The Criterion Collection Reveals Its February 2024 Release Slate • Toplined By Robert Alman's McCabe And Mrs. Miller (4K, Feb. 6)

The Criterion Collection is out with its slate of February titles and topping the list (that’s always subjective) is auteur filmmaker Robert Altman’s 1971 turn of the century “Western,” McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

This will be a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack presentation … the street date is Feb. 6.

After Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch in 1969, the traditional Western was a dying motif and none better than Altman to present an epitaph in form of a “Western” that really isn’t about the taming of the frontier, gunslingers, saloons, etc.    It has all those elements, but the storyline could easily take place in the roaring twenties or in the post-war world of film noir.

Over-lapping dialogue, an unrequited love story and a place of unrelenting misery … that’s how the story is told.  A story without hope or joy, and, the way Altman handles it, it could be argued that it is his best film — it certainly arrived during his most creative period (M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, The Long Goodbye, Nashville … McCabe and Mrs. Miller all within a five-year period beginning in 1970).

So what does Criterion have in the way of bonuses included with the 4K debut of Altman’s masterpiece?  

There is the 2002 commentary teaming Altman with producer David Foster (The Getaway, The Thing, Short Circuit, etc.), a making-of documentary (Out on a Limb?), a vintage featurette, the 1999 Art Directors Guild Film Society Q&A with production designer Leon Ericksen (also Altman’s Images and Quintet), a video session with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and The Dick Cavett Show segments featuring critic Pauline Kael and Altman.

In what is something of a surprise, the Criterion Collection has a full spread release of director Raoul Walsh’s 1939 film release of The Roaring Twenties, starring James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart and Priscilla Lane.   

There was a time when a prestigious film such as The Roaring Twenties, would be worked in-house by Warner Bros. and not licensed to third parties.   The studio did release the film on DVD in 2005 and re-issued it in 2010 as part of Humphrey Bogart: The Essential Collection, so technically it has been out of circulation for over a decade.

That aside, Criterion is releasing stand-alone DVD and Blu-ray editions on Feb. 27, along with a 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack purchasing option (film buffs and collectors will be focused here).

Bonus features include the vintage 2005 commentary with film historian Lincoln Hurst, a newly prepared video session with film critic Gary Giddins and a 1973 video session with filmmaker Raoul Walsh.

Rounding out the February selection from Criterion are: Eric Rohmer's Tales of the Four Seasons, featuring  A Tale of Springtime, A Tale of Winter, A Tale of Summer and A Tale of Autumn (four disc Blu-ray collection, Feb. 13); the double feature of The Heroic Trio and Executioners (4K and Blu-ray purchasing options, Feb. 20) and DVD and Blu-ray selections of director Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man (also on Feb. 20).