| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Motion picture video production |
| Founded | 1984 |
| Headquarters | New York City, New York, U.S.[1] |
| Key people | Jonathan B. Turell (CEO)[1] |
| Products | Laserdiscs (1984–98) DVDs (1998–present) Blu-ray Discs (2008–present) VOD (select titles) (2008–present) |
| Revenue | US$6.1 million (2007)[1] |
| Owner(s) | The Voyager Company |
| Employees | 40[1] |
| Parent | Janus Films |
| Divisions | Eclipse from the Criterion Collection Essential Art House |
| Website | www.criterion.com |
The Criterion Collection (est. 1984) is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados.[2] The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions. Criterion is also known for taking great lengths to restore and clean all films released on their label.
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The Criterion Collection company was founded in 1984 by Robert Stein, Aleen Stein, and Joe Medjuck, who later were joined by Roger Smith. In 1985, the Steins, William Becker, and Jonathan B. Turell founded the Voyager Company,[3] to publish educational multimedia CD-ROMs (1989–2000),[3][4] during which time, The Criterion Collection became a subordinate division of the Voyager Company. In March 1994, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH bought 20 percent of Voyager for US$ 6.7 million; the founders each retained a 20 percent owner’s share.[3] In 1997, the Voyager Company was dissolved (Aleen Stein founded the Organa LLC CD-ROM publishing company), and Holtzbrinck Publishers sold the “Voyager” brand name, 42 CD-ROM titles, the Voyager web site, and associated assets, to Learn Technologies Interactive, LLC (LTI).[5] Robert Stein sold 42 Voyager titles to LTI for his Voyager–Criterion company share. The remaining partners, Aleen Stein, William Becker (President) and Jonathan Turell (CEO) owned The Criterion Collection company,[5] which has a business partnership with Janus Films, and had one with Home Vision Entertainment (HVE) until 2005, when Image Entertainment bought HVE.[6]
In 1986, Charles Benton founded Home Vision Entertainment (HVE), the home-video division of Public Media Inc. (PMI), which he founded in 1968. The HVE company sold, advertised, marketed, and distributed Criterion Collection DVDs, and sold its own HVE-brand of DVDs (co-produced with Criterion), including The Merchant Ivory Collection,[7] and the Classic Collection, a joint venture between Home Vision Entertainment and Janus Films. The latter enterprise published HVE imprint films, for which Janus Films owned the video rights, unavailable from the Criterion Collection; however, Criterion published Classic Collection fims. In 2005, Image Entertainment bought HVE, thus it became the exclusive distributor of Criterion Collection products.
Criterion began to provide video-on-demand in partnership with MUBI (formerly The Auteurs) in 2008. In February 2011, Criterion began switching its VOD offerings exclusively to Hulu Plus.[8]
Commercially, the Criterion Collection video company pioneered the correct aspect ratio letterboxing presentation of movies, commentary soundtracks, multi-disc sets, special editions, and definitive versions.
With its eighth laserdisc release of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Criterion introduced the letterbox format, which added black bars to the top and bottom of the 4:3 standard television set in order to preserve the original aspect ratio of the film.[9] Thereafter, Criterion made letterboxing the standard presentation for all releases of films shot in widescreen aspect ratios.[10]
The Criterion Collection's second catalogue title, King Kong (1933), was the debut of the scene-specific audio commentary contained in a discrete analogue channel of the laserdisc. It featured US film historian Ronald Haver reporting about the production, cast, screenplay, production design and special effects. He also is the commentator for the Casablanca (1942), Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Singin' in the Rain (1952), and The Wizard of Oz (1939) laserdiscs. Typically, the chapter-indexed commentaries are exclusive to the Criterion releases, and the initial DVD reissues; they became collector’s items when the original-owner studios re-issued titles (with commentary tracks or not) licensed to Criterion.
The Criterion Collection began in 1984 with the releases of Citizen Kane (1941) and King Kong (1933) on laserdisc. The company later became notable for pioneering the “special edition” DVD concept, containing bonus materials (trailers, commentaries, documentaries, alternate endings, deleted scenes, et cetera), "a film school in a box", as it were,[11] the success of which established the special edition version in the DVD business. In 2006, taking advantage of better film-transfer and film-restoration technologies, Criterion published improved-image versions, with bonus materials, of early catalogue titles such as Amarcord (1973), Brazil (1985), and Seven Samurai (1954).
Some licensed Criterion Collection titles, such as Rebecca (1940), are commercially unavailable but are for sale at auction on-line. Titles such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991), RoboCop (1987), Hard-Boiled (1992), The Killer (1989), and Ran (1985), become unavailable when their publishing licenses expire or when Criterion publishes improved versions, such as Beauty and the Beast (1946), M (1931), Seven Samurai (1954), and The Wages of Fear (1954). As of August 2009, 87 of the 373 titles (23 percent) constituting the list of Criterion Collection laserdisc releases, have been released.
The film Charade (1963), was a public-domain property for lacking the legally required copyright notice—usually a license to sell low-quality DVD products —yet the Criterion company produced a digitally cleaned edition under license from Universal Pictures for the initial edition and for the anamorphic widescreen re-release edition of the film.
Periodically, Criterion does release material on DVD/Blu-ray licensed from the studios they previously dealt with, such as Sony, Fox, MGM/UA, and Universal, generally on a case-by-case basis. Recently, Criterion struck new deals with Westchester Films (which is home to some films that had previously been with Castle Hill Productions) and the estate of Charlie Chaplin (as Janus Films had struck a new deal with the Chaplin company and worldwide distribution agent MK2 for the re-issue rights to the Chaplin library).
Originally, the Criterion company released art, genre, and mainstream movies on laserdisc—Halloween (1978), Ghostbusters (1984), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Armageddon (1998), and The Rock (1996)—yet currently the Criterion Collection mostly sells World cinema, mainstream cinema classics, and critically successful obscure movies. Using the best available source materials, the company produces technologically improved versions, thus, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), M (1931), and the Children of Paradise (1945) discs contain film-cleaning and film-restoration demonstrations, comparing the restored and un-restored images; not every film-distribution company approved of the comparison exercise—the Toho Company took exception to the restoration demonstration in Criterion's first DVD release of Seven Samurai (1954); the re-issued version does not contain it.
The Criterion Collection began publishing laserdiscs on December 1, 1984 with its release of Citizen Kane. In 1998, Criterion began publishing DVDs as well. On March 16, 1999, Criterion issued its final laserdisc release, Michael Bay's Armageddon.[12] As with its laserdiscs, Criterion's early DVD editions of widescreen films were presented in the letterbox format, but Criterion did not enhance its discs for 16x9 monitors until mid-1999 with its release of Insomnia (1997), catalogue number 47.[13]
On 25 November 2008, on its web site, Criterion began offering video-on-demand (VOD) downloading services, for US$5.00 per select movie, marking the beginning of a cross-promotional VOD service from the Criterion and The Auteurs web sites.[14] In early 2011, many Criterion titles also became available through the Hulu Plus premium service.[15]
Criterion began publishing on Blu-ray Disc in December 2008.[16] Unlike its DVD releases, a mixture of NTSC-standard Region 0 (region-free) and Region 1 DVDs, Criterion Collection Blu-ray Discs are Region A.
In 2006, the prices for Criterion Collection movies on DVD ranged from 30 to 40 US dollars for one-disc and two-discs sets, respectively. Movies below that price range tend to be Walt Disney-produced or -distributed products, such as The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (2004), and Chasing Amy (1997). Criterion also sold the French Holocaust short documentary Night and Fog (1955) for US$14.95, below the company’s usual price range.[17] In 2004, the company released The Criterion Collection Gift Set 2004, a special 282-disc set for US$5,000, sold exclusively through online retailer Amazon.com, although it was not the (then) entire Criterion Collection cinémathèque. Recently, Criterion DVDs (including two disc editions) have been roughly ten dollars cheaper than their Blu-ray counterparts.
Janus Films' "Essential Art House" collection consists of Janus-owned Criterion movies without special features, and are also cheaper alternatives.
Given their rarity, the great aficionado demand for out-of-print Criterion Collection DVDs spawned the business of counterfeit (bootleg) copies, often advertised as a Criterion Collection Asian edition to disguise their bootleg nature.[13] The company’s Web site instructs buyers to shop carefully, advises about identifying bootleg merchandise, and notes that the Criterion Collection never published Asian editions of its movie catalogue.