In my book, Frank Perry’s Play It As It Lays (‘72) is easily the most accomplished, mesmerizing and zeitgeist–capturing film he ever made. Hands down, no question. So did Criterion Channel programmers include this dark-heart-of-Hollywood film when they decided to pay tribute to the Perry canon? Of course not.
One significant reason is because this Universal release has apparently never been HD-scanned, and definitely never released to home video. To this day you can’t stream a quality-level 1080p. PIAIL It surfaced on the Sundance channel many years ago, and you can still watch a 480p version on YouTube, but that’s all. So bizarre.
