The Criterion Collection Reveal It June Of 2023 Release/Restoration Calendar

The Criterion Collection revealed its June release calendar this past week, which includes two upgrades to 4K Ultra HD status and an impressive collection of films from Italian poet, journalist, playwright and filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini.

First the newly 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack presentations.  

What better than French filmmaker Jean Renoir’s summer of 1939 release of The Rules of the Game.   The street date is June 6.

It was, by any standard, a commercial disaster, which lead Renoir to edit, re-edit and edit it once again … from 113 minutes (reported at the time) to just 85 minutes.   It didn’t help.

And then came World War II and word that it was destroyed in an Allied bombing.   However, in the post-war rubble, a copy of the 85-minute version was found and in 1956 the Société des Grands Films Classiques embarked upon a quest to reconstruct the film.  

They were able to find bits and pieces in various storage boxes from the bombed-out G.M. Film Lab (Boulogne area in the western suburbs of Paris), and with the help of Renoir himself, they restored the 106-minute version.   This version is the one used for the Criterion 4K restoration.

Bonus features include a vintage commentary from the late Peter Bogdanovich, a comparison of the film’s two endings, a selected-scene analysis by Renoir historian Chris Faulkner, and a number of video sessions and television broadcasts.
Arriving on June 13 as a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack is director Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy adventure, Time Bandits.

Bonus features include commentary from Gilliam, who is joined by cowriter-actor Michael Palin and actors John Cleese, David Warner and Craig Warnock.

Also on the calendar, for delivery on June 27, is the nine-film/nine-disc Blu-ray Collection titled Pasolini 101.  Counted among the selections are Mamma Roma, Love Meetings, The Gospel According to Matthew, The Hawks and the Sparrows, Oedipus Rex, Teorema, Porcile and Medea.

Rounding out the June Blu-ray product offerings from the Criterion Collection are director Barry Jenkins’ 2008 film release of Medicine for Melancholy (complete with a newly-prepared commentary option) and director Joseph Losey’s 1963 (1964 domestic theatrical release) arthouse entry, The Servant.