Holiday time! What does Criterion Channel have for us in December?
OK, look, Hitchcock doesn’t become holiday-related just because you call your collection “Hitchcock for the Holidays.” Great collection but come on. We’ll return to this. However, I want to start with the very last thing on the announcement.
Criterion is adding eight titles to the already strong Czechoslovak New Wave collection. This is great! There were already 24 movies available, including some flat out classics, so adding more might seem like gilding the lily. However, I love having more context available; if I spent a month or two just watching the entire collection I feel like I’d have a solid impression of a fascinating period in film history. Super exciting. I hope they stick around.
Back to the material Criterion highlighted. There are two big director collections, one from John Waters and one from Alfred Hitchcock. That’s quite the spread of American directors, huh? Both of them are excellent; the Waters collection has a nice spread between underground and mainstream movies, and the Hitchcock collection has very many of the hits. If you dip into the latter, I’d recommend watching a couple of those very early 1927 films to get a sense of how Hitchcock developed.
Waters also has an Adventures in Moviegoing for us. Bet you wouldn’t have guessed that he included a Bergman. Check out The Naked Kiss for a less famous Samuel Fuller neo-noir. Fuller’s sensibilities and sympathies are on full display.
Next, there’s Déjà Vu? The question mark is theirs. This is very clever; it’s a collection of temporal loops and questionable memories. It ranges from experimental French film (La Jetée) to offbeat anime (Mind Game) to — hey, it’s a Kieślowski (Blind Chance)! This is super cool. I’ll call out The Beast, which came out last year, as particularly interesting.
Pre-Code Columbia is another one of the pre-Code collections that cycle in and out of the lineup. I imagine rights are easier for these. I find these worth my attention when I’m catching up on favorite stars — there’s at least one Barbara Stanwyck movie in here — and also just for comparison. Nothing in these strikes the modern eye as racy, but when you realize that from the 30s onward you just couldn’t be honest about some of these story elements, it makes you wonder what might have been?
(Watch Victims of Sin, a 1951 Mexican movie, for one answer to that question. It’s amazing, and it’s fascinating how rich the story can be when nobody’s steering away from single mothers and sex work. I got lucky and saw it in a theater during the recent tour, but it’s on the Channel as well.)
The final collection this month is MTV Productions. This is honestly a bit disappointing. It’s a good theme, because MTV’s movie efforts were important from a pop culture perspective. The movies included are a reasonable start; yes, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America and Jackass are significant. Still, I’d have liked to see some deeper cuts. Better Luck Tomorrow, Hustle & Flow, and Æon Flux would have been excellent inclusions. Points for Election, anyhow.
OK, on to the miscellanea.
All three of the exclusive premieres are interesting: two sets of interviews with directors on the future of cinema, and a documentary on life in Iran under authoritarianism. Reviews on Letterboxd for the former are mixed, alas.
The Criterion Collection editions are superb. I’d never realized that Channel collections are sometimes built around new releases before; here we’ve got Election as the anchor for the MTV Productions collection and Polyester for the John Waters. Plus a Dylan biopic and a Coen Brothers release — that’s my interests right there.
I’m amped by both the Director Spotlights. Kenji Misumi’s succinct Sword Trilogy seems fun; I’ve watched a lot more Japanese chanbara films this year thanks to Radiance, so these seem like they will layer on nicely. Dónal Foreman is a new name to me, which is cool, and I’m always interested in Irish film. Plus metafiction!
The new restorations are cool. I’ll highlight Mike Leigh’s film directorial debut, Bleak Moments, as my most anticipated among this group. Finally, Benedetta is coming as one of two International Classics, and I’m gonna be in the mood to watch something heretical at some point in December.
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