In April, there will be five releases from The Criterion Collection. The new additions are Frank Borzage’s History Is Made at Night, Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder, and Olivier Assayas’s Irma Vep. Getting high-def upgrades are Anthony Mann’s The Furies and Jean-Luc Godard’s Masculin féminin. Read on to learn more about them.
History Is Made at Night (#685) out Apr 13
Suffused with intoxicating romanticism, History Is Made at Night is a sublime paean to love from Frank Borzage, classic Hollywood’s supreme poet of carnal and spiritual desire. On the run through Europe from her wealthy, cruelly possessive husband, an American (Jean Arthur) is thrown together by fate with a suave stranger (Charles Boyer)—and soon the two are bound in a consuming, seemingly impossible affair that stretches across continents and brings them to the very edge of catastrophe. Lent a palpable erotic charge by the chemistry between its leads, this delirious vision of lovers beset by the world passes through a dizzying array of tonal shifts—from melodrama to romantic comedy to noir to disaster thriller—smoothly guided by Borzage’s unwavering allegiance to the power of love. The special features are:
- New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New conversation between author Hervé Dumont (Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic) and film historian Peter Cowie
- Interview from 2019 with critic Farran Smith Nehme about director Frank Borzage’s obsession with romantic love
- Audio excerpts of a 1958 interview with Borzage from the collection of the George Eastman Museum
- Radio adaptation of the film from 1940, broadcast by The Screen Guild Theater and starring Charles Boyer
- New program about the restoration
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Dan Callahan
Memories of Murder (#1073) out Apr 20
In his breakthrough second feature, Bong Joon Ho explodes the conventions of the policier with thrillingly subversive, genre-defying results. Based on the true story of a string of serial killings that rocked a rural community in the 1980s, Memories of Murder stars New Korean Cinema icon Song Kang Ho as the local officer who reluctantly joins forces with a seasoned Seoul detective (Kim Sang Kyung) to investigate the crimes—leading each man on a wrenching, yearslong odyssey of failure and frustration that will drive him to the existential edge. Combining a gripping procedural with a vivid social portrait of the everyday absurdity of life under military rule, Bong fashions a haunting journey into ever-deepening darkness that begins as a black-comic satire and ends as a soul-shattering encounter with the abyss. The director-approved special features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, supervised by cinematographer Kim Hyung Ku and approved by director Bong Joon Ho, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Two 2009 commentaries featuring Bong and members of the cast and crew, plus a new commentary featuring critic Tony Rayns
- New program featuring filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
- New interview with Bong about the real-life serial killer who inspired the film
- Documentary from 2004 on the making of the film
- Deleted scenes, with optional audio commentary by Bong
- New program about the use of sound in Bong’s work, featuring film scholar Jeff Smith
- Incoherence, a 1994 student film by Bong, with a new introduction by the director
- Teaser, trailer, and TV spot
- PLUS: An essay by critic and novelist Ed Park
The Furies (#435) out Apr 20
Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston are at their fierce finest in this crackling western melodrama by master Hollywood craftsman Anthony Mann. In 1870s New Mexico Territory, megalomaniacal widowed ranch owner T. C. Jeffords (Huston, in his final role) butts heads with his firebrand of a daughter, Vance (Stanwyck), over her dowry, choice of husband, and, finally, ownership of the land itself. Sophisticated in its view of frontier settlement and ablaze with searing domestic drama, The Furies is an often-overlooked treasure of American filmmaking, boasting Oscar-nominated cinematography and vivid supporting turns from Judith Anderson, Wendell Corey, and Gilbert Roland. The special features are:
- High-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary from 2008 featuring film historian Jim Kitses
- New program featuring critic Imogen Sara Smith (Blu-ray only)
- The Movies: “Action Speaks Louder Than Words,” a 1967 television interview with director Anthony Mann
- Rare on-camera interview with actor Walter Huston, made for the movie-theater series Intimate Interviews in 1931
- Interview from 2008 with Nina Mann, the director’s daughter
- Stills gallery of rare behind-the-scenes photos (DVD only)
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Robin Wood and a 1957 Cahiers du cinéma interview with Mann, as well as a new printing of the 1948 novel by Niven Busch on which the film is based
Irma Vep (#1074) out Apr 27
The live-wire international breakthrough of Olivier Assayas stars a magnetic Maggie Cheung as a version of herself: a Hong Kong action-movie star who arrives in Paris to play the latex-clad lead in a remake of Louis Feuillade’s classic silent crime serial Les vampires. What she finds is a behind-the-scenes tangle of barely controlled chaos as egos clash, romantic attractions simmer, and an obsessive director (a cannily cast Jean-Pierre Léaud) drives himself to the brink to realize his vision. Blending blasts of silent cinema, martial-arts flicks, and the music of Sonic Youth and Luna into a hallucinatory swirl of postmodern cool, Assayas composes a witty critique of the nineties French film industry and the eternal tension between art and commercial entertainment. The director-approved special features are:
- New 2K digital restoration from the original camera negative, approved by director Olivier Assayas, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with Assayas
- On the Set of “Irma Vep,” a behind-the-scenes featurette
- Interview from 2003 with Assayas and critic Charles Tesson
- Interview from 2003 with actors Maggie Cheung and Nathalie Richard
- Musidora, the Tenth Muse (2013), a documentary on the actor who originated the role of Irma Vep
- Les vampires: Hypnotic Eyes (1916), the sixth episode in Louis Feuillade’s silent-film serial
- Man Yuk: A Portrait of Maggie Cheung, a 1997 short film by Assayas
- Black-and-white rushes for the film
- English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by critic Aliza Ma
Masculin féminin (#308) out Apr 27
With Masculin féminin, the ruthless stylist and iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard introduces the world to “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola,” through a gang of restless youths engaged in hopeless love affairs with music, revolution, and one another. French New Wave icon Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Paul, an idealistic would-be intellectual struggling to forge a relationship with the adorable pop star Madeleine (real-life yé-yé girl Chantal Goya). Through their tempestuous affair, Godard fashions a candid and wildly funny free-form examination of youth culture in pulsating 1960s Paris, mixing satire and tragedy as only Godard can. The special features are:
- New 4K digital restoration, approved by cinematographer Willy Kurant, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- Interview from 1966 with actor Chantal Goya
- Interviews from 2004 and 2005 with Goya, Kurant, and Jean-Luc Godard collaborator Jean-Pierre Gorin
- Discussion of the film from 2004 between film critics Freddy Buache and Dominique Païni
- Footage from Swedish television of Godard directing the “film within the film” scene
- Trailers
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Adrian Martin and a reprint of a report from the set by French journalist Philippe Labro
