Criterion has announced the new titles coming in April 2014 and among them are two titles teased on their New Years 2014 illustration, those being Lars von Trier‘s Breaking the Waves (4/15) and Don Siegel‘s prison drama Riot in Cell Block 11 (4/22).
Breaking the Waves has long been one of von Trier’s more acclaimed films starring Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgaard, a wonderful faith-based drama you might not expect if you’re only familiar with von Trier from films such as Antichrist, Melancholia and the upcoming Nymphomaniac. Personally I would love to see Dancer in the Dark get the Criterion treatment, but this should be a good one with a selection of features that includes a selected-scene audio commentary featuring von Trier, editor Anders Refn and location scout Anthony Dod Mantle, as well as new and old interviews, Watson’s audition tape and more.
As for Siegel’s Riot in Cell Block 11, I’ve never actually seen it but it’s described as “a ripped-from-the-headlines social-problem picture about prisoners’ rights, inspired by a recent spate of uprisings in American prisons” that was “shot on location at Folsom State Prison, with real inmates and guards as extras.” Additional features include a new audio commentary by film scholar Matthew Bernstein, xcerpts from the director’s 1993 autobiography, [amazon asin=”0571178316″ text=”A Siegel Film”] and more.
Additionally a new Carl Th. Dreyer film in the form of Master of the House (4/22) with a new interview with Dreyer historian Casper Tybjerg and a new visual essay on Dreyer’s camera work and editing by film historian David Bordwell as well as Dino Risi‘s Italian road comedy Il sorpasso (4/29) starring Vittorio Gassman and Jean-Louis Trintignant (Amour). Il Sorpasso is another one I haven’t seen but when a road comedy is done well they can be some of the best around and this one takes its two leads from Rome to rural Southern Italy and includes a series of interviews, a 2006 documentary on Risi and much more.
Finally, Criterion is giving Francois Truffaut‘s classic, and previously out-of-print, The 400 Blows the dual DVD/Blu-ray upgrade on April 8. I still have the original release, but for those of you that haven’t yet seen it, get on it.
