In maybe the first instance of this happening in eons, Criterion has posted their title announcements a day early. And while their January slate is maybe a little slimmer than normal, oh boy does the quality of what they’re releasing make it so that that doesn’t matter in the slightest. Here, they rescue two underseen films, including a seminal work in world cinema, bring another great Fassbinder film back in-print and on Blu-Ray in the U.S., and stack their release of perhaps the definitive screwball comedy with extras. Specs and cover art are below.
- New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New 2K restoration of Lewis Milestone’s The Front Page (1931), made from a recently discovered print of the director’s preferred version
- New interview with film scholar David Bordwell about His Girl Friday
- Archival interviews with director Howard Hawks
- Featurettes from 1999 about Hawks, actor Rosalind Russell, and the making of His Girl Friday
- Radio adaptation of His Girl Friday from 1940
- New piece about the restoration of The Front Page
- New piece about playwright and screenwriter Ben Hecht
- Radio adaptations of the play The Front Page from 1937 and 1946
- His Girl Friday trailers
- PLUS: A booklet featuring essays on His Girl Friday and The Front Page by film critics Farran Smith Nehme and Michael Sragow
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- 4K restoration of the short film Borom sarret, director Ousmane Sembène’s acclaimed 1963 debut
- New interviews with scholars Manthia Diawara and Samba Gadjigo
- Excerpt from a 1966 broadcast of JT 20h, featuring Sembène accepting the Prix Jean Vigo for Black Girl
- New interview with actor M’Bissine Thérèse Diop
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Ashley Clark
- More!
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation and supervised by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with actor Harry Baer
- New interview with filmmaker Ira Sachs
- Excerpt from a 1975 interview with director Rainer Werner Fassbinder
- Excerpts from a 1981 interview with composer Peer Raben
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Michael Koresky
- New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Jack Garfein, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New conversation between Garfein and critic Kim Morgan
- New interview with actor Carroll Baker
- New interview with scholar Foster Hirsch on the Actors Studio’s cinematic legacy
- Master Class with Jack Garfein, a 2015 recording of one of the director’s world-famous lectures on acting technique
- PLUS: An essay by critic Sheila O’Malley