The Criterion Collection Announces Its January Of 2020 Film Restoration Calendar

The Criterion Collection announced its January of 2020 slate of new film restorations destined for the home entertainment packaged media marketplace this past week.

Leading the hit parade is a new 4K restoration of director Sidney Lumet’s 1964 film adaptation of the Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler 1962 Cold War thriller, Fail-Safe.   Both DVD and Blu-ray editions will be available on Jan. 28.

Producer and former United Artists executive Max Youngstein formed ECA during the early part of 1963 and snapped up the rights to the Burdick/Wheeler book as his company’s first film project.    Before he knew he was embroiled in a plagiarism lawsuit filed by writer Peter George, whose novel, Red Alert, was being produced by Stanley Kubrick as Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.   

Although it was eventually settled out of court, the damaged had been done an ECA folded and the project was turned over to Columbia Pictures.   Ironically, Columbia handled the theatrical distribution of both films, sending Kubrick’s out theatrically in January of 1964 and the Lumet’s Fail-Safe followed ten months later (in October).

As to bonus materials, Criterion has a vintage commentary track from director Sidney Lumet, Jeffrey Schwarz’s 2000 documentary short film titled Fail-Safe Revisited and a newly minted video session with film critic J. Hoberman (“An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and the Making of the Cold War,” “The Dream Life: Movies, Media, and the Mythology of the Sixties,” etc.).

Also on the January film restoration calendar from the Criterion Collection is another Sidney Lumet film, his 1960 film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams’ play, Orpheus Descending (aka: Battle of Angels), which was re-titled for the screen as The Fugitive Kind.

Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando equals A Streetcar Named Desire, which got Brando his first of eight Oscar nominations (losing out to Humphrey Bogart for The African Queen); Tennessee Williams and Anna Magnani equals The Rose Tattoo, which netted her the Oscar for Best Actress … Tennessee Williams and Marlon Brando plus Anna Magnani equals The Fugitive Kind.   Amazing how it just all came together, but it almost didn’t happen as Tony Franciosa was originally considered for the Brando role.

Bonus features here include a vintage video session with Lumet (circa 2009), three one act plays by Tennessee Williams broadcast in 1958 and more.

Also to be found among the Jan. 2020 release slate of new Blu-ray and DVD releases from Criterion are the Jan. 7 double feature presentation of Holiday and Holiday (1938 and 1930 versions based on the Philip Barry play … 1938 version features direction by George Cukor and performances by Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant), Jan. 20 is the street date for Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Petit Soldat and Jan. 28 brings the 1999 Best Foreign Language winner to market, director Pedro Almodóvar’s All About My Mother.