The Criterion Collection Announces Its July Of 2022 Film Restoration Release Calendar

The Criterion Collection announced its July slate of new film restorations, which features six film selections, including four making their 4K Ultra HD debuts during the course of the month.   So, let’s get to it …

Just before The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, English filmmaker David Lean earned his third Best Director Oscar nomination for the 1955 film release of Summertime.

It was a film adaptation of Arthur Laurents’ stage play, “The Time of the Cuckoo,” which had opened at the Empire Theatre in October of 1952 and ran for seven solid months.  Shirley Booth was in the lead as Leona Samish, the lovelorn spinster on vacation in Venice, and with Dino Di Luca as Renato, a married man, who has a bittersweet love affair with the love-starved Leona.

By the time the film version got into production, Leona had become Jane Hudson … Booth was gone, as were rumored replacements Olivia de Havilland and Ingrid Berman, with Katharine Hepburn eventually landing the lead.   Renato was still Renato, with Rossano Brazzi, who had scored well with Three Coins in the Fountain and The Barefoot Contessa, replacing Broadway’s Dino Di Luca.

The entire film was shot on location in Venice, Italy and Hepburn was nominated for the sixth time as Best Actress (she had won in 1933 for Morning Glory … and would go on to win in 1967 for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, again in 1968 for The Lion in Winter and once again in 1981 for On Golden Pond).

The Criterion Collection has a new 4K film restoration of Lean’s Summertime ready to go on July 12 as both Blu-ray and DVD product offerings.   Bonus features include a vintage video session with David Lean (circa 1963), a newly-prepared video session with film historian Melanie Williams (author of the 2016 book titled simply “David Lean”) and excerpts from a 1988 interview with cinematographer Jack Hildyard (Oscar-winner for his cinematography on The Bridge on the River Kwai).

Other films on the release calendar in July — the four-new-to-the-4K Ultra HD format are — director Bong Joon Ho’s 2017 direct-to-Netflix release of Okja and writer/director Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film release of The Virgin Suicides (both available on July 5), auteur filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s 1980 Best Picture nominee, Raging Bull (July 12, also available on Blu-ray) and Devil in a Blue Dress (on July 19),

Rounding out the July release calendar from the Criterion Collection on July 19 is Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar-winning release of Drive My Car.   Both DVD (double-disc) and Blu-ray editions will be available … the ARR is 235 days and box office receipts for the film’s domestic run came in at $2.2 million.