The Piano (1993) Tunes Up on the Criterion Collection

The Criterion Collection released The Piano to Blu-ray on January 25, 2022. Jane Campion directed the film starring Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, and Sam Neill.

‘The Piano’ Criterion Synopsis

With this sublimely stirring fable of desire and creativity, Jane Campion became the first woman to win a Palme d’Or at Cannes. Holly Hunter is achingly eloquent through silence in her Academy Award–winning performance as Ada, an electively mute Scottish woman who expresses her innermost feelings through her beloved piano. When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter (Anna Paquin, in her Oscar-winning debut) to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband (Sam Neill) and a rugged frontiersman (Harvey Keitel) to whom she develops a forbidden attraction. With its sensuously moody cinematography, dramatic coastal landscapes, and sweeping score, this uniquely timeless evocation of a woman’s awakening is an intoxicating sensory experience that burns with the twin fires of music and erotic passion.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

• New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Jane Campion and director of photography Stuart Dryburgh, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
• In the 4K UHD edition: One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and one Blu-ray with the film and special features
• Audio commentary featuring Campion and producer Jan Chapman
• New conversation between Campion and film critic Amy Taubin
• New interviews with Dryburgh, production designer Andrew McAlpine, and Maori adviser Waihoroi Shortland
• Interview with actor Holly Hunter on working with Campion
• “The Piano” at 25, a program featuring a conversation between Campion and Chapman
• Interview with composer Michael Nyman
• Excerpts from an interview with costume designer Janet Patterson
• Inside “The Piano,” a featurette including interviews with Hunter and actors Harvey Keitel and Sam Neill
• Water Diary, a 2006 short film by Campion
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation and English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by critic Carmen Gray

New cover by Greg Ruth