Blu-ray, DVD Release: The Rose

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: May 19, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Bette Midler (The Showgirl Must Go On) exploded onto the screen with her take-no-prisoners performance in the 1979 music-filled drama The Rose, one of the great Seventies films about fame and addiction from director Mark Rydell (On Golden Pond).

Bette Midler is The Rose

Bette Midler is The Rose

Midler is Janis Joplin-ish rock-and-roll singer Mary Rose Foster (known as the Rose to her legions of fans), whose romantic relationships and mental health are continuously imperiled by the demands of life on the road.

Incisively scripted by Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and beautifully shot by Blow Out’s Vilmos Zsigmond (with assistance on the dazzling concert scenes by a host of other world-class cinematographers, including Conrad L. Hall, László Kovács, Owen Roizman, and Haskell Wexler), The Rose is a sensitively drawn and emotionally effective melodrama that transformed popular musical star Midler into a movie star as well.

Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray editions of the movie contain the following:

  • New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director of photography Vilmos Zsigmond, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD master audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • Audio commentary featuring director Mark Rydell
    • New interviews with Rydell, Zsigmond, and Bette Midler
    • Archival interviews with Midler and Rydell, with on-set footage
    • An essay by music critic Paula Mejia
Buy or Rent The Rose
Amazon graphicDVD | Blu-ray Movies Unlimited graphic Netflix graphic

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.