new audio interview with the director
– “The Running Jumping and Standing Still Film” (1959), Lester’s Oscar-nominated short featuring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan
– “Anatomy of a Style,: a new piece on Lester’s approach to editing
New interview with Mark Lewisohn, author of “Tune In: The Beatles: All These Years — Volume One”
– Deleted scene
– Trailers
– One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Howard Hampton
– More!
ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS
– New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Audio commentary featuring John Mercer, coauthor of “Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility,” and film scholar Tamar Jeffers-McDonald
– “Rock Hudson’s Home Movies” (1992), a groundbreaking essay film about the actor by Mark Rappaport
– French television interview with Sirk from 1982
– Excerpts from “Behind the Mirror: A Profile of Douglas Sirk,” a 1979 BBC documentary featuring rare interview footage with the director
– “Contract Kid: William Reynolds” on Douglas Sirk, a 2007 interview with the actor, who costarred in three Sirk films, including “All That Heaven Allows”
– Trailer
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Laura Mulvey and an excerpt from a 1971 essay by filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Sirk
L’ECCLISE
– New, restored high-definition digital film transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Audio commentary by film scholar Richard Peña, former program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center
– “Michelangelo Antonioni: The Eye That Changed Cinema” (2001), a fifty-six-minute documentary exploring the director’s life and career
– “Elements of Landscape,” a twenty-two-minute piece from 2005 about Antonioni and L’eclisse, featuring Italian film critic Adriano Aprà and longtime Antonioni friend Carlo di Carlo
New English subtitle translation
– PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by film critics Jonathan Rosenbaum and Gilberto Perez, as well as excerpts from Antonioni’s writing about his work
HEARTS AND MINDS
– High-definition digital restoration, supervised by director Peter Davis and cinematographer Richard Pearce, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Audio commentary featuring Davis
– A collection of over two hours of never-before-seen outtakes from the film, including interviews with presidential adviser George Ball, broadcast journalist David Brinkley, French journalist and historian Philippe Devillers, political activist Tony Russo, and General William Westmoreland
– PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Davis, film critic Judith Crist, and historians Robert K. Brigham, George C. Herring, and Ngo Vinh Long
JUDEX
– New 2K digital film restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Interview from 2007 with the film’s cowriter Jacques Champreux, the grandson of Louis Feuillade, cocreator of the silent serial “Judex”
– Interview from 2012 with actor Francine Bergé
Franju le visionnaire, a fifty-minute program from 1998 on director Franju’s career and imagination
– New English subtitle translation
– One Blu-ray and one DVD, with all content available in both formats
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Geoffrey O’Brien, along with reprinted writings by and excerpted interviews with Franju
PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK
– Remastered high-definition digital film transfer, supervised and approved by director Peter Weir, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
– Extended interview with Weir
– New piece on the making of the film, featuring interviews from 2003 with executive producer Patricia Lovell, producers Hal McElroy and Jim McElroy, and cast members
– New introduction by film scholar David Thomson, author of “The New Biographical Dictionary of Film”
– “A Recollection . . . Hanging Rock 1900” (1975), an on-set documentary hosted by Lovell and featuring interviews with Weir, actor Rachel Roberts, and source novel author Joan Lindsay
– “Homesdale” (1971), an award-winning black comedy by Weir
– Trailer
– PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by author Megan Abbott and an excerpt from film critic Marek Haltof’s 1996 book “Peter Weir: When Cultures Collide”; a new paperback edition of Lindsay’s original novel, previously out of print in the U.S.
