This June, Criterion will bring three of the most beloved classics of French cinema to Blu-ray for the first time with a newly restored edition of Marcel Pagnol’s Marseille Trilogy, a sweeping saga set in the author’s native Provence that tracks the lives and loves of its characters over the course of a generation. A legend is born in The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, the silent serial-killer thriller that Alfred Hitchcock considered his true debut, which is accompanied in our release by Downhill, another variation on the “wrong man” theme that the Master of Suspense returned to throughout his legendary body of work. Nicholas Ray kicked off his own renowned career with They Live By Night, a lyrical film noir that would be imitated by decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come, now on Blu-ray for the first time. Dustin Hoffman stands his ground in Sam Peckinpah’s notorious shocker Straw Dogs, presented in a new 4K transfer with extensive features that explore the film’s production and controversies. And not to be missed: Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu, an indisputable classic of world cinema and perhaps the finest achievement of the master whom Jean-Luc Godard called “quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers.”
June 6: Ugetsu
June 13: They Live By Night
June 20: The Marseille Trilogy
June 27: The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog
June 27: Straw Dogs