Criterion’s new dual-format 4K UHD/Blu-ray release of The Wages of Fear (1953) presents an opportunity to revisit Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic and examine just why it troubled its U.S. distributor and some critics with its political and sexual implications.
Howard Hawks’ Scarface: The Shame of a Nation (1932), newly restored in 4K and released by Criterion in a dual-format edition as well as a stand-alone Blu-ray, is in many ways the most modern of the 1930s gangster movies, filled with Paul Muni’s infectious energy as the ambitious Tony Cramonte, balanced by two string female characters (Karen Morley and Ann Dvorak), blending dark tragedy with streaks of comedy, and pushing violence as far as was possible in the years just before Hollywood established the Production Code.
During an eight-month visit to Hong Kong in 1980-81, I took out a membership in a cinema club called Studio One. I recently came across the eight monthly schedules for their screenings and discovered that my memory of the movies I’d been to see varied widely. What makes one thing stick while another fades away? Damned if I know!
Mikhail Kalatozov’s I Am Cuba (1964) uses the striking cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky to create a fever dream version of the Cuban Revolution, a series of archetypal moments of oppression and resistance leading to an ecstatic explosion of justified communal violence. Filled with heightened emotions rendered in breathtaking images and seemingly impossible camera movements, the film looks gorgeous in a 4K restoration on Criterion’s Blu-ray.
Criterion’s two-disk Tod Browning’s Sideshow Shockers showcases three of the director’s best movies, including the peak of his long collaboration with Lon Chaney in The Unknown (1927) and Browning’s masterpiece Freaks (1932) along with the lesser-known The Mystic (1925). Fine 2K transfers and some illuminating extras leave you hoping that more of Tod Browning’s work will turn up on disk in restored versions.
Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy, which follows the life of its titular character from birth to a difficult adulthood, from an impoverished rural village to India’s crowded cities, recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema, shines in Criterion’s new dual-format edition.
Although overshadowed by his hugely influential cycle of zombie movies, Martin (1976), George A. Romero’s treatment of vampirism, is his finest work, a complex and subtle meditation on myth, madness, violence and social collapse in mid-’70s America. Second Sight’s 4K restoration finally gives this masterpiece the release it deserves.
Excellent Blu-ray editions from Criterion and the BFI respectively do full justice to Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953), two very dark examinations of the post-war crisis of masculinity.
Doomed romance is offset by a vibrant sense of community in Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord (1938), one of the filmmaker’s remarkable string of poetic realist masterpieces from the late 1930s to the mid-’40s. The film’s rich atmosphere comes to life in the 2K restoration used by Criterion for their new Blu-ray release.
Digital tools put in service of restoring films from a century ago produce spectacular results with Blu-rays of Carl Th. Dreyer’s uncanny Vampyr (1932) and Louis Feuillade’s serial Tih-Minh (1919).