The Emigrants / The New Land - Criterion Collection (Blu-ray)
This monumental mid-nineteenth-century epic from Jan Troell charts, over the course of two films, a Swedish farming family’s voyage to America and their efforts to put down roots in this beautiful but forbidding new world. Movie legends Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann give remarkably authentic performances as Karl Oskar and Kristina, a couple who meet with one physical and emotional trial after another on their arduous journey. The precise, minute detail with which Troell depicts the couple’s story—which is also that of countless other people who sought better lives across the Atlantic—is a wonder to behold. Engrossing at every step of the way, the duo of The Emigrants and The New Land makes for perhaps the greatest screen drama about the settling of America.
SPECIAL FEATURES
- New high-definition digital restorations of both films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks on the Blu-rays
- New introduction by theater and film critic John Simon
- New conversation between film scholar Peter Cowie and director Jan Troell
- New interview with actor Liv Ullmann
- To Paint with Pictures, an hour-long documentary from 2005 on the making of the films, featuring archival footage as well as interviews with Troell, Ullmann, producer and coscreenwriter Bengt Forslund, actor Eddie Axberg, and composer Georg Oddner
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: An essay by critic Terrence Rafferty