What Is the Criterion Collection?

Written by Jon Williams

If you use our monthly DVD/Blu-ray Buyer’s Guide, you know that each month we feature a selection of movies offered by the Criterion Collection. In the upcoming December catalog, there will be a full page dedicated to them. But have you ever wondered exactly what the Criterion Collection is?

The simple answer, of course, is that it’s a video distribution company. The “About Us” page on Criterion’s website describes their collection as “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films,” as well as “the greatest films from around the world…in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements.” What Criterion does is restore (if necessary) and remaster films for a crisp and clear presentation on DVD and high-definition Blu-ray, and then complement that film with such materials as audio commentary, deleted scenes, ‘making-of’ documentaries, and more. This wealth of esoterica allows the viewer to see the film in the context in which it was made, and has led to Criterion versions being referred to as “film school in a box.” In addition, Criterion was also the innovator of the “letterbox” format, using black bars at the top and bottom of the screen to present movies in a widescreen format, preserving their original aspect ratio (generally 2.35:1) when televisions were designed for a 4:3 display.

The Criterion Collection began in 1984, when VHS was still fighting with Betamax to become to dominant home video system of the day. Not content with the quality offered by either of these formats, though, Criterion in the beginning transferred films onto laserdisc. Although that format never became widespread, it remained Criterion’s sole format until 1998, when it made the switch to the burgeoning DVD format. Ten years later, in 2008, Criterion added Blu-ray to its repertoire, allowing for even better presentation than had previously been available. Currently, Criterion still distributes its films in both DVD and Blu-ray formats.

In the laserdisc days, Criterion would release mainstream movies, but their focus has narrowed mainly down to art, world, and classic films and documentaries. Although it no longer distributes them, the first two films issued by the Criterion Collection were Citizen Kane and the 1933 version of King Kong (and in both cases, the editions currently available are obviously inspired by the Criterion versions, boasting HD transfers and a full range of special features). It was with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (also no longer available from Criterion) that they introduced letterboxing.

Recent Criterion releases include such films as The Great Beauty (2014 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film), Babette’s Feast, Eraserhead, and the Beatles classic A Hard Day’s Night, while upcoming releases are scheduled for L’Avventura, Time Bandits (an update of their 1999 release), and Tootsie. This, however, is a mere sampling of a vast collection that includes more than 800 titles. For the full list of DVDs and Blu-rays available from Midwest Tape, SmartBrowse ‘Criterion Collection’ on our website.

Essential Early Hitchcock on Criterion Blu-ray

Written by Kirk Baird

The distinct elements to the Master of Suspense’s filmmaking career were always there, but our first full exposure to his genius in bloom is with 1934’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, just released on Blu-ray through Criterion Collection. The story of rather ordinary people who find themselves in a rather extraordinary situation, The Man Who Knew Too Much is the blueprint to many of the Alfred Hitchcock films to follow, including Rear Window, North by Northwest, and Vertigo.

Leslie Banks and Edna Best star as Bob and Jill Lawrence, a British couple on holiday in Switzerland with their teenage daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). Their vacation takes a macabre twist with the murder of a family friend who happens to be a British agent, who left an important note – and thus a clue to those responsible for his death – hidden in his hotel room. Bob recovers the note and thus becomes the titular namesake who must deal with a nefarious gang of spies who want the information. The story wraps around the assassination plot of an important foreign dignitary, though we know little else; Hitchcock’s films are often cloaked in mystery when it comes to the incidentals. The group kidnaps Betty to force Bob to give them the note, but he and Jill do not prove so easily pushed around, and Bob and family friend Clive (Hugh Wakefield) go undercover to learn more about the gang and to rescue his daughter.

The Man Who Knew Too Much is primitive by today’s slick standards of Hollywood moviemaking – perhaps even on the level of a well-produced student film. But the execution of this suspenseful thriller is more fully realized and gutsier than almost any movies opening in theaters today. Peter Lorre as the chief spy and criminal mastermind dramatically undersells his performance – an acting feat from which many actors-as-villains could learn – and is all the more effective because of it. There’s a substantially more menacing air to someone not unhinged but with his wits about him, and in complete control of himself and everyone – and nearly everything – around him. Lorre is chilling in his matter-of-fact and almost likable delivery and all the more memorable.

Banks and Best make for a believable couple who show amazing resolve when pushed. Yes, there’s the occasional histrionics, but this was the acting style of the time. And Hitchcock loved melodrama.  Also note the restrained emotions Bob and Jill display when they learn Betty has been kidnapped. It’s British “keep a stiff upper lip” stoicism at its finest.

While much of the drama unfolds in the plot twists and dialogue, The Man Who Knew Too Much has its share of gripping action. The violent shootout in a London street between London police and the spies who are holding up in an apartment building was undeniably edgy for its time, yet the bloodless carnage still resonates as rather shocking given the amount of deaths, especially to innocent men of law and order.

Criterion Collection, as it always does, went to great lengths to clean up The Man Who Knew Too Much’s video and audio presentation; it’s doubtful the 75-minute film has ever looked as good as it does in this Blu-ray version. And as a precursor to the greatness to come from Hitchcock, The Man Who Knew Too Much is an important film that any of the filmmaker’s fans should experience…or experience again.

The single Blu-ray also features new audio commentary from film historian Philip Kemp and a new interview with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, as well as a 1972 interview with Hitchcock conducted by journalist Pia Lindstrom and film historian William Everson.

Gilliam's Brazil Comes to Blu-ray

Written by Kirk Baird

For Terry Gilliam fans, December brought an early gift in the form of the long-awaited Brazil on Blu-ray. Criterion’s deluxe package, with its lovingly restored high-definition transfer of the 27-year-old film, is one holiday present that will not disappoint.

Having co-written the final Monty Python film, 1983’s The Meaning of Life, and directed its ambitious and clever Crimson Permanent Assurance short, Gilliam, the most twisted and comically dark mind of the famed comedic group, still clearly had Python on the mind when he dreamt up Brazil. This Orwell-inspired tale of a paranoid city government sometime in our near future, muddled in inefficiency and paralyzed by bureaucracy while its population of grim and desperate citizens toils away to no real purpose, features brilliantly absurdist Python-esque gags and scathing commentary that echoes the best of the troupe’s work.

The protagonist is Sam Lowry, played with marvelous befuddlement and an eventual sense of derring-do by Jonathan Pryce, a happy cog in the bureaucratic machine who is jolted out of willful complacency when he encounters the woman of his dreams — literally — while attempting to correct a major government error not of his doing. These two disparate events yank him out of his placid life and place him in a position of danger, as an emboldened fugitive rebelling against a broken system who is motivated by love and justice.

In Brazil, Gilliam achieves a tricky thematic balance to his film: warnings of an impending Big Brother-like state (note the government propaganda posted on signs throughout the film: “Suspicion breeds confidence,” “Be safe — be suspicious”) and of the dehumanizing — and failing — technology that makes such a world possible; a brilliant dark comedy that happens to be set in dystopian world; a terrific science-fiction universe filled with stunning art direction; and an old-fashioned love story of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy does everything he can to get her back.

To the latter, Gilliam and fellow screenwriters Charles McKeown and Tom Stoppard cooked up a rather stunning and bleak conclusion to the film in being true to the stark mood of the story; however, the American studio behind Brazil, Universal, balked at the dark twist in favor of a more audience-friendly “Love Conquers All” version, which also chopped nearly 50 minutes from Gilliam’s submission. And thus began a contentious war between a filmmaker driven by artistic vision and a studio motivated by box-office receipts. It was Gilliam who ultimately prevailed, but only after the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awarded his version of Brazil as its top film, as well as awards for director and screenplay. Universal relented, and released a 132-minute “compromise cut” of the film, which included Gilliam’s original ending.

The Criterion Collection release includes two of the three versions of Brazil: disc one features Gilliam’s 142-minute director’s cut, while disc two features the studio’s 94-minute version of the film. Also included on disc two is the fascinating documentary The Battle of Brazil, detailing Gilliam’s struggles with Universal; What Is Brazil?, Rob Hedden’s on-set documentary; and the production notebook, consisting of interviews and video essays. The two-disc set comes with an informative essay booklet by film critic David Sterritt on the importance and merit of Gilliam’s master work.

While Brazil won no Academy Awards — nor was it nominated for any of the major categories save Best Original Screenplay — it nevertheless remains one of the great films of the 1980s and the unquestioned high point of Gilliam’s mostly brilliant and occasionally maddening film career. As important, Brazil stands as a testament to a director who battled the system…and, unlike the fictional world he created, won.