The Criterion Collection Announces Its April Slate Of New Film Restorations

The Criterion Collection announced its April slate of film restorations this past week.   One need look no further than the DVD and Blu-ray release of director Frank Borzage’s 1937 melodrama of love, jealousy, honor and murder, History is Made at Night as being the month’s front-runner.  

This will be a new 4K digital transfer and the street date will be Apr. 13.

Irene (Jean Arthur) is in a miserable marriage to a shipping tycoon by the name of Bruce Vail (Colin Clive) and has informed the bully that a divorce is in the offing.   He will not allow his ego to make it easy for her and decides to cook up an affair that will destroy her case against him.

The plan is put in motion in Paris, but Vail is thrown a curve by a waiter, Paul Dumond (Charles Boyer), who overhears the scheme and comes to Irene’s rescue by staging a robbery and kidnapping.   It seems simple enough, even romantic, but when Vail begins to put two and two together, he murders her intended liaison, his driver, Michael (played by Ivan Lebedeff), and then blackmails her into sailing with him to New York … or her lover will be revealed. 

She thinks it is Paul, the man who rescued her, so she agrees to go to New York.  Paul, upon reading this in the society page, feels that it is Vail who has kidnapped her and so, desperate, he follows her there, bringing along his buddy, Cesare (Leo Carrillo), a chef.   Once in New York, the pair land jobs at a fancy restaurant … and in one of those small world kind of things, in walks Irene and Bruce.  

Bruce has framed an innocent man for Michael’s murder and Paul and Irene have to go back to Paris to set things right.   They board one of Vail’s passenger ships, but Vail discovers and orders the captain to … whoa, not giving the ending away.   Let’s just say that Paul and Irene, now desperately in love, will face death on the high seas … will they survive?  

Bonus features include a newly prepared video session with writer Hervé Dumont (“Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic”) and film historian Peter Cowie, the 1940 radio adaptation (featuring Charles Boyer) and more.

Also on the film restoration calendar from The Criterion Collection for the month of April are Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho’s Memories of Murder (Apr. 20), a new film restoration of Anthony Mann’s 1950 Western starring Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston, The Furies (also available on Apr. 20), and the month closes out on Apr. 27 with new Blu-ray and DVD editions of French-language imports, Irma Vep and Masculin Féminin.