Blu-ray, DVD Release: The Baker’s Wife

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: July 16, 2019
Price: DVD $17.97, Blu-ray $22.97
Studio: Criterion

The warmth and wit of celebrated playwright turned cinema auteur Marcel Pagnol (Marius, Fanny) shine in 1938’s The Baker’s Wife, an enchanting slice-of-life comedy.

Returning to the Provençal countryside he knew intimately, Pagnol draws a vivid portrait of a close-knit village where the marital woes of a sweetly deluded baker (the inimitable Raimu, praised by no less than Orson Welles as “the greatest actor who ever lived”) snowball into a scandal that engulfs the entire town.

Marrying the director’s abiding concern for the experiences of ordinary people with an understated but superbly judged visual style, The Baker’s Wife is at once wonderfully droll and piercingly perceptive in its depiction of the complexities of human relationships.

Criterion’s new editions of the film include the following:

* New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Selected-scene audio commentary featuring Marcel Pagnol scholar Brett Bowles
* Introduction by Pagnol from 1967
* Excerpt from a 1966 interview with Pagnol for the French television series Cinéastes de notre temps
* Short French news program from 1967 revisiting the village of Le Castellet, where the film was shot
* New English subtitle translation
* An essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau