Mystery lurks this May with a missing man in San Francisco’s Chinatown in Wayne Wang’s Chan Is Missing, a mistaken identity in World War II–era Paris in Joseph Losey’s Mr. Klein, and the sinister scheme in hard-boiled LA that put film noir on the map in Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Plus: The maker of Tampopo, Juzo Itami,takes on the Japanese way of death in The Funeral, and Mira Nair’s modern cross-cultural romance, Mississippi Masala, gets a long-awaited restoration. Read on to learn more about them.
Mr. Klein (#1123) out May 10
One of the crowning achievements of blacklisted Hollywood director Joseph Losey’s European exile, the spellbinding modernist mystery Mr. Klein puts a chilling twist on the wrong-man thriller. Alain Delon delivers a standout performance as Robert Klein, a decadent art dealer in Paris during World War II who makes a tidy profit buying up paintings from his desperate Jewish clients. As Klein searches for a Jewish man with the same name for whom he has been mistaken, he finds himself plunged into a Kafkaesque nightmare in which his identity seems to dissolve and the forces of history to close in on him. Met with considerable controversy on its release for its portrayal of the real-life wrongdoings of the Vichy government, this haunting, disturbingly beautiful film shivers with existential dread as it traces a society’s descent into fascistic fear and inhumanity. The Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Interviews with critic Michel Ciment and editor Henri Lanoë
- Interviews from 1976 with director Joseph Losey and actor Alain Delon
- Story of a Day, a 1986 documentary on the real-life Vél d’Hiv Roundup, a central historical element of Mr. Klein
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau
The Funeral (#1125) out May 17
It’s death, Japanese style, in the rollicking and wistful first feature from maverick writer-director Juzo Itami. In the wake of her father’s sudden passing, a successful actor (Itami’s wife and frequent collaborator, Nobuko Miyamoto) and her lascivious husband (Tsutomu Yamazaki) leave Tokyo and return to her family home to oversee a traditional funeral. Over the course of three days of mourning that bring illicit escapades in the woods, a surprisingly materialistic priest (Chishu Ryu), and cinema’s most epic sandwich handoff, the tensions between public propriety and private hypocrisy are laid bare. Deftly weaving dark comedy with poignant family drama, The Funeral is a fearless satire of the clash between old and new in Japanese society in which nothing, not even the finality of death, is off-limits. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- High-definition restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interviews with actors Nobuko Miyamoto and Manpei Ikeuchi
- Creative Marriages: Juzo Itami & Nobuko Miyamoto, a short program produced by the Criterion Channel
- Commercials for Ichiroku Tart by director Juzo Itami
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by author Pico Iyer and, for the Blu-ray, excerpts from Itami’s 1985 book Diary of “The Funeral” and from a 2007 remembrance of Itami by actor Tsutomu Yamazaki
Mississippi Masala (#1127) out May 24
The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, twentysomething Mina (Sarita Choudhury) spends her days cleaning rooms in an Indian-run motel in Mississippi. When she falls for the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington), their passionate romance challenges the prejudices of both of their families and exposes the rifts between the region’s Indian and African American communities. Tackling thorny issues of racism, colorism, culture clash, and displacement with bighearted humor and keen insight, Nair serves up a sweet, sexy, and deeply satisfying celebration of love’s power. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director Mira Nair and director of photography Ed Lachman, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New audio commentary featuring Nair
- New conversation between actor Sarita Choudhury and film critic Devika Girish
- New interviews with Lachman, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and production designer and photographer Mitch Epstein
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Bilal Qureshi and, for the Blu-ray, excerpts from Nair’s production journal
Chan Is Missing (#1124) out May 31
A mystery man, a murder, and a wad of missing cash—in his wryly offbeat breakthrough, Wayne Wang updates the ingredients of classic film noir for the streets of contemporary San Francisco’s Chinatown. When their business partner disappears with the money they had planned to use for a cab license, driver Jo (Wood Moy) and his nephew Steve (Marc Hayashi) scour the city’s back alleys, waterfronts, and Chinese restaurants to track him down. But what begins as a search for a missing man gradually turns into a far deeper and more elusive investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Chinese American identity. The first feature by an Asian American filmmaker to play widely and get mainstream critical appreciation, Chan Is Missing is a continuously fresh and surprising landmark of indie invention that playfully flips decades of cinematic stereotypes on their heads. The Director-Approved Special Features are:
- High-definition digital master, approved by director Wayne Wang, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Is Chan Still Missing?, a making-of documentary directed by Debbie Lum
- New conversations between Wang and critic Hua Hsu and Wang and filmmaker Ang Lee
- Conversation between Wang and film programmer Dennis Lim
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Oliver Wang
Double Indemnity (#1126) out May 31
Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously evil as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter Raymond Chandler, director Billy Wilder launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this paragon of film-noir fatalism from James M. Cain’s pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell her insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from Edward G. Robinson and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer John F. Seitz, Double Indemnity is one of the most wickedly perverse stories ever told and the cynical standard by which all noir must be measured. The Special Features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- Audio commentary featuring film critic Richard Schickel
- New interview with film scholar Noah Isenberg, editor of Billy Wilder on Assignment
- New conversation between film historians Eddie Muller and Imogen Sara Smith
- Billy, How Did You Do It?, a 1992 film by Volker Schlöndorff and Gisela Grischow featuring interviews with director Billy Wilder
- Shadows of Suspense, a 2006 documentary on the making of Double Indemnity
- Audio excerpts from 1971 and 1972 interviews with cinematographer John F. Seitz
- Radio adaptations from 1945 and 1950
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
