May's Criterion Collection May Slate Elia Kazan, Terrence Malick, Period Romance

Spring is in the air be it a little earlier but The Criterion Collection and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment are delighted to confirm the titles to be released on Blu-ray in May 2019.

On 6 May comes A FACE IN THE CROWD. Andy Griffith plays a folk idol turned TV demagogue in Elia Kazan’s eerily prescient satire. The film features an extraordinary debut screen performance by Griffith, who brandishes his charm in an uncharacteristically sinister role.

On 20 May, Terrence Malick’s exquisite first film BADLANDS is released in a new digital restoration. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equalled its strange sublimity.

MY BRILLIANT CAREER follows on 27 May. Judy Davis stars in Gillian Armstrong’s breakthrough, a period romance as unconventional as its brash heroine.

A Face In A Crowd | 6 May

Andy Griffith plays a folk idol turned TV demagogue in Elia Kazan’s eerily prescient satire. A Face in the Crowd chronicles the rise and fall of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy Griffith), a boisterous entertainer discovered in an Arkansas drunk tank by Marcia Jeffries (Hud’s Patricia Neal), a local radio producer with ambitions of her own. His charisma and cunning soon shoot him to the heights of television stardom and political demagoguery, forcing Marcia to grapple with the manipulative, reactionary monster she has created. Directed by Elia Kazan (East of Eden) from a screenplay by Budd Schulberg (On the Waterfront), this incisive satire features an extraordinary debut screen performance by Griffith, who brandishes his charm in an uncharacteristically sinister role. Though the film was a flop on its initial release, subsequent generations have marvelled at its eerily prescient diagnosis of the toxic intimacy between media and politics in American life.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
New interview with Ron Briley, author of The Ambivalent Legacy of Elia Kazan
New interview with Andy Griffith biographer Evan Dalton Smith
Facing the Past, a 2005 documentary featuring actors Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, and Anthony Franciosa; screenwriter Budd Schulberg; and film scholars Leo Braudy and Jeff Young
Trailer

PLUS: An essay by critic April Wolfe and a 1957 New York Times Magazine profile of Andy Griffith

Badlands | 20th May

Terrence Malick’s exquisite first film, in a new digital restoration. Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven). His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) and Sissy Spacek (Carrie). The film also introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his ionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equalled its strange sublimity.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Making “Badlands,” a new documentary featuring actors Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek and production designer Jack Fisk
New interview with editor Billy Weber about director Terrence Malick’s unique approach to editing
New interview with producer Edward Pressman
Trailer
“Charles Starkweather,” a 1993 episode of the television series Great Crimes and Trials, about the real-life story on which the film was loosely based

PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by filmmaker Michael Almereyda

My Brilliant Career | 27 May

Judy Davis stars in Gillian Armstrong’s breakthrough, a period romance as unconventional as its brash heroine. For her award-winning breakthrough film, director Gillian Armstrong (Little Women) drew on teenage author Miles Franklin’s novel, a celebrated turn-of-the-twentieth-century Australian coming-of-age story, to brashly upend the conventions of period romance. Headstrong young Sybylla Melvyn (Judy Davis, in a star-making performance), bemoans her stifling life in the backcountry, where her writerly ambitions receive little encouragement, and craves independence above all else. When a handsome landowner (Jurassic Park’s Sam Neill), disarmed by her unruly charms, begins to court her, Sybylla must decide whether she can reconcile the prospect of marriage with the illustrious life’s work she has imagined for herself. Suffused with generous humour and a youthful appetite for experience, My Brilliant Career is a luminous portrait of an ardently free spirit.

DIRECTOR APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New 2K digital restoration, approved by director Gillian Armstrong, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Audio commentary from 2009 featuring Armstrong
New interview with Armstrong
Interview from 1980 with actor Judy Davis
New interview with production designer Luciana Arrighi
Trailer

PLUS: An essay by critic Carrie Rickey