The Criterion Collection
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The Criterion Collection is a privately held company which produces and releases authoritative consumer versions of "important classic and contemporary films" on DVD. It was established in 1984 as a joint venture between Janus Films and the Voyager Company.
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[edit] Corporate history
Due to the company's private nature, very little publicly accessible information regarding the business or its relationships with other entities is available. Nevertheless, what information can be gathered from media sources reveals that the Criterion Collection shares a close business relationship with Janus Films and with Home Vision Entertainment (HVE), which was a publicly traded company in the US[1].
The Criterion Collection was founded in 1984 by Robert Stein, Aleen Stein (then Robert's wife), and Roger Smith. In 1985, the Steins, William Becker, and Jonathan B. Turell (son of Saul J. Turell) founded The Voyager Company. Voyager was a developer of multimedia CD-ROMs that released dozens of educational CD-ROMs between 1989 and 2000. During that time, the Criterion Collection became a division of Voyager. In March of 1994, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH purchased a twenty percent share of Voyager for US$6.7 million. The four founders themselves each retained a twenty percent share.
In the late 1990s, Voyager was broken up. In the winter of 1994, Aleen Stein divorced Robert Stein and left the active management of the company to start another CD-ROM publishing company, Organa LLC, although she retained her share in Voyager. In the winter of 1997, Holtzbrinck Publishers sold 42 Voyager CD-ROM titles, the Voyager brand name, the Voyager Web site, and associated assets to Learn Technologies Interactive (LTI) LLC (Robert Stein had himself sold 42 Voyager CD-ROM titles to LTI some time earlier in exchange for his shares in Voyager/Criterion). At this time, the remaining founding partners, Aleen Stein, William Becker and Jonathan Turell retained complete ownership of Criterion, each with 1/3 share of the company; Turell became the CEO and Becker's son, Peter Becker, became the president (Peter Becker had been the president of Voyager and, before that, the director of its Criterion division). Aleen Stein no longer has a role in the day-to-day operations, but she continues to own one third of the company.[2]
The company softball team's nickname is "the True Foes," punning on the name of French director François Truffaut.
[edit] Janus films
Janus Films Inc. was founded by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey Jr. in 1955 and was sold by them in 1966. At some point thereafter, the company was acquired by William Becker and Saul Turell. It is likely, although unverified, that Becker and Turell were the 1966 purchasers of Janus Films.
[edit] HVE
Charles Benton founded Public Media, Inc. (PMI) in 1968. PMI's home video division, HVE, was established in 1986. Charles' daughter, Adrianne B. Furniss, became PMI's president in 1996, and its CEO in 1999. Adrianne B. Furniss is also the Chief Executive Officer of HVE. Charles Benton is the Chairman of HVE.
HVE, which was also a privately held company, acted as distributor for Criterion's DVD releases as well as providing sales, advertising and marketing services. HVE released its own line of DVDs on its own HVE line, including The Merchant Ivory Collection [3], produced in association with the Criterion Collection and was dedicated to releasing DVDs of films of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, and the Classic Collection, "a joint venture between Home Vision Entertainment and Janus Films." The latter appears to be dedicated to releasing DVDs under the HVE imprint of films for which Janus Films holds DVD rights and are not currently available from the Criterion Collection. Films under the Classic Collection imprint, however, have also been released by the Criterion Collection. In 2005, HVE was acquired by Image Entertainment. As a result of this transaction, Image Entertainment became the exclusive distributor of the Criterion Collection. DVDs continue to be released under the HVE imprint, but it is unclear how long the practice will continue.
[edit] Contributions and influence
Criterion pioneered many innovations in the way movies are presented on video that have become standard today. These include the use of letterboxing, the release of multi-disc sets and special editions, and definitive versions.
[edit] Letterboxing
Letterboxing is a practice in which widescreen movies are presented in their original theatrical aspect ratios for viewing on the home television screen. Though initially disliked by some consumers, since the letterboxed image would not use the full area of the television, the practice was soon embraced by movie enthusiasts since it allowed the director's original framing to be presented at home for the first time — previous home video releases typically cropped significant portions (25%-50%) of the image to fit the 4:3 television screens which were common at the time. The 1987 Criterion laserdisc of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was a seminal home video release that helped legitimize letterboxing. [4] [5]
[edit] Special editions
The company's debut releases were the 1984 laserdiscs of Citizen Kane and King Kong. In both cases, Criterion pioneered the concept of the special edition, in which a movie is presented with numerous bonus materials including trailers, directors' audio commentaries, behind-the-scenes documentaries, alternate endings, deleted scenes, and more. Peter Becker calls this idea, "a film school in a box" [6]. This concept was quickly embraced by almost all other home video companies, from the mainstream to small speciality labels. Today, special edition DVDs, even for the most trivial of films, are becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Criterion occasionally issues the same DVD (e.g. The Red Shoes) with and without a silver special-edition sticker on the packaging, although there is no difference between discs with and without stickers.[citation needed]
In September of 2006, to tie in with their new design, Criterion re-released three of their earlier titles back onto DVD with enhanced picture and new supplements: Amarcord, Brazil, and Seven Samurai.
[edit] Definitive versions
Under license from the copyright holders, Criterion has released definitive, and in some cases unique, video editions of such films as Citizen Kane, A Hard Day's Night, It's a Wonderful Life, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jason and the Argonauts, as well as those noted below. Many of these editions are now out of print, usually where the film's copyrights have changed hands or where the copyright holders have decided to release their own version. As a result, many Criterion titles are now collectors items.
- The original Criterion DVD release of This Is Spinal Tap contains supplementary content absent from MGM's current DVD release (such as the 16 mm 'test' film)
- The Criterion laserdisc version of Blade Runner is the original unedited international version not included on subsequent laserdisc and DVD releases of the film due to legal disputes
- Midnight Cowboy is presented in its intended aspect ratio of 1.66:1 while later releases are all matted to 1.85:1, causing the titles to be cropped, has more vivid colors than even recent DVD releases and includes a commentary
- Criterion's releases of the first three James Bond films on laserdisc (Dr. No, From Russia With Love and Goldfinger) also presented the films in the intended 1.66:1 ratio and included commentaries not present on subsequent laserdisc and DVD releases
- Dr. Strangelove includes an original draft of the screenplay, and an extensive section of Cold War instructional pamphlets and films (including the full version of Duck and Cover)
- The Prince of Tides includes a commentary track by Barbra Streisand and other supplements not included on Columbia/TriStar's current DVD
- The Fisher King contains commentary by Terry Gilliam, an extensive deleted scenes section with commentary, trailers, storyboarded segments, and costume tests, while the current DVD release by Sony includes trailers as the only supplement
- Close Encounters of the Third Kind contains scenes from the original version (in film context) which are not represented on the later "collector's edition" video releases (they are available separately on Sony's recent DVD). These versions can occasionally be found on Internet auction sites.
[edit] Licensing
Some of Criterion's titles (e.g., Salò) are now "out-of-print" and unavailable, and sell at high prices on auction sites. Usually, titles go out of print only when Criterion's license for them expires and is not renewed; this typically happens when the original licensor wishes to release its own version of the title, as happened with The Silence of the Lambs, RoboCop, and Hard-Boiled.
In a few cases, early releases (such as the laserdisc edition of Citizen Kane, or the DVD editions of Beauty and the Beast, M, Seven Samurai, and The Wages of Fear) are taken out of print temporarily to make way for Criterion's own re-releases, which typically feature improved transfers and more comprehensive supplements.
The comedy Charade featuring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant became public domain on its release due to the absence of a copyright notice which was at that time required. This means that any home video distributor is able to release the film without the payment of royalties. While some budget labels have released lower quality versions, the Criterion Collection produced a digitally-cleaned DVD edition of the film using good quality source materials, and included extras. They repeated this process for their later Anamorphic re-release.
[edit] Restorations
Criterion usually selects foreign films, established classics and obscure (albeit critically admired) movies over mainstream Hollywood fare, although it has released the occasional mainstream blockbuster such as Armageddon and The Rock. Criterion is noted for spending a great deal of effort and money tracing the best source materials for classic films, and engaging in thorough video clean-ups — a practice that has influenced other companies, most notably Warner Home Video.
Some Criterion DVDs, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc, M and Children of Paradise, contain short restoration demonstrations, which compare unrestored prints with the painstakingly restored new master.
[edit] Laserdisc and DVD
Criterion was a laserdisc pioneer, but was a late entrant into the DVD market, not releasing its first titles on the new format until DVD had been on the market for approximately a year. Indeed, Criterion's early DVD releases of widescreen films were presented in letterbox format as was the case with widescreen laserdisc films, rather than being anamorphically enhanced: Criterion's first anamorphic release was #47, Insomnia, [7] although there would not be another release of an anamorphically enhanced film in a widescreen ratio until #55: The Unbearable Lightness of Being).
Nonetheless, in 1998, the company discontinued its line of laserdisc releases [8]. While these laserdiscs are no longer available, bonus materials from them, such as commentary tracks, have appeared on DVD releases issued by other companies. For example, Martin Scorsese's commentary track for Raging Bull appears on the newly released MGM DVD. It is suspected that these commentary releases are the result of business transactions between Criterion and other studios that could potentially allow Criterion to release films on DVD to which it otherwise would not have access.
While the Criterion Company pioneered the production of quality home video releases, in recent years, they have received more competition. Distributors such as Warner Home Video and Fox have received considerable acclaim for their recent releases. However, in terms of academic approach, attention to detail and artistic cover art, the Criterion Collection remains unsurpassed.
[edit] Pricing
The price range as of 2006 is about US$30 for a one-disc set and US$40 for a two-disc set. The rare discs to break the pricing structure are generally films produced and/or distributed by Disney's Buena Vista Motion Picture Group, including The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and Chasing Amy. Criterion released the short film Night and Fog at US$14.95 because of its brevity and important treatment of The Holocaust[citation needed].
In 2004, Criterion released a DVD holiday gift set exclusively on Amazon.com, with 282 discs at a cost of about US$5,000.00. It was not a complete set of the Criterion releases at that point, since Criterion no longer had the rights to certain films. It was however, one of the biggest and most expensive DVD products available to consumers. As of June 2006, Criterion had issued over 350 DVD releases.
Since there is significant demand for out-of-print Criterion releases, they are often bootlegged and these bootleg editions are sometimes advertised as "Asian editions".[citation needed] The Criterion company has urged buyers to "proceed with caution when shopping for out-of-print DVDs," and on its website offers advice on how to spot bootlegs. The company also point out that it has never issued Asian editions. Bootlegs of many out-of-print Criterion editions, particularly the above-mentioned Salò, are often seen on Internet auction sites, while legitimate discs can command prices in the hundreds of dollars.[citation needed]
[edit] References
- Robert Stein by John Brockman
- "The Teachings of Bob Stein", Wired Magazine, July 1996
- DVD Audio commentary Research Paper
- Peter Becker interview on NPR (2004).
[edit] See also
- Janus Films
- Masters of Cinema
- List of Criterion Collection releases
- List of Criterion Laserdisc releases
