The Criterion Collection Announces Its May 2020 Slate Of New Film Restorations Including The Great Escape And A Collection Title Scorsese Shorts

Well how about that for timing!!   Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood features Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character) in a film test sequence for the role of Captain Virgil Hilts in director John Sturges’ 1963 film adaptation of the Paul Brickhill novel, The Great Escape.   

Of course, the role went to Steve McQueen.   Steven McQueen was also featured in Tarantino’s film (an eerily dead-on performance by Damian Lewis) … he was a good friend of Jay Sebring and if not for a change in plans, he too might have been killed that fateful August night.

So we wonder, was it just coincidence or did the Criterion Collection pick up on all that Hollywood film history and elect to do a 4K digital restoration of the Sturges’ World War II POW thriller?   In any case, May 12 is the date that we will see both DVD and Blu-ray editions of The Great Escape being made available from the Criterion Collection. 

Bonus features include two vintage audio commentaries — from 1991, we have director John Sturges and composer Elmer Bernstein, and from 2004, actors James Coburn, James Garner and Donald Pleasence.

Other bonuses include the 2001 four-part documentary from producer Kevin Burns, The Great Escape: Heroes Underground, a 2001 short film titled The Real Virgil Hilts: A Man Called Jones and a vintage 1993 program titled Return to the Great Escape, plus there is a newly minted video session with film critic Michael Sragow.

With word out there that Criterion has a home entertainment packaged media release deal with Netflix, we can expect to see The Irishman as some point this year, but in the meantime another cool entry on the May film restoration calendar from the Criterion Collection is the May 26 collection, Scorsese Shorts, which features his long missing 1978 short film, American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince, plus four other MIA short films.

Before Boxcar Bertha, Mean Streets and Taxi Driver, Scorsese experimented with three short films, What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in a Place Like This? (1963), which was followed in 1964 by It's Not Just You, Murray! and in 1967 he delivered The Big Shave.

After Mean Streets he did the family documentary, Italianamerican, featuring his mother and father, Catherine and Charles Scorsese.

Bonus nuggets include newly minted video sessions with filmmaker Martin Scorsese and film critic Farran Smith Nehme, and a video session with Ari Aster, Josh Safdie and Benny Safdie.

Also on the May release calendar is the six film collection titled Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales (May 5, Blu-ray only), which features The Bakery Girl of Monceau, Suzanne's Career, My Night at Maud's, La Collectionneuse, Claire's Knee and Love in the Afternoon.

Rounding out the May selections are director Dorothy Arzner’s 1940 film release of Dance, Girl, Dance (May 19), starring Maureen O’Hara and Lucille Ball; writer/director Paul Dano’s 2018 drama, Wildlife (also May 19) and the John Cassavetes gem, Husbands (May 26).