John Kraskinki’s 2018 dystopian horror film, A Quiet Place, was a huge hit. It was inevitable that there would be a sequel. A Quiet Place: Part II had its world premiere in New York on March 8, 2020, but further shows were put on hold as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. It was not shown anywhere else until May 2021. Like its predecessor, it was a huge hit.

The first film was a novelty in that its alien monsters are blind but can still find humans to kill by the sounds they make. It followed a particular family consisting of a father (Krasinki), mother (Emily Blunt), and their three children, Millicent Symonds, Noah Jupe, and Cade Woodward. Blunt will later give birth to another son.

The sequel begins with another look at the first invasion by the monsters and then forwards to the point where the first film left off. This one has a bigger budget and a larger cast as it expands beyond the adventures of Kraskinki and Blunt’s family. The main character in this one is their deaf daughter, excellently played by deaf actress Millicent Symonds. New additions to the cast include Cillian Murphy (28 Days Later) and Djimon Hounsou (Amistad).

The film received generally favorable reviews from critics and audiences alike, but if you weren’t a big fan of the original you are apt to be even less of one of the sequel, which, like the original, fails to wrap things up completely. Although there isn’t a third installment currently planned, the unresolved ending clearly points to one.

A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II are available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD, purchased either separately or in a combo package.

Criterion has released a Blu-ray edition of Jacques Deray’s 1969 film, La Piscine (The Swimming Pool). The beautifully restored film from the director of Borsalino was filmed simultaneously in French and English at a time when most French films were dubbed in English for international distribution. Both versions are included in the Criterion release.

A box-office smash immediately upon its release in France, the film reunited Alain Delon (The Leopard) and Romy Schneider (The Cardinal), who had been together from 1959 to 1964 but had since married others. They play lovers vacationing in a villa on the French Riviera where tensions mount when they are joined by an old friend played by Maurice Ronet (Delon’s co-star in Purple Noon) and his 18-year-old daughter, played by Jane Birkin (Evil Under the Sun). Tensions mount as it is revealed that Ronet was Schneider’s former lover and reach the boiling point when Delon seduces Birkin and tragedy ensues. The film’s ambivalent ending was modified for the film’s international release.

Criterion extras include a film by director Deray’s widow on its fiftieth anniversary in which now-85-year-old Delon reveals that he is unable to watch the film as it brings back painful memories of Schneider and Ronet, both of whom died tragically. Schneider had brought her young son David to the set, allowing him to play on the swing that Birken is photographed on. The mere sight of that swing reminds Delon that David died at fourteen in 1981 having been impaled on a fence he was climbing at his stepfather’s family’s estate. Schneider, unable to get over the tragedy, committed suicide less than a year later at 42. Ronet died the year after that of cancer at 55.

Birken is also interviewed. Having recently been divorced from composer John Barry (Midnight Cowboy), she had just started a relationship with actor-composer Serge Gainsbourg (Slogan), who was jealous of Delon.

The film has had a huge influence on French culture over the years, its imagery appearing in commercials as recently as 2009. Francois Ozon’s 2003 film, Swimming Pool, starring Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier, was clearly patterned after it while Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 film, A Bigger Splash, starring Tilda Swinton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Ralph Fiennes, and Dakota Johnson, was an actual remake.

Kino Lorber is on a Claudette Colbert binge, releasing on Blu-ray in a period of three weeks, five of her films made in a ten-year period between 1934 and 1943. They are Four Frightened People, The Gilded Lily, The Bride Comes Home, Arise, My Love, and No Time for Love.

1934 was, of course, Colbert’s big year in which she would win an Oscar for It Happened One Night, one of her three box-office hits that year, the others being Cleopatra and Imitation of Life. Four Frightened People, which preceded them, is not quite in the same league.

Although classified as an adventure film, Cecil B. DeMille’s Four Frightened People is more of a droll comedy along the lines of his 1919 silent film, Male and Female, one of numerous filmed versions of the classic comedy, The Admirable Crichton, in which sophisticated Londoners lose their inhibitions along with their clothes when marooned on an island after a shipwreck. Herbert Marshall (Trouble in Paradise), William Gargan (The Story of Temple Drake), and Mary Boland (The Women) co-star.

On the heels of the late 1934 release of Imitation of Life came the early 1935 release of Wesley Ruggles’ The Gilded Lily in which Colbert received sole over-the-title billing with rising stars Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland as her beaux given below-the-title billing. The smash hit comedy catapulted MacMurray to stardom and later in the year he was given equal billing with Colbert in Ruggles’ almost as good The Bride Comes Home in which Robert Young played the third wheel in their romance. Colbert and MacMurray would eventually make a total of seven films together. Milland’s ascent to star billing would have to wait a little longer.

Following the success of 1939’s Beau Geste in which he was second billed to Gary Cooper, Milland was given star billing opposite Colbert in Mitchell Leisen’s Arise, My Love, a deft blend of comedy and drama that served as a nudge for America to become involved in World War II. It was nominated for four Oscars and won one for Best Original Story.

1943’s No Time for Love reunited Colbert and MacMurray under Leisen’s direction in a romantic comedy in which she plays a reporter who falls for MacMurray’s Hudson River Tunnel laborer. The film was Oscar-nominated for its mesmerizing art direction and set design.

This week’s U.S. Blu-ray releases include Union Pacific and a Special Edition of Coogan’s Bluff.