France

The Red Balloon (Released by Janus Films, in association with the Criterion Collection)

Newly restored and available for the first time on DVD Albert Lamorisse's exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children's films of all time. In this deceptively simple nearly wordless tale a young boy discovers a stray balloon which seems to have a mind of its own on the streets of Paris. The two become inseparable yet the world's harsh realities finally interfere. With its glorious palette and allegorical purity the Academy Award-winning The Red Balloon has enchanted movie lovers young and old for generations.System Requirements:LENGTH: 34 minutes Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY UPC: 715515028820 Manufacturer No: CC1746DDVD

The late French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse made this classic, 1956 short work about a lonely little Parisian boy (Pascal Lamorisse) befriended by a large red balloon, which seems to have a will of its own. As with his preceding short, 1952's White Mane, Lamorisse took home a grand prize from the Cannes Film Festival for The Red Balloon, and the latter film also won an Academy Award. There have been some stimulating pieces of film criticism (some pro, some con) written about the aesthetics of this little movie over the years, but there's no question it makes for a touching, allegorical piece always certain to prompt conversations among viewers of any age. --Tom Keogh

White Mane (Released by Janus Films, in association with the Criterion Collection)

In the south of France in a near-desert region called La Camargue lives White Mane a magnificent stallion and the leader of a herd of wild horses too proud to let themselves be broken in by humans. Only Folco a young fisherman manages to tame him. A strong friendship grows between the boy and the horse as the two go looking for the freedom that the world of men won't allow them. Long unavailable in the U.S. this extraordinarily shot wonder from Albert Lamorisse the director of The Red Balloon is a work of technical sophistication and immense natural beauty.System Requirements:LENGTH: 39 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: CHILDREN/FAMILY UPC: 715515028929 Manufacturer No: CC1747DDVD

As in Albert Lamorisse's classic fable The Red Balloon, a boy forms a unique attachment in the less fanciful, if equally lyrical White Mane. While the 1956 color film takes place in modern Paris, the filmmaker's 1953 effort plays like an old black and white western. In the opening sequence, White Mane ("Crin Blanc") enjoys a life of freedom in the dusty Camargue region of Southern France. Local cowboys, portrayed by the herdsmen of Les Saints-Maries-de-la-Mer, attempt to capture him, but the wild horse keeps evading their clutches. Young fisherman Folco (Alain Emery), who lives with his grandfather and younger brother (the director's son, Pascal, star of The Red Balloon), finds himself entranced by the proud creature. In Folco's dreams, they become friends, but the horse prefers to associate with his own kind. That dynamic starts to change once White Mane realizes Folco isn't like the adults trying to tame him. The boy doesn't want to change the horse, and a relationship develops based on mutual trust. This luminous transfer features spare narration, in French or a newly-recorded English version, and minimal dialogue in favor of a flute-dominated score and chase-oriented action (which may be too intense for younger viewers). Just as the 34-minute Red Balloon won an Oscar, the 40-minute White Mane won a Grand Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (the two often screen together). Other than the trailer and an essay from Michael Koresky, this long-awaited release forgoes special features. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Monsieur Vincent

An Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film MONSIEUR VINCENTchronicles the remarkable journey of St. Vincent De Paul(PIERRE FRESNAY) who rose from slavery to become a trusted advisor toqueens and princes. Director Maurice Cloche's powerful anddramatic biopic reveals how St. Vincent De Paul's unwavering commitmentto the poor made him one of the greatest humanitarians inhistory.System Requirements:Running Time: 114 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/RELIGION Rating: NR UPC: 012236240877 Manufacturer No: 24087

La Ronde

Simone Signoret, Anton Walbrook, and Simone Simon lead a roundelay of French stars in Max Ophuls's delightful, acerbic adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's controversial turn-of-thecentury play La ronde. Soldiers, chambermaids, poets, and aristocrats, all are on equal footing in this multicharacter merry-go-round of love and infidelity, directed with a sweeping gaiety as knowingly frivolous as it is enchanting and shot with Ophuls's trademark intricate cinematography. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Audio commentary featuring film scholar Susan White, author of The Cinema of Max Ophuls, Interview with Max Ophuls's son, the Academy Award winning filmmaker Marcel Ophuls
Interview with actor Daniel Gelin (Napoleon, Testament of Orpheus)
Interview with film scholar Alan Williams, Selected correspondence between Sir Laurence Olivier and Heinrich Schnitzler (the playwright's son), illustrating the controversy surrounding the source play
New and improved English subtitle translation. PLUS: A new essay by film critic Terrence Raffert

Earrings of Madame De...

French master Max Ophuls's most cherished work, The Earrings of Madame de . . . is an emotionally profound, cinematographically adventurous tale of false opulence and tragic romance. When the aristocratic woman known only as Madame de . . . (the extraordinary Danielle Darrieux) sells her earrings, unbeknownst to her husband (Charles Boyer), in order to pay personal debts, she sets off a chain reaction, the financial and carnal consequences of which can only end in despair. Ophuls adapts Louise de Vilmorin's incisive fin de siecle novella with virtuosic camera work so elegant and precise it's been called the equal to that of Orson Welles.

SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Audio commentary featuring film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar , Interviews with Ophuls collaborators Alain Jessua, Marc Frederix, and Annette Wademant
A visual analysis of The Earrings of Madame de . . . by film scholar Tag Gallagher, Interview with novelist Louise de Vilmorin on Ophuls's adaptation of her story, New and improved English subtitle translation PLUS: A new essay by Molly Haskell, Louise de Vilmorin's novella Madame de, upon which the film is based, and a reprinted essay by costume designer and longtime Ophuls collaborator George Annenkov

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Jacques Demy's haunting romantic musical is an enchanting, one-of-a-kind musical experience. It's basically a movie operetta, in which the characters sing all the dialogue (or, rather, lyrics--by director Demy) to Michel Legrand's lovely score. The story spans five years (1957-1962) in the life of Geneviéve (the ethereally beautiful Catherine Deneuve in the role that launched her to international stardom), the teenage daughter of a woman who owns a Cherbourg umbrella shop. After Geneviéve's boyfriend Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) is drafted and sent off to Algeria, she discovers she's pregnant ... and complications ensue. With its dazzling candy-colored palette, Umbrellas of Cherbourg looks sweet and dreamy. Restored and rereleased in 1995 to rapturous acclaim and the renewed delight of all who got the chance to see it. The video release is taken from the restored version. --Jim Emerson

Breathless

The movie that heralded the French New Wave movement, this lean and exciting 1959 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman, Weekend) broke new ground not only in its unorthodox use of editing and hand-held photography, but in its unflinching and nonjudgmental portrayal of amoral youth. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play two young lovers on the run from the law after Belmondo kills a cop and steals a car. Soon they are on an odyssey through the streets of Paris searching for some money he is owed so that he and his American girlfriend can escape to Italy. As a chase picture it features some startling photography on the streets of Paris, but as a romance it defies expectations, existing as part tragedy and part Bonnie and Clyde crime movie. The result is a wholly original film experience. Inspiring not only a remake starring Richard Gere but numerous films and television series, Breathless is an essential part of motion picture history. --Robert Lane

A Man and a Woman

From director CLAUDE LELOUCH (And Now...Ladies and Gentlemen) comes this 1966 classic a tender visually exciting film of revitalizing love: a race-car driver (JEAN-LOUIS TRINIGNANT) and a movie script girl (ANOUK AIMEE) share a romance filled with humor and truth intertwined with the demands of career and parenthood. Winner of Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Original Screenplay.Running Time: 103 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 085392431229

French filmmaker Claude Lelouch continues to take critical heat for this 1966 international hit, which has been labeled "schmaltzy" and dismissed as overly stylized for its simple story line. While it certainly can't be mistaken for a masterpiece of the French New Wave (Lelouch was left in the dust that year by such wonders as Jean-Luc Godard's Masculin Feminin), A Man and a Woman has a jumpy impressionism that engages a viewer precisely because it cuts against conventional expectations of romance. Starring Anouk Aimée as a widowed "script girl" (working in film production) and Jean-Louis Trintignant as a racer who lost his wife to suicide, the film is really an objective sampling--almost a study--of moments between the time the two characters meet and the point at which they begin to read each other intuitively. Generous flashbacks fill in details on the pair's woeful, recent histories, while endless documentary-like glimpses of Aimée's and Trintignant's characters at work in their highly charged professions become a visual engine for the days passing between measured developments in love. Lelouch is more dryly humane than lush in his approach, though the film strains once in a while for a forced naturalism that can actually be more narcissistic than the most obvious romantic contrivance. Still, A Man and a Woman--in the best sense--is also a movie in love with itself, with its own ability to evoke and conjure and construct dozens of different ways of tracking a relationship in progress. If Lelouch doesn't exactly push open the boundaries of cinema as several of his filmmaking peers did at the time, he certainly enjoys what he's doing. --Tom Keogh

Le Plaisir

Roving with his dazzlingly mobile camera around the decadent ballrooms, bucolic countryside retreats, urban bordellos, and painter's studios of late nineteenth-century Parisian society, Max Ophuls brings his astonishing visual dexterity and storytelling bravura to this triptych of tales by Guy de Maupassant about the limits of spiritual and physical pleasure. Featuring a stunning cast of French stars (including Danielle Darrieux, Jean Gabin, and Simone Simon), Le plaisir pinpoints the cruel ironies and happy compromises of life with a charming and sophisticated breeziness. SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:New, restored high-definition digital transfer, Introduction by filmmaker Todd Haynes, English- and German-language versions of the opening narration, From Script to Screen, a video essay featuring film scholar Jean-Pierre Berthome discussing the evolution of Ophuls's screenplay for Le plaisir, Interviews with actor Daniel Gelin, assistant director Tony Aboyantz, and set decorator Robert Christides, New and improved English subtitle translation. PLUS: A new essay by film critic Robin Wood.

The Lovers - Criterion Collection

Louis Malle unveiled the natural beauty of Jeanne Moreau in his breakthrough Elevator to the Gallows. With his follow-up the scandalous smash The Lovers (Les amants) he made her a star once and for all. A deeply felt and luxuriously filmed fairy tale for grown-ups perched on the edge between classical and New Wave cinemas The Lovers presents Moreau as a restless bourgeois wife whose eye wanders from both her husband and her lover to an attractive passing stranger (Jean-Marc Bory). Thanks to its frank sexuality The Lovers caused quite a stir being censored and attacked for obscenity around the world. If today its shock has worn off its glistening sensuality and seductive storytelling haven't aged a day.SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:New restored high-definition digital transfer of the complete uncensored versionSelection of archival interviews with Louis Malle actors Jeanne Moreau and Jose Luis de Villalonga and writer Louise de VilmorinGallery of promotional material from the U.S. theatrical releaseNew and improved English subtitle translationPLUS: A new essay by film historian Ginette VincendeauSystem Requirements:Running Time: 90 minutes Language: French Subtitles: EnglishFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/LOVE & ROMANCE Rating: NR UPC: 715515029629 Manufacturer No: CC1751DDVD