"Despite being considered Akira Kurosawa's first important film, the Stray Dog DVD is unfortunately one of the lesser Criterion releases. The print is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.33:1, but it is not in good shape. It does show some marks and lines, and the image flickers and fades on occasion. It is still probably made from the best print of the movie that exists, but Criterion has set the bar so high that now consumers expect all their releases to be nearly perfect. The disc's visual deficiencies are somewhat compensated by good supplementary features. It has an informative audio commentary by Stephen Prince, the author of The Warrior's Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Another useful supplement is a 30-minute documentary on the making of Stray Dog, a part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It's Wonderful to Create. It features interviews with a few of Kurosawa's surviving collaborators on that film: art director Toshiro Muraki, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, and actors Keiko Awaji and Isao Kimura. The booklet that comes with the DVD includes a nice mini-essay by Terrence Rafferty and an excerpt from Kurosawa's book Something Like an Autobiography in which he reminisces about the filming of Stray Dog."