The Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection is a line of authoritative consumer versions of "important classic and contemporary films" on laserdisc and, later, DVD. It was established as a joint venture between Janus Films and the Voyager Company in the mid-1980s.

Corporate history

Because it is a privately held company, there is a dearth of publicly accessible information regarding the Criterion Collection as a business, as well as its relationships with other entities. 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 is a publicly traded company in the US^*.

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 high-quality 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 States dollar|US$" target="_blank" >^*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.^*

Janus films

Janus Films Inc. was founded by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey Jr. in 1955; they sold it in 1966. At some point thereafter, it was acquired by William Becker and Saul Turell. It is likely, although unverified, that Becker and Turell were the 1966 purchasers of Janus Films.

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, distributed Criterion DVD releases; however, it did not own Criterion. HVE also provided sales, advertising, and marketing services for Criterion. HVE released its own line of DVDs on its own HVE line, including The Merchant Ivory Collection ^*, 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 released by 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. It is unclear whether or not HVE will continue to exist as an independent label.

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.

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 at first resisted by consumers (due to the fact that letterboxing requires the image to be shrunk and bracketed top and bottom by black bars to accommodate a television's roughly square screen), it was soon embraced by movie enthusiasts who were quick to recognize its benefits over the alternative, a film image that was sometimes severely cropped on the sides. The 1987 Criterion laserdisc of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner was a seminal home video release that helped legitimize letterboxing. [http://www3.baylor.edu/~Michael_Korpi/classes/1303intro/PlayingField.htm

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" ^*. 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.

As of 2006, Criterion has begun to re-release choice earlier titles from their library as they were but with anamorphically-enhanced picture. So far, Brazil and Seven Samurai are scheduled for this fall.

Definitive versions

Criterion has released definitive, and in some cases unique, video editions of such films as The Prince of Tides, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Citizen Kane, A Hard Day's Night, It's a Wonderful Life, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, A Space Odyssey (film), Jason and the Argonauts, and the aforementioned Blade Runner under license with the respective companies that own (or have at some point owned) them. Many of these editions are now out of print, either because they were only released on the now-defunct laserdisc format or because the titles have changed hands and are no longer licensed to Criterion. As a result, many Criterion titles are now collectors items. For instance, the original Criterion DVD release of This Is Spinal Tap contains supplementary content not represented in 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 issues); The Prince of Tides includes a commentary track by Barbra Streisand and other supplements not included on Columbia/TriStar's current DVD; and 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.

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.

And whereas the unintentionally public domain Audrey Hepburn-Cary Grant comedy Charade is available in many low-priced, budget-line editions, Criterion nonetheless went through the expense to produce a properly restored DVD edition of the film, with extras. (They did this twice, in fact, the second time to create a new anamorphic transfer.)

Restorations

Criterion usually selects foreign films, established classics, and obscure critically admired movies over mainstream Hollywood fare, though 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 restorations — a practice that has influenced other companies.

Despite Criterion's legacy for quality transfers and sound mixes, its release of Pasolini's Salò suffers from poor color balance, softness, artifacts, and miscellaneous imperfections. Many of these problems (and similar problems on other early discs) are attributable to the fact that Criterion re-used its existing laserdisc transfer instead of creating a new DVD transfer: not only did the picture quality itself pale in comparison to films transferred utilizing newer telecine and digital restoration technologies, but previously unnoticed flaws in the source materials became more apparent on the higher-resolution DVD format. Some films, such as Laurence Olivier's Richard III have been painstakingly reconstructed by Criterion, restoring "lost" scenes for the film.

Some Criterion DVDs, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc and Children of Paradise, contain short restoration demonstrations, which compare unrestored prints with the painstakingly restored new master.

Laserdisc and DVD

Criterion was a laserdisc pioneer, but it entered the DVD market cautiously, 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, ^* 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 ^*. While these laserdiscs are no longer available, bonus materials, such as commentary tracks, have appeared on DVD releases issued by other companies. The commentary by director Martin Scorsese, which appears on the newly released special edition of Raging Bull, is an example. 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. Today, though the company is no longer alone in the care and dedication with which it treats its films, nor in the elaborate content of the special editions, the Criterion Collection remains synonymous with quality.

Pricing

As with any brand associated in the mind of consumers with quality, Criterion DVDs tend, on the whole, to be more expensive than DVDs released by other entities. The price range as of 2006 is about US$30 for a one-disc set and US$40 for a two-disc set. Whether this pricing structure is due to increased costs necessary to ensure the best possible film elements and extras and to compensate for a smaller market for the titles it releases, or whether it is a means to capitalize on the cachet of its reputation has been debated. With an emphasis on quality over quantity, only a comparatively few films have been selected to be join the Collection. 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 a special US$14.95 price because of its brevity and important treatment of The Holocaust.

The price may be influenced by the packaging. Criterion rejects flimsy cases and single-spine double disc boxes. Each disc is given its own chamber on multiple-disc editions (sometimes even their own separate snap case, like Brazil). Oftentimes, decorative sleeves and thick booklets accompany the movies.

In 2004, Criterion released a DVD holiday gift set exclusively on Amazon.com, with a total of 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, and remains, however, one of the biggest and most expensive DVD products available to consumers. As of June 2006, Criterion had issued over 350 DVD releases.

One should not rule out buying used Criterion DVD's from local video stores and game shops. Chances are, the previous owner was a collector of sorts and thusly, the discs and accompanying material may be well in tact. In fact, oftentimes, a used Criterion DVD is in perfect or at least reasonable condition, as opposed to mainstream titles that could have exchanged more careless hands.