Criterion Crazy: Jesus & Scorsese, Lean & Coward, and Titanic & Not James Cameron among March wave

The other Titanic movie is making its way to blu-ray
via Criterion, March 2012

Criterion have announced their March wave, which is set to include blu-ray upgrades of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) and Roy Ward Baker's tragic titanic epic A Night to Remember (1958), and an impressive 4-fim boxset of director David Lean's collaborations with playwright Noël Coward.

Of the eight titles announced for March, three--The Last Temptation of Christ, A Night to Remember and David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945)--were previously released on DVD by the Criterion Collection. The other five--D.A. Pennebacker and Chris Hegedus' documentary The War Room (1993), Mikhail Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent (1959) and the three other films in the Lean-Coward boxset, In Which We Serve (1942), This Happy Breed (1944) and Blithe Spirit (1945)--are new to both the Collection and Region-A blu-ray (and will also be available on DVD on the same date).


On March 13 Criterion will release Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

The Last Temptation of Christ synopsis from Criterion:

The Last Temptation of Christ, by Martin Scorsese, is a towering achievement. Though it initially engendered enormous controversy, the film can now be viewed as the remarkable, profoundly personal work of faith that it is. This fifteen-year labor of love, an adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis’s landmark novel that imagines an alternate fate for Jesus Christ, features outstanding performances by Willem Dafoe, Barbara Hershey, Harvey Keitel, Harry Dean Stanton, and David Bowie; bold cinematography by the great Michael Ballhaus; and a transcendent score by Peter Gabriel.

The blu-ray--an upgrade of spine #80--will be presented in 1.85:1 color widescreen AVC MPEG-4 1080p HD, with DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround and will include:

• Restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and editor Thelma Schoonmaker, with a 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack by supervising sound editor Skip Lievsay
• Audio commentary featuring director Martin Scorsese, actor Willem Dafoe, and writers Paul Schrader and Jay Cocks
• Galleries of production stills, research materials, and costume designs
• Location production footage shot by Scorsese
• Interview with composer Peter Gabriel, with a stills gallery of traditional instruments used in the score
• PLUS: An essay by film critic David Ehrenstein

On March 20, Criterion will release Pennebacker's The War Room and a slice of soviet cinema, Kalatozov's Letter Never Sent. 

The War Room synopsis from Criterion:

The 1992 presidential election was a triumph not only for Bill Clinton but also for the new breed of strategists who guided him to the White House and changed the face of politics in the process. For this thrilling, behind-closed-doors account of that campaign, renowned cinema verité filmmakers D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus closely followed the brainstorming and bull sessions of Clinton’s crack team of consultants—especially the folksy James Carville and the preppy George Stephanopoulos, who became media stars in their own right as they injected a youthful spirit and spontaneity into the process of campaigning. Fleet-footed and entertaining, The War Room is a vivid document of a political moment whose truths (“It’s the economy, stupid!”) still ring in our ears.

The director-approved special edition blu-ray--spine #602--will be presented in 1.33:1 color AVC MPEG-4 1080p HD, with DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 surround and will include: 

• New, restored high-definition digital transfer, approved by directors D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, with 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Return of the War Room, a 2008 documentary in which advisers James Carville, George Stephanopoulos, and Paul Begala and others reflect on the effect the Clinton war room had on the way campaigns are run
• Making “The War Room,” a conversation between the filmmakers about the difficulties of shooting in the campaign’s fast-paced environment
• Panel discussion hosted by the William J. Clinton Foundation and featuring Carville, Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan, journalist Ron Brownstein, and surprise guest Bill Clinton
• Interview with strategist Stanley Greenberg on the increasing importance of polling
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by writer Louis Menand

Letter Never Sent synopsis from Criterion:

The great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov, known for his virtuosic, emotionally gripping films, perhaps never directed one more visually astonishing than Letter Never Sent. This absorbing tale of exploration and survival concerns four members of a geological expedition who are stranded in the bleak and unforgiving Siberian wilderness while on a mission to find diamonds. Luxuriating in wide-angle beauty and featuring one daring shot after another (the brilliant cinematography is by Kalatozov’s frequent collaborator Sergei Urusevsky), Letter Never Sent is a fascinating piece of cinematic history and a universal adventure of the highest order.

The blu-ray--spine #601--will be presented in 1.37:1 black-and-white AVC MPEG-4 1080p HD, with Russian 1.0 LPCM mono and English subtitles and will include:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Dina Iordanova

On March 27 both the big Lean-Coward boxset dubbed David Lean Directs Noël Coward and Ward Baker's A Night to Remember make their blu-ray debut from Criterion. 

David Lean Directs Noël Coward collector's set synopsis from Criterion:

In the 1940s, the wit of playwright Noël Coward and the craft of filmmaker David Lean melded harmoniously in one of cinema’s greatest writer-director collaborations. With the wartime military drama sensation In Which We Serve, Coward and Lean (along with producing partners Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan) embarked on a series of literate, socially engaged, and enormously entertaining pictures that ranged from domestic epic (This Happy Breed) to whimsical comedy (Blithe Spirit) to poignant romance (Brief Encounter). These films created a lasting testament to Coward’s artistic legacy and introduced Lean’s visionary talents to the world. Individual synopses:

1. In Which We Serve--In the midst of World War II, the renowned playwright Noël Coward engaged a young film editor named David Lean to help him realize his vision for an action drama about a group of Royal Navy sailors (roles that would be filled by Coward himself, Bernard Miles, and John Mills, among others) fighting.
2. This Happy Breed--David Lean brings to vivid emotional life Noël Coward’s epic chronicle of a working-class family in the London suburbs over the course of two decades.
3. Blithe Spirit--David Lean’s delightful film version of Noël Coward’s theater sensation stars Rex Harrison as a novelist who cheekily invites a medium to his house to conduct a séance, hoping the experience will inspire a book he’s working on.
4. Brief Encounter--After a chance meeting on a train platform, a married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a muted but passionate, ultimately doomed, love affair.

The blu-ray boxset--spine #603--includes four films: In Which We Serve, This Happy Breed, Blithe Spirit and Brief Encounter. Each film will be presented on its own disc in 1.37:1 black-and-white (color for Breed and Spirit) AVC MPEG-4 1080p HD, with 1.0 LPCM soundtracks and will include:

• New high-definition digital transfers of the BFI National Archive’s 2008 restorations, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-ray editions
• Audio commentary on Brief Encounter by film historian Bruce Eder
• New interviews with Noël Coward scholar Barry Day on all of the films
• Interview with cinematographer-screenwriter-producer Ronald Neame from 2010
• Short documentaries from 2000 on the making of In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter
• David Lean: A Self Portrait, a 1971 television documentary on Lean’s career
• Episode of the British television series The Southbank Show from 1992 on the life and career of Coward
• Audio recording of a 1969 conversation between Richard Attenborough and Coward at London’s National Film Theatre
• Trailers
• PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by Ian Christie, Terrence Rafferty, Farran Smith Nehme, Geoffrey O’Brien, and Kevin Brownlow

A Night to Remember synopsis from Criterion:

On April 14, 1912, just before midnight, the unsinkable Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours, it had plunged to the bottom of the sea, taking with it more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. In his unforgettable rendering of Walter Lord’s book of the same name, A Night to Remember, the acclaimed British director Roy Ward Baker depicts with sensitivity, awe, and a fine sense of tragedy the ship’s final hours. Featuring remarkably restrained performances, A Night to Remember is cinema’s subtlest, finest dramatization of this monumental twentieth-century catastrophe.

The blu-ray--an upgrade of spine #7--will be presented in 1.66:1 black-and-white widescreen AVC MPEG-4 1080p HD, with 1.0 LPCM mono and will include:

• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary by Don Lynch and Ken Marschall, author and illustrator of “Titanic:” An Illustrated History
• The Making of A Night to Remember (1993), a sixty-minute documentary featuring William MacQuitty’s rare behind-the-scenes footage
• Archival interview with Titanic survivor Eva Hart
• En natt att minas (1962), a forty-five-minute Swedish documentary featuring interviews with Titanic survivors
• Trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Michael Sragow

In all, March looks like another solid month for the Collection. Both The Last Temptation of Christ and part of the David Lean Directs Noël Coward boxset are really not much of a surprise; both were hinted at by Criterion on their Facebook page earlier this month. 

The original DVD was window-boxed
so the blu-ray should be a huge upgrade

What is surprising is that the Lean-Coward box is, well, a box. Many suspected that the hint was simply  just one title--not four. And four Lean films are certainly better than one. The director of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) really ought to have more of his oeuvre on the high def format--especially Lawrence of Arabia, but that's supposedly come from Sony next year; and these less well-known Lean's are probably a better fit for Criterion anyway. 

With (very likely true) rumors that James Cameron's Titanic (1997) is coming to blu-ray in 2012 from Paramount, it makes sense that Criterion would bow their, arguably much better, version of the tragedy on the format as well. And for those wondering, yes, the much-requested anamorphically enhanced DVD-reissue is also planned on the same date as the blu-ray, so you can replace the original non-anamorphic DVD from 1998. Finally--with or without blu-ray--fans will have the chance to view the film in its intended shape. 

The one disappointment: Letter Never Sent has, basically, no extras at all. It certainly sounds like a film worthy of discussion, so why no supplements? I suppose it's alright though. Criterion has discounted the title by $10, to $29.99 MSRP to reflect its barebones nature.