5 Classy DVD's From the Criterion Collection

By RICHARD CORLISS

It's not just about owning the latest Pixar movie or Star Wars reissue. The DVD format has created a connoisseur class that values taste in title selection, pristine print quality, peerless extras and lavish production. For those collectors, the Chanel of DVD outfits is Criterion, spawned by the pre-eminent '50s art-house distributor Janus Films. From the 350 titles issued thus far in the Criterion Collection, here's a sampling of its classy wares.

The Royal Tenenbaums Wes Anderson The emphasis at Criterion is on classic foreign films, but the folks there do select U.S. movies, and they do love Anderson--they offer three of his four features. His deadpan comic sense gives his work a retro-European feel that suits the collection. Tenenbaums, his most agreeable offering, boasts a stellar cast and the emotional edginess of a real-life domestic epic. Among the extras is a revealing documentary portrait of Anderson by cinema verite pioneer Albert Maysles.

The Killers Robert Siodmak, Don Siegel The Ernest Hemingway story, about two tough guys in a diner, is one of the most influential works in American lit; without it, no Pulp Fiction. The 1946 movie expands the action with a long flashback about the gangster's prey, a haunted boxer called Swede (Burt Lancaster in his first movie). The 1964 version has murderous Lee Marvin tangling with the even more venal Ronald Reagan (in his last movie). The set also includes a third film, a short by renegade Soviet auteur Andrei Tarkovsky.

Grand Illusion Jean Renoir Perhaps the most beloved film on any list of all-time greats, this World War I saga prefigures many a Great Escape prison-camp movie--it pits a German commandant (Erich von Stroheim) against two captured French officers (Pierre Fresnay and Jean Gabin) in a gradually warming debate on the codes of honor and survival. But Renoir the humanist is no sentimentalist, as the film's French title makes clear: La Grande Illusion translates as The Big Illusion. This was the first Criterion DVD release, and the supplements show that the company was on its game from the start. There is Renoir's filmed reminiscence of the movie and his own wartime exploits, as well as a fond essay by Von Stroheim on this superb director.

The Seventh Seal Ingmar Bergman The art-house film came of age in the late '50s with Janus' release of a dozen or so Bergman movies, particularly this medieval epic about a knight playing chess with Death during the plague years. As gaunt, handsome and stern as the face of its star, Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal comes with an illuminating commentary by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie and a nifty short about the process of restoring the film.

Six Moral Tales Eric Rohmer The latest box from Criterion is one of its biggest--and grandest. Rohmer's lovely, chatty, pensive comedies (including My Night at Maud's and Claire's Knee) arrive with six of the director's short films, his written versions of the Tales in a 262-page book and a pamphlet of essays by top critics. The package serves as both a tribute to Rohmer and a display of Criterion's excellence.