Never before on disc in the U.S., Criterion presents a new 4K digital restoration partially funded by the Film Foundation and mastered with supervision by Grover Crisp. The American disc debut features two DVDs and one Blu-ray and each format includes the film and all the supplements, including two documentaries: the feature-length 2005 Elio Petri: Notes About a Filmmaker (on the life and career of the director) and the 50-minute Investigation of a Citizen Named Volonté (on actor Gian Maria Volonté). Also includes an archival interview with Petri from 1970, a 2010 interview with composer Ennio Morricone, and a new interview with film scholar Camilla Zamboni, plus trailers and a booklet with essays and notes.
Il Generale della Rovere (Raro, Blu-ray, DVD), previously released as a Criterion DVD, gets a new edition and a Blu-ray debut from Raro, which specializes Italian classics and genre rediscoveries. This 1959 drama, one of Roberto Rossellini’s last commercially-targeted pictures, is inspired by a true story and it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Vittoria De Sica stars as an Italian con man in World War II who profited in the margin between desperate Italian families and the German Gestapo who essentially policed the country. It’s a richly drawn drama of an opportunist whose conscience is reignited and De Sica’s performance is a model of understatement and ambiguity. The new edition, mastered from the 35mm negative, offers both the theatrical cut and a longer director’s cut, mastered with more clarity than the earlier Criterion edition (the added scenes are of noticeably lower clarity) and presented in a windowboxed 1.37:1 aspect ratio that presents the entire negative image but has caused some controversy (the film was released in a tradtional 1.66:1 ratio). Both Blu-ray and DVD feature a video essay by film critic Adriano Aprà and video interviews with Renzo Rossellini Jr. (mostly repeating clips from the video essay), Aprà and Aldo Strappini, who oversaw the digital transfer and restoration.Videophiled Classic: Investigations of ‘A Citizen Above Suspicion’ and ‘Generale Della Rovere’
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