New 4K digital restoration of the Magnascope road-show version, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
New interview with Robert Legato, the visual-effects supervisor for the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator, on the groundbreaking aerial visuals of Hell’s Angels
New interview with critic Farran Smith Nehme about actor Jean Harlow
Outtakes and rushes from the film, with commentary by Harlow biographer David Stenn
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by author and journalist Fred Kaplan
In for the entire slate, which is definitely rare for me with Criterion, but that said, I really wish EWS has the original artwork. I hate the new art with a passion.
New 4K digital restoration, supervised by photographer Gabriel Figueroa Flores, director of photography Gabriel Figueroa’s son, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
One 4K UHD disc of the film and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
New video essay on director Luis Buńuel by scholar Jordi Xifra
Appreciation by filmmaker Guillermo del Toro
Interview with Buńuel from 1981 by writer Jean-Claude Carričre, a longtime collaborator of the director's
Panel discussion from 2009, moderated by filmmaker José Luis Garci
Trailer
New English subtitle translation
PLUS: An essay by critic Fernanda Solórzano and an interview with Buńuel by critics José de la Colina and Tomás Pérez Turrent
House Party this is insane, but one of my favorite announcements of the year
The Breakfast Club I have this film on DVD so this will be a major upgrade over that
Hells Angels I love Howard Hughes flicks so this is a must buy for me. Also Harlow died so young she was only 26 years old when she died, and never managed to break through in Hollywood, which is really sad.
Long before he became one of the most renowned artists in world cinema, the great Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami began his cinematic career at Tehran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (a.k.a. Kanoon), where he honed his distinctive style and themes. During his first decades as a filmmaker, Kiarostami moved freely among documentary, narrative, and even animation, and between joyous short films made for children and subtle works exploring the struggles of adolescents. Often using the classroom as a laboratory, he probed social and political tensions in Iranian society during the turbulent years before and after the 1979 revolution. Spanning his very first short, Bread and Alley (which the director called the “mother of all my films”); other underseen early revelations, like Experience and The Traveler; and nonfiction masterpieces such as Homework, the graceful, warm, and playful works collected here find moments of transcendent poetry within everyday life, and use deceptively simple premises to express universal truths about the human condition.
This release features 2K restorations undertaken by MK2 in collaboration with L’Immagine Ritrovata.
FILMS IN THIS SET
Bread and Alley (1970)
“The mother of all my films,” according to Abbas Kiarostami, starts out as a breezily observed anecdote about a boy wending his way home through Tehran alleys carrying a loaf of bread. Variations on both the boy and the old man he sees and begins to follow will factor into future Kiarostami films, as will the use of “dead time,” the journey structure, and the poetic articulation of space. The final scene, involving a dog and a door, ends things on a note of wry ambiguity.
Breaktime (1972)
Disciplined at school for breaking a window, a boy joins throngs of his schoolmates as they make a cacophonous exit into Tehran’s streets. He then briefly joins an impromptu soccer game but disrupts it by stealing the ball and running away, and ends up drifting aimlessly along a busy highway. Free of dialogue but using nonsynchronous concrete sound throughout, this moody film shows Abbas Kiarostami expanding his visual vocabulary with zooms and crane and helicopter shots.
Experience (1973)
Based on a story by Amir Naderi, who also cowrote the film, this slice of a fourteen-year-old boy’s life follows his efforts to fend for himself in the big city, working as a tea server and assistant in a photographer’s studio, running errands, and, briefly, exchanging glances with a pretty middle-class girl. With no music and little dialogue, and distinguished by its darkly elegant compositions, the film offers an impressionistic meditation on adolescent solitude.
The Traveler (1974)
Abbas Kiarostami’s first feature focuses on a boy in a provincial city so avid to get to Tehran to see a soccer match that he’ll lie to adults and cheat other kids. A quest film that’s also a study of youthful obsession, it’s filmed in edgy black and white with a quiet energy that matches its hero’s. The Traveler has an acridly ironic ending and one of the best performances by a child in Kiarostami’s early work.
Two Solutions for One Problem (1975)
This simple moral tale seems to prefigure Where Is the Friend’s House? Two young schoolboys, Dara and Nader, are friends until Dara returns Nader’s notebook torn and Nader retaliates in kind, setting off an escalating battle that leads to destruction of property and physical injury. In the second solution, Dara realizes his offense and repairs the notebook, preserving the peace and the friendship. The film is shot mostly in close-ups, with a narrator drolly chronicling the action.
So Can I (1975)
The first of Abbas Kiarostami’s films made for, rather than about, children was an experiment in combining live action and animation, done in collaboration with animator Nafiseh Riahi. As two schoolboys watch animated views of animals’ actions—kangaroos jumping, fish swimming, etc.—one boy (played by Riahi’s son Kamal) says, “I can, too,” and imitates the actions. The music is sprightly, the mood fun. The second boy is Kiarostami’s son Ahmad.
Colors (1976)
Ostensibly a film for children, this picture-book essay about the range of hues that brighten our world has the air of a delightfully playful formalistic exercise. As a narrator runs though the colors one by one, Abbas Kiarostami shows us where each appears in nature and human life (which occasions some great views of prerevolutionary consumer culture in Iran). Of course, a little boy is featured—in one memorable sequence, he fantasizes about being a race-car driver.
A Wedding Suit (1976)
In a trilevel shopping arcade, a teenage boy who works for a tailor is besieged by two other boys who want to borrow a new suit to wear on a social outing before it’s turned over to its owner. One of the most accomplished and intricately plotted of Abbas Kiarostami’s Kanoon films, this sharply observed drama contains suspense, satire, an undercurrent of violence, and even a magic show.
Tribute to Teachers (1977)
An assignment from Iran’s Ministry of Education, this documentary from the last years of the Pahlavi dynasty includes interviews with officials who predictably praise teaching as a sacred, noble, and honorable profession. The teachers who are also interviewed are less starry-eyed; one speaks of ungrateful students and the job’s poor pay. The contrasting views express Abbas Kiarostami’s interest in education while registering some of his reservations about how it is practiced.
Solution No. 1 (1978)
The rare Kanoon film that doesn’t involve children, this unusual road movie was made during the revolution and afforded Abbas Kiarostami what may have been a welcome escape from the capital. Shot amid spectacular mountain scenery north of Tehran, it shows a young man on a roadside with a tire, trying to get a ride. After several minutes of failure, he simply takes the tire and rolls it down the mountain, a lyrical visual journey that’s accompanied by a triumphal score.
First Case, Second Case (1979)
Made in the spring of 1979, not long after the shah’s overthrow, this extraordinary film serves as a Rorschach blot for people in a revolutionary mindset. Abbas Kiarostami stages two versions of a classroom-discipline situation—in one, a student tells on a troublemaker; in the other, seven students refuse to rat—and then has several adult authorities comment on the outcomes. The fascinating responses evoke conflicts between order and resistance.
Toothache (1980)
Though much of this film by Abbas Kiarostami is a straightforward lecture about dental hygiene delivered by a dentist facing the camera, it still manages to be persuasively Kiarostami-esque in its description of young Mohammad-Reza’s life at home and school before he falls prey to tooth woes. (Kiarostami found the boy having a tooth removed, then filmed the earlier parts of the story later.) That some audiences find the film hilarious testifies to the humor that can accompany great discomfort.
Orderly or Disorderly (1981)
The first shot shows students descending a staircase in calm, orderly fashion, then the second details the same action as a chaotic rush. Separated by slates and director Abbas Kiarostami’s voice intoning, “Sound, camera,” subsequent sequences describe the same dichotomous behavior in a schoolyard, on a school bus, and in the haphazard traffic of Tehran. Kiarostami described this as “a truly educational film,” but it plays more like a quirky philosophic aside.
The Chorus (1982)
An old man strolls through the noisy streets of Rasht, and when his hearing aid is knocked out of his ear, the film’s sound goes off, mimicking the silence that envelops him. At home, the same thing happens when he takes the device out, and Abbas Kiarostami intercuts his silent actions with the clamor of schoolgirls who try to get his attention from outside. Another Kiarostami meditation on the contrasts of silence and sound, age and youth, solitude and solidarity.
Fellow Citizen (1983)
Abbas Kiarostami’s fascination with both Tehrani car culture and the uses of power in postrevolutionary society combine in this documentary about a traffic officer assigned to enforce driving restrictions in central Tehran (a locale near the director’s office at Kanoon). The officer, a rock star in his own world, remains coolly authoritative as he faces a steady stream of exasperated motorists.
First Graders (1984)
Inspired by his work at Kanoon and his own sons’ schooling, the first of Abbas Kiarostami’s two documentary features about education looks in on a schoolyard of chanting, playful boys but mainly transpires in the office of a supervisor who has to deal with latecomers and discipline problems. You can almost see the boys’ personalities forming in their first encounters with authorities and peers outside the home.
Homework (1989)
In Abbas Kiarostami’s second documentary feature about education, the filmmaker himself asks the questions, probing a succession of invariably cute first- and second-graders about their home situations and the schoolwork they must do there. It emerges that many parents are illiterate. Tellingly, many kids can define punishment (the corporal variety seems common) but not encouragement.
So from the announced titles, looks like the only correct guess from forum members was Eyes Wide Shut? Based on predictions, I was gearing up for an unprecedented slate of absolute blockbusters, but The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Boogie Nights, all unaccounted for.
I’ll likely pick up Eyes Wide Shut. Loved it in the theater in 1999, loved that the women sitting directly behind me were outraged by the film. “Umm, what was THE POINT of that movie??!?!”
Also, wasn’t the Eclipse series said to have been retired?
Wow, that Hells Angels artwork is incredible. I picked up Burden of Dreams on DVD a sale or two ago, so you're welcome What a great film. Good looking slate of films this month! I think I'll get the Eclipse set, EWS and House Party, which I haven't seen but it seems like a solid entry into the collection. I'll pick up Breakfast Club eventually, but not feeling the need to splurge on the UHD right away.
So from the announced titles, looks like the only correct guess from forum members was Eyes Wide Shut? Based on predictions, I was gearing up for an unprecedented slate of absolute blockbusters, but The French Connection, Dog Day Afternoon, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Boogie Nights, all unaccounted for.
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What a great film. Good looking slate of films this month! I think I'll get the Eclipse set, EWS and House Party, which I haven't seen but it seems like a solid entry into the collection. I'll pick up Breakfast Club eventually, but not feeling the need to splurge on the UHD right away.
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