Each week we’re recommending a movie from film lover’s favorite home video company, Criterion. The Criterion Collection is dedicated to gathering the greatest films from around the world and publishing them in editions of the highest technical quality with supplemental features that enhance the appreciation of the art of film. This week, The Awful Truth.
In this Oscar-winning farce, Cary Grant (in the role that first defined the Cary Grant persona) and Irene Dunne exude charm, cunning, and artless affection as an urbane couple who, fed up with each other’s infidelities, resolve to file for divorce. But try as they might to move on, the mischievous Jerry can’t help meddling in Lucy’s ill-matched engagement to a corn-fed Oklahoma businessman (Ralph Bellamy), and a mortified Lucy begins to realize that she may be saying goodbye to the only dance partner capable of following her lead. Directed by the versatile Leo McCarey, a master of improvisation and slapstick as well as a keen and sympathetic observer of human folly, The Awful Truth is a warm but unsparing comedy about two people whose flaws only make them more irresistible.
Special Features
- 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
- New interview with critic Gary Giddins about director Leo McCarey
- New video essay by film critic David Cairns on Cary Grant’s performance
- Illustrated 1978 audio interview with actor Irene Dunne
- Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1939, starring Grant and Claudette Colbert
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- 1937
- 91 minutes
- Black & White
- 1.37:1
- English
- Spine #917
