'Round Midnight Bertrand TavernierThe 39 Steps Alfred HitchcockThe 39 Steps is a heart-racing spy story by Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), following Richard Hannay (Oscar winner Robert Donat of Goodbye, Mr. Chips), who stumbles into a conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors—a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued—as well as into an expected romance with the cool Pamela (Madeline Carroll). Adapted from a novel by John Buchan, this classic wrong-man thriller from the Master of Suspense anticipates the director’s most famous works (especially North by Northwest), and remains one of his cleverest and most entertaining films.50 Years of Janus Films 50 Years, 50 Films
One Spectacular DVD Box Set Janus Films opened American viewers’ eyes to the pleasures of Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and François Truffaut at the height of their artistic powers. Celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of this world-renowned distribution company with Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films, an expansive collectors’ box set featuring fifty classic films on DVD and a lavishly illustrated hardcover book that tells the story of Janus Films through an essay by film historian Peter Cowie, a tribute from Martin Scorsese, and notes on each of the fifty films.
• Eight Academy Awards
• Twenty-eight Academy Award nominations
• Two Palme d’or awardsThe 400 Blows François TruffautIn 1959, François Truffaut burst upon the scene, heralding the French New Wave with his emotional, autobiographical tale of a boy named Antoine Doinel, neglected by family and school, who must ultimately fend for himself on the streets of Paris. A showcase for the talents of not only Truffaut but also the young Jean-Pierre Léaud (who would become an emblem of the coming decade of daring French cinema), The 400 Blows remains a stunner, from first frame to unforgettable last.Accatone Pier Paolo PasoliniThe first of Pier Paolo Pasolini's highly acclaimed films, and the winner of numerous film festival prizes, ACCATONE uses a talented cast to present a vivid picture of the Roman slums. Based on one of the filmmaker/poet's novels, this story of a pimp, his friends, his enemies and his girls is realism at its earthiest. It is brutal, realistic, unsentimental and bustiling with life. Particularly effective is the use of Bach on the soundtrack which provides ironic counterpoint to the world of pimps, prostitutes and street fighters.After the Rehearsal Ingmar BergmanWith this spare chamber piece, set in an empty theater, Ingmar Bergman returned to his perennial theme of the permeability of life and art. Lingering after a rehearsal for August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (a touchstone for the filmmaker throughout his career), eminent director Henrik (Erland Josephson) enters into a frank and flirtatious conversation with his up-and-coming star, Anna (Lena Olin), leading him to recall his affair with Anna’s late mother, the self-destructive actress Rakel (Ingrid Thulin). The sharply written and impeccably performed After the Rehearsal, originally made for television, pares away all artifice to examine both the allure and the cost of a life in the theater.Alambrista! Robert M. YoungIn Alambrista!, a farmworker sneaks across the border from Mexico into California in an effort to make money to send to his family back home. It is a story that happens every day, told here in an uncompromising, groundbreaking work of realism from American independent filmmaker Robert M. Young (Dominick and Eugene). Vivid and spare where other films about illegal immigration might sentimentalize, Young's take on the subject is equal parts intimate character study and gripping road movie, a political work that never loses sight of the complex man at its center. Alambrista!, winner of the Cannes Film Festival s inaugural Camera d'Or in 1978, remains one of the best films ever made on this perennially relevant topic.Alexander Nevsky Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri VasilyevSergei Eisenstein, long regarded as a pioneer of film art, changed cinematic strategies halfway through his career. Upon returning from Hollywood and Mexico in the late 1930s, he left behind the densely edited style of celebrated silents like Battleship Potemkin and October, turning instead to historical sources, contradictory audiovisuals, and theatrical sets for his grandiose yet subversive sound-era work. This trio of rousing action epics reveals a deeply unsettling portrait of the Soviet Union under Stalin, and provided battle-scene blueprints for filmmaking giants from Laurence Olivier in Henry V to Akira Kurosawa in Seven Samurai.Alita: Battle Angel Robert RodriguezAll About My Mother Pedro AlmodóvarAll That Heaven Allows Douglas SirkFriends and family want a rich widow to end her romance with a tree surgeon about 15 years her junior.And the Ship Sails On Federico FelliniAndrei Rublev Andrei TarkovskyArmy of Shadows Jean-Pierre MelvilleThis masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville (Le doulos, Le cercle rouge) about the French Resistance went unreleased in the United States for thirty-seven years, until its triumphant theatrical debut in 2006. Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Melville’s most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura (Le deuxième souffle), Paul Meurisse (Diabolique), Jean-Pierre Cassel (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), and the incomparable Simone Signoret (Casque d’or, Diabolique) as intrepid underground fighters who must grapple with their conception of honor in their battle against Hitler’s regime.Ashes and Diamonds Andrzej WajdaA Polish partisan assassinates the wrong man at the end of World War II. Directed by Andrzej Wadja.An Autumn Afternoon Yasujiro OzuThe final film from Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story) was also his last masterpiece, a gently heartbreaking story about a man’s dignifed resignation to life’s shifting currents and society’s modernization. Though widower Shuhei (frequent Ozu leading man Chishu Ryu) has been living comfortably for years with his grown daughter, a series of events leads him to accept and encourage her marriage and departure from their home. As elegantly composed and achingly tender as any of the Japanese master’s films, An Autumn Afternoon is one of cinema’s fondest farewells.Babette's Feast Gabriel AxelAt once a rousing paean to artistic creation, a delicate evocation of divine grace, and the ultimate film about food, the Oscar-winning BABETTE'S FEAST is a deeply beloved cinematic treasure. Directed by Gabriel Axel and adapted from a story by Isak Dinesen, this is the layered tale of a French housekeeper with a mysterious past who brings quiet revolution in the form of one exquisite meal to a circle of starkly pious villagers in late nineteenth-century Denmark. BABETTE'S FEAST combines earthiness and reverence in an indescribably moving depiction of pleasure that goes to your head like fine champagne.The Baby of Mâcon Peter GreenawayBack: Season Two Lyndsay Robinson, Kenton Allen, Simon Blackwell, Victoria Grew, Matthew JusticeBallad of a Soldier Grigori ChukhraiRussian soldier Alyosha Skvortsov is granted a visit with his mother after he singlehandedly fends off two enemy tanks. As he journeys home, Alyosha encounters the devastation of his war-torn country, witnesses glimmers of hope among the people, and falls in love. With its poetic visual imagery, Grigori Chukhrai's Ballad of a Soldier is an unconventional meditation on the effects of war, and a milestone in Russian cinema.The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez Robert M. YoungBallad of the Little Soldier Werner HerzogBarcelona Whit StillmanWomen and Cold War politics surround a U.S. sales rep and his Navy-officer cousin in Spain. Directed by Whit Stillman.The Battle of Algiers Gillo PotecorvoOne of the most influential political films in history, The Battle of Algiers, by Gillo Pontecorvo (Kapò), vividly re-creates a key year in the tumultuous Algerian struggle for independence from the occupying French in the 1950s. As violence escalates on both sides, children shoot soldiers at point-blank range, women plant bombs in cafés, and French soldiers resort to torture to break the will of the insurgents. Shot on the streets of Algiers in documentary style, the film is a case study in modern warfare, with its terrorist attacks and the brutal techniques used to combat them. Pontecorvo’s tour de force has astonishing relevance today.The Beales of Grey Gardens Albert MayslesGrey Gardens is an American entry into the cinéma verité documentary style film. This one however, is a fascinating look into the lives of the rich and useless. The subjects are related to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis which makes them even more fascinating. Really. The directors of this film are considered pioneers of the documentary film. This one revolves around Mother, daughter and their decaying mansion. The daughter cannot let go of the past, they snipe at each other, reliving the past, and the heartfelt, raw emotions involved in a daughter giving up her hopes and dreams of an acting career to take care of her ailing and aging mother. Poor thing, she only has money and a mansion to soothe the wounds of her unfulfilled dreams. This documentary is worth seeing because it is exceptionally well done. After all, don't we all want to watch the whining, wealthy, elite on screen so we can take a peek into their everyday lives?The Beast in Heat Luigi BatzellaLe Beau Serge Claude ChabrolBefore Midnight Richard LinklaterBefore Sunset Richard LinklaterThe Before Trilogy Richard LinklaterThe Big Chill Lawrence KasdanBIG CHILL (BLU-RAY/DVD COMBO/1983/WS 1.85/3 DISC) PB DRAMABlow-Up Michelangelo AntonioniBlue Valentine Derek CianfranceBlue Valentine is the story of love found and love lost told in past and present moments in time. Flooded with romantic memories of their courtship, Dean and Cindy use one night to try and save their failing marriage. Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams star in this honest portrait of a relationship on the rocks.Bottle Rocket Wes AndersonWes Anderson first illustrated his lovingly detailed, slightly surreal cinematic vision in this witty and warm portrait of three young middle-class misfits. Fresh out of a mental hospital, gentle Anthony (Luke Wilson) finds himself once again embroiled in the machinations of his best friend, elaborate schemer Dignan (Owen Wilson). With the aid of getaway driver Bob (Robert Musgrave), they develop a needlessly complex, mildly successful plan to rob a small bookstore then go on the lam. Also featuring Lumi Cavazos as Inez, the South American housekeeper Anthony falls in love with, and James Caan as local thief extraordinaire Mr. Henry, Bottle Rocket is a charming, hilarious, affectionate look at the folly of dreamers. Shot against radiant southwestern backdrops, it s the film that put Anderson and the Wilson brothers on the map.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL BLU-RAY EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer supervised and approved by director Wes Anderson and director of photography Robert Yeoman
DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack
Commentary by director/co-writer Anderson and co-writer/star Owen Wilson
The Making of Bottle Rocket : an original documentary by filmmaker Barry Braverman featuring Anderson, James L. Brooks, James Caan, Temple Nash Jr., Kumar Pallana, Polly Platt, Mark Mothersbaugh, Robert Musgrave, Richard Sakai, David and Sandy Wasco, Andrew and Luke and Owen Wilson, and Robert Yeoman
The original thirteen-minute black-and-white Bottle Rocket short film from 1992
Eleven deleted scenes
Anamorphic screen test, storyboards, location photos, and behind-the-scenes photographs by Laura Wilson
Murita Cycles, a 1978 short film by Braverman
The Shafrazi Lectures, no. 1: Bottle Rocket
PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by executive producer James L. Brooks, an appreciation by Martin Scorsese, and original artwork by Ian DingmanThe Bridge Bernhard WickiSeven drafted German schoolboys die defending a worthless bridge against Allied tanks.The Bridge on the River Kwai Peter Taylor, David LeanSpectacularly produced, and the winner of seven Academy Awards® (1957), including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor (Alec Guinness), The Bridge on the River Kwai continues to be one of the most memorable cinematic experiences of all time. Now, for the first time on Blu-ray, following an extensive all-new 4K digital restoration from the original negative, with newly restored 5.1 audio, experience director David Lean's masterpiece as you never have before.Brief Encounter David LeanAn Italian-born housewife and a married stranger meet in a British train station and briefly fall in love.Brink of Life Ingmar BergmanThree women in a maternity ward reveal their life stories and intimate thoughts to one another.Broadcast News James L. Brooks  In the 1970s, the name James L. Brooks (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Taxi, Terms of Endearment, The Simpsons) was synonymous with intelligent television comedy—his shows were insightful about work and love and always tapped into the zeitgeist. With his transition to film in the 1980s, he became a master Hollywood storyteller, and none of his films was more quintessentially Brooks than Broadcast News. This caustic inside look at the Washington news media stars Holly Hunter (Raising Arizona, The Piano), in her breakout role, as a feisty television producer torn between an ambitious yet dim anchorman (William Hurt) and her closest confidant, a cynical veteran reporter (Albert Brooks). Brooks’s witty, gently prophetic entertainment is a captivating transmission from an era in which ideas on love and media were rapidly changing.The Brown Bunny Vincent GalloThe Brown Bunny is both a love story and a haunting portrait of a lost soul unable to forget his past. After finishing a motorcycle race in New Hampshire, Bud Clay (Vincent Gallo) loads his racing bike into the back of his van and begins a cross-country odyssey to Los Angeles, where he is to compete in another race. During his trip, he meets three very different women: Violet, a wholesome all-American gas station attendant; Lilly (Cheryl Tiegs), a fellow lost soul he connects with at a highway rest stop; and Rose, a Las Vegas prostitute. Throughout his journey, Bud can never escape his intense feelings for the love of his life, Daisy (Chloë Sevigny), so he plans to reconcile with her when he reaches Los Angeles. Arriving in Los Angeles, Bud checks into a motel before visiting the abandoned home he once shared with Daisy. He leaves a note, hoping she will turn up at his motel room . . .Building to a notorious climax, the film presents one of the frankest portrayals of male sexuality ever seen in American cinema.Bullet Ballet Shinya TsukamotoBusiness Is Business Paul VerhoevenBy Brakhage: An Anthology, Volume One Stan BrakhageWorking completely outside the mainstream, Stan Brakhage has made nearly 400 films over the past half century. Challenging all taboos in his exploration of "birth, sex, death, and the search for God," Brakhage has turned his camera on explicit lovemaking, childbirth, even actual autopsy. Many of his most famous works pursue the nature of vision itself and transcend the act of filming. Some, including the legendary Mothlight, were made without using a camera at all. Instead, Brakhage has pioneered the art of making images directly on film itself––starting with clear leader or exposed film, then drawing, painting, and scratching it by hand. Treating each frame as a miniature canvas, Brakhage can produce only a quarter- to a half-second of film a day, but his visionary style of image-making has changed everything from cartoons and television commercials to MTV music videos and the work of such mainstream moviemakers as Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, and Oliver Stone.
Criterion is proud to present 26 masterworks by Stan Brakhage in high-definition digital transfers made from newly minted film elements. For the first time on DVD, viewers will be able to look at Brakhage's meticulously crafted frames one by one.Carlos Olivier AssayasCarlos, directed by Olivier Assayas (Summer Hours), is an epic, intensely detailed account of the life of the infamous international terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sanchez—also known as Carlos the Jackal. One of the twentieth century’s most-wanted fugitives, Carlos was committed to violent left-wing activism throughout the seventies and eighties, orchestrating bombings, kidnappings, and hijackings in Europe and the Middle East. Assayas portrays him not as a criminal mastermind but as a symbol of seismic political shifts around the world, and the magnetic Édgar Ramírez (The Bourne Ultimatum) brilliantly embodies him as a swaggering global gangster. Criterion presents the complete, uncut, director-approved, five-and-a-half-hour version of Carlos.Chappelle's Show - The Complete Series Rusty Cundieff, Andre Allen, Neal Brennan, Scott Vincent, Bobcat Goldthwait, Peter Lauer, Bill BernerChildren of Paradise Marcel CarnePoetic realism reached sublime heights with Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), widely considered one of the greatest French films of all time. This nimble depiction of nineteenth-century Paris’s theatrical demimonde, filmed during World War II, follows a mysterious woman (The Pearls of the Crown’s Arletty) loved by four different men (all based on historical figures): an actor, a criminal, a count, and, most poignantly, a street mime (La ronde’s Jean-Louis Barrault, in a longing-suffused performance for the ages). With sensitivity and dramatic élan, director Marcel Carné (Port of Shadows) and screenwriter Jacques Prévert (Le jour se lève) resurrect a world teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers. Thanks to a major new restoration, this iconic classic looks and sounds richer and more detailed than ever.Chimes at Midnight Orson WellesThe crowning achievement of Orson Welles's extraordinary film career, Chimes at Midnight was the culmination of the filmmaker s lifelong obsession with Shakespeare s ultimate rapscallion, Sir John Falstaff. Usually a comic supporting figure, Falstaff the loyal, often soused friend of King Henry IV s wayward son Prince Hal here becomes the focus: a robustly funny and ultimately tragic screen antihero played by Welles with looming, lumbering grace. Integrating elements from both Henry IV plays as well as Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor, Welles created a gritty and unorthodox Shakespeare film, one that he intended, he said, as a lament . . . for the death of Merrie England. Poetic, philosophical, and visceral with a kinetic centerpiece battle sequence that rivals anything else in the director s body of work Chimes at Midnight is as monumental as the figure at its heart.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentary featuring film scholar James Naremore, author of The Magic World of Orson Welles
- New interview with actor Keith Baxter
- New interview with director Orson Welles s daughter Beatrice Welles, who appeared in the film at age seven
- New interview with actor and Welles biographer Simon Callow
- New interview with film historian Joseph McBride, author of What Ever Happened to Orson Welles?
- Interview with Welles while at work editing the film, from a 1965 episode of The Merv Griffin Show
- TrailerThe Circus Charlie ChaplinCity Lights Charles ChaplinCity of Women Federico FelliniThe Complete Jean Vigo Jean VigoEven among cinema’s greatest legends, Jean Vigo stands alone. The son of a notorious anarchist, Vigo had a brief but brilliant career making poetic, lightly surrealist films before his life was cut tragically short by tuberculosis at age twenty-nine. Like the daring early works of his contemporaries Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel, Vigo’s films refused to play by the rules. This set includes all of Vigo’s titles: À propos de Nice, an absurdist, rhythmic slice of life from the bustling coastal city of the title; Taris, an inventive short portrait of a swimming champion; Zéro de conduite, a radical, delightful tale of boarding-school rebellion that has influenced countless filmmakers; and, of course, L’Atalante, widely regarded as one of cinema’s finest achievements, about newlyweds beginning their life together on a canal barge. These are the endlessly witty, visually adventurous works of a pivotal film artist.
À propos de Nice, 1930, 23 min, B&W, Silent, 1.33:1
Taris, 1931, 9 min, B&W, Mono, In French with English subtitles, 1.19:1
Zéro de conduite, 1933, 44 min, B&W, Mono, In French with English subtitles
L’Atalante, 1934, 85 min, B&W, Mono, In French with English subtitles, 1.33:1Contempt Jean-Luc GodardA screenwriter's wife hates him for joining the U.S. producer of a Fritz Lang movie. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.Coriolanus Ralph FiennesThe classic legend of honor and betrayal has been astonishingly re-imagined in this exhilarating action thriller that wields a profound relevance for today. Caius Martius 'Coriolanus' (star and director Ralph Fiennes) is a feared and revered Roman General, suddenly pitted against his own city and fellow citizens. Rebelling against the power-hungry designs of his manipulative mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and rejected by his own people, Coriolanus incites a riot that expels him from Rome. The banished hero joins forces with his sworn enemy Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) to exact his revenge — and determine his destiny.Les cousins Claude ChabrolCrouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ang LeeCul-de-sac Roman PolanskiRoman Polanski (Repulsion) orchestrates a mental ménage à trois in this slyly absurd tale of paranoia from the director’s golden 1960s period. Donald Pleasance (Halloween) and Françoise Dorléac (The Soft Skin) star as a withdrawn couple whose isolated house is infiltrated by a rude, burly American gangster on the run, played by Lionel Stander (Unfaithfully Yours). The three engage in a game of shifting identities and sexual and emotional humiliations. Cul-de-sac is an evocative, claustrophobic, and morbidly funny tale of the modern world in chaos.Dances With Wolves Kevin CostnerA Day in the Country Jean RenoirThis bittersweet work from Jean Renoir (The Rules of the Game), based on a story by Guy de Maupassant, is a tenderly comic idyll about a city family’s picnic in the French countryside and the romancing of the mother and grown daughter by two local men. Conceived as part of a larger project that was never completed, shot in 1936, and released ten years later, the warmly humanist vignette A Day in the Country ranks among Renoir’s most lyrical films, with a love for nature imbuing its every beautiful frame.Death Game Peter S. TraynorDeath in Venice Luchino ViscontiDekalog Krzysztof KieslowskiDjango, Kill... If You Live, Shoot! Giulio QuestiDoctor Zhivago David LeanDavid Lean's Doctor Zhivago is an exploration of the Russian Revolution as seen from the point of view of the intellectual, introspective title character (Omar Sharif). As the political landscape changes, and the Czarist regime comes to an end, Dr.Zhivago's relationships reflect the political turmoil raging about him. Though he is married, the vagaries of war lead him to begin a love affair with the beautiful Lara (Julie Christie). But he cannot escape the machinations of a band of selfish and cruel characters: General Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay), a Bolshevik General; Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), Lara's former lover; and Yevgraf (Alec Guinness), Zhivago's sinister half-brother. This epic, sweeping romance, told in flashback, captures the lushness of Moscow before the war and the violent social upheaval that followed. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Boris Pasternak.La Dolce Vita Federico FelliniDouble Indemnity Billy WilderDragged Across Concrete S. Craig ZahlerDreams Ingmar BergmanSusanne, head of a modeling agency, takes her protégée Doris to a fashion show in Göteborg, where Susanne makes contact with a former lover, and Doris finds herself pursued by a married dignitary.Drowning by Numbers Peter GreenawayDziga Vertov Collection Dziga Vertov"I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only the machine can see it. - Dziga Vertov ("Kino-Eye")These words, written in 1923 (only a year after Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North was released) reflect the Soviet pioneer's developing approach to cinema as an art form that shuns traditional or Western narrative in favor of images from real life. They lay the foundation for what would become the crux of Vertov's revolutionary, anti-bourgeois aesthetic wherein the camera is an extension of the human eye, capturing "the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe." Over the next decade-and-a-half, Vertov would devote his life to the construction and organization of these raw images, his apotheosis being the landmark 1929 film The Man with the Movie Camera. In it, he comes closest to realizing his theory of 'Kino-Eye,' creating a new, more ambitious and more significant picture than what the eye initially perceives. Now - thanks to the extraordinary restoration efforts of Lobster Films, Blackhawk Films® Collection, EYE Film Institute, Cinémathèque de Toulouse, and the Centre National de la Cinématographie - Flicker Alley is able to present the four films featured on Dziga Vertov: The Man with the Movie Camera and Other Newly Restored Works in a brand-new, Blu-ray edition.Elena and Her Men Jean RenoirThe Emigrants / The New Land Jan TroellThe Enigma of Kaspar Hauser Werner HerzogEssential Fellini Federico FelliniEven Dwarfs Started Small Werner HerzogEvery Man for Himself Jean-Luc GodardAfter a decade in the wilds of avant-garde and early video experimentation, Jean-Luc Godard (Breathless) returned to commercial cinema with this work of social commentary, star-driven and narrative while remaining defiantly intellectual and visually cutting-edge. Every Man for Himself, featuring a script by Jean-Claude Carrière (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) and Anne-Marie Miéville (Ici et ailleurs), looks at the sexual and professional lives of three people—a television producer (Van Gogh’s Jacques Dutronc), his ex-girlfriend (The Return of Martin Guerre’s Nathalie Baye), and a prostitute (White Material’s Isabelle Huppert)—to create a meditative story about work, relationships, and the notion of freedom. Made twenty years into his career, the film was, according to Godard, a second debut.Fanny and Alexander Ingmar BergmanThrough the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling bourgeois clan in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) intended Fanny and Alexander as his swan song, and it is the legendary director’s warmest and most autobiographical film, a four-time Academy Award–winning triumph that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality. The Criterion Collection is proud to present both the theatrical release and the original five-hour television version of this great work. Also included in the box set is Bergman’s own feature-length documentary The Making of “Fanny and Alexander,” a unique glimpse into his creative process.Fårö Document Ingmar BergmanIngmar Bergman had discovered the bleak, windswept Fårö while scouting locations for Through a Glass Darkly in 1960. Nearly a decade later—and after shooting a number of arresting dramas there and making the island his primary residence—the director set out to pay tribute to its inhabitants.Fårö Document 1979 Ingmar BergmanMidway through his time in Germany, Bergman returned to Fårö for his second documentary exploration of the remote Swedish island he loved and the socioeconomic realities experienced by those who lived there. Longer, more optimistic, and less ascetic than its predecessor, this film charts a calendar year in the life of the island’s 673 inhabitants, many of whom he observes working tirelessly shearing sheep, thatching roofs, and slaughtering livestock, as well as going about various communal rituals. Distilled from twenty-eight hours of material, Fårö Document 1979 is a lyrical depiction of life’s cyclical nature.Fata Morgana Werner HerzogFear and Desire Stanley KubrickAn existential war film that is often compared with Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY (1957) among three Kubrick films selected for the Library's National Film Registry-and FULL METAL JACKET (1987), FEAR AND DESIRE follows a squad of soldiers who have crash-landed behind enemy lines and must work their way downriver to rejoin their unit.
In the process, they encounter a peasant girl (Virginia Leith) and tie her to a tree, where she is tormented by a mentally unbalanced soldier (future director Paul Mazursky). Before making their escape, the soldiers determine the location of an enemy base and formulate a plot to assassinate its commanding officer.
Independently financed, and shot by a skeleton crew - with Kubrick controlling almost every aspect of production - FEAR AND DESIRE was conceived as a European-style art film, cloaked in the guise of a Hollywood war picture. Kubrick described the film to distributor Joseph Burstyn as allegorical and poetic. ''A drama of 'man', lost in a hostile world-deprived of material and spiritual foundations-seeking his way to an understanding of himself, and of life around him.''
Beautifully restored and remastered in HD from an original camera negative and thanks to the preservation efforts of the Library of Congress, Kino Lorber is proud to share with the world FEAR AND DESIRE, fresh from the 24-year-old mind of the man who would become the most influential filmmaker of his generation.
BONUS FEATURE: ''The Seafarers'', A short subject film, restored and remastered in HD (for the first time) by the The Museum of Modern Art & The Film Foundation.The Fearless Vampire Killers Roman PolanskiIts the living end, a fancy-dress ball for blood fiends in Count Von Krolocks Transylvanian castle. Surely no mortal would be foolish enough to infiltrate this hemogobbling horror of a soiree. But partygoers notice something in the ballroom mirrors: the reflections of humans vampire killers dancing among them. Director/cowriter Roman Polanski (The Pianist, Rosemary s Baby, Chinatown) spoofs vampire movies with this droll balancing act of shocks and laughs. He also portrays Alfred, mousy apprentice to a doddering researcher of vampirism (Jack MacGowran)...and the lovestruck defender of gorgeous Sarah (Sharon Tate) when the Count (Ferdy Mayne) tries to make her the ghoul of his dreams. It s all fang-tastic fun!Fellini's Casanova Federico FelliniFighting Elegy Seijun SuzukiFires on the Plain Kon IchikawaA tubercular Japanese soldier walks among World War II horror. Directed by Kon Ichikawa.Fitzcarraldo Werner HerzogFive Easy Pieces Bob RafelsonThe Five Obstructions Lars von Trier, Jorgen LethOnce upon a time—1967, to be precise—Danish director Jørgen Leth released The Perfect Human. In The Five Obstructions, fellow countryman Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) challenges his "hero" to remake the short five times and provides a different set of "obstructions" for each. Because Leth likes cigars, von Trier suggests the first be made in Cuba. For the second, however, he sends Leth to "the worst place on earth"—Bombay's red light district. The obstructions keep coming, interspersed with conversation and clips from the original film, in which actors engage in a variety of activities, like eating and dancing, while the narrator posits oblique questions like "Why is joy so whimsical?" (Von Trier claims to have watched it "at least 20 times.") In the end, the two Danes have whipped up an unclassifiable concoction that plays less like documentary and more like a duel between friendly adversaries.
Digitally remastered.
English, Danish, French & Spanish languages with English subtitles.Floating Weeds Toyo Suzuki, Yasujirô OzuThe leader of a traveling acting troupe meets his former mistress and their illegitimate son. Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.For All Mankind Al ReinertAvant-garde music and the words of astronauts highlight striking NASA footage of Earth and the moon.Forbidden Games René ClémentA timeless evocation of the loss of innocence, René Clément’s devastating Forbidden Games tells the story of a young orphan and her friend forced to fend for themselves in World War II France. Featuring brilliant performances from its child stars, the film won the 1952 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and remains a singular, breathtaking cinematic achievement.From the Life of the Marionettes Ingmar BergmanMade during his self-imposed exile in Germany, Ingmar Bergman’s From the Life of the Marionettes offers a lacerating portrait of a destructive marriage and a complex psychological analysis of a murder. Businessman Peter nurses fantasies of killing his wife, Katarina, until a prostitute becomes his surrogate prey. In the aftermath of the crime, Peter and Katarina’s psychiatrist and others attempt to explain its roots. Jumping back and forth in time, this compelling film moves seamlessly between seduction and repulsion, and the German cast is superb.Gate of Flesh Seijun SuzukiGeneral Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait Barbet SchroederIn 1974, Barbet Schroeder went to Uganda to make a film about Idi Amin, the country's ruthless, charismatic dictator. Three years into a murderous regime that would be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ugandans, Amin prepared a triumphal greeting for the filmmakers, staging rallies, military maneuvers, and cheery displays of national pride, and envisioning the film as an official portrait to adorn his cult of personality. Schroeder, however, had other ideas, emerging with a disquieting, caustically funny brief against Amin, in which the dictator's own endless stream of testimony charming, menacing, and nonsensical by turns serves as the most damning evidence. A revelatory tug-of-war between subject and filmmaker, General Idi Amin Dada: A Self-Portrait is a landmark in the art of documentary and an appalling study of egotism in power.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New, restored 2K digital transfer, supervised by director Barbet Schroeder, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New interview with Schroeder
- New interview with journalist and author Andrew Rice about Idi Amin's regime
- PLUS: An essay by critic J. HobermanThe Gestapo's Last Orgy Cesare CanevariGiants and Toys Yasuzô MasumuraThe Gold Rush Charlie ChaplinThe Gospel According to St. Matthew Pier Paolo PasoliniThe birth, life, teachings, and death on the cross of Jesus Christ presented almost as a cine-verite documentary. Pasolini's second feature seemed a strange choice for such a revolutionary director, but it is an attempt to take Christ out of the opulent church and present him as an outcast Italian peasant. Applying Neo-Realist methods, the director shot the film in Calabria, using the expressive faces of the non professionals including that of his motoher as the Virgin Mary. THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW is considered the greatest screen version of the 'greatest story ever told' and this freshly remastered version brings the film to life in a way that has never been seen before.Grand Illusion Jean RenoirOne of the very first prison escape movies, Grand Illusion is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Jean Renoir's antiwar masterpiece stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay, as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp, and Erich von Stroheim as the unforgettable Captain von Rauffenstein. Following a smash theatrical re-release, Criterion is proud to present Grand Illusion in a new special edition, with a beautifully restored digital transfer.The Great Dictator Charlie ChaplinIn his notorious masterpiece, The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin (City Lights, Modern Times) offers both a cutting caricature of Adolf Hitler and a sly tweaking of his own comic persona. Chaplin (in his first pure talkie) brings his sublime physicality to two roles: the cruel yet clownish “Tomanian” dictator and the kindly Jewish barber who is mistaken for him. Featuring Jack Oakie (Thieves’ Highway, Lover Come Back) and Paulette Goddard (Modern Times, The Women) in stellar supporting turns, The Great Dictator, boldly going after the fascist leader before the U.S.’s official entry into World War II, is an audacious amalgam of politics and slapstick that culminates in Chaplin’s famously impassioned plea for tolerance.The Great Escape John SturgesHamlet Laurence OlivierLaurence Olivier directs himself in this classic rendition of Shakespeare's tale of the brooding Danish prince who decides to exact revenge on his uncle for the murder of his father.Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai Takashi MiikeThe Hawks and the Sparrows Pier Paolo PasoliniTHE HAWKS AND THE SPARROWS, a wild comic fable, stars the beloved stone faced clown Toto as an Italian everyman, and Ninetto Davoli as his good natured but empty headed son. Pasolini uses a comic crow, which philosophizes amusingly and pointedly about the passing scene, as a counterpoint to the performers, representing humanity, as they progress down the road of life. Pasolini presents a tragic fable which shows two delightful innocents caught, like many Italians, between the Church and Marxism.The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things Asia ArgentoHeart of Glass Werner HerzogHeaven's Gate Michael CiminoHell's Angels Howard HughesHellbound: Hellraiser 2 Tony RandelHenry V Laurence OlivierWilliam Shakespeare's play depicting the King of England leading his army to win at Agincourt.Herzog: The Collection Werner HerzogHitchcock/Truffaut Kent JonesIn 1962 Hitchcock and Truffaut locked themselves away in Hollywood for a week to excavate the secrets behind the mise-en-scène in cinema. Based on the original recordings of this meeting—used to produce the mythical book, Hitchcock/Truffaut—this film illustrates the greatest cinema lesson of all time and plummets us into the world of the creator of Psycho, The Birds, and Vertigo. Hitchcock's incredibly modern art is elucidated and explained by today’s leading filmmakers: Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader.How Is It Going? Jean-Luc GodardDirected by the legendary Jean-Luc Godard (Contempt, Weekend) - combining video and film, Comment Ca Va? is a fascinating dialectic on the dissemination and processing of information, both literary and visual. Two workers of a communist newspaper strike out to make a film and video about the newspaper and the printing plant. One of the workers, Odette (Anne-Marie Mieville), has strange ideas about content and form and how the film should be made. Comment ca va? is a formally brilliant work about the transmission of ideas by the major media. Jean-Luc Godard co-wrote the screenplay with Anne-Marie Mieville (Ici Et Ailleurs).The Human Condition Masaki KobayashiHuman Condition (Cc)Hunger Steve McQueenWith HUNGER, British filmmaker and artist Steve McQueen has turned one of history’s most controversial acts of political defiance into a jarring, unforgettable cinematic experience. In Northern Ireland’s Maze prison in 1981, twenty-seven-year-old Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize him and his fellow IRA inmates as political prisoners, rather than as ordinary criminals. McQueen dramatizes prison existence and Sands’ final days in a way that is purely experiential, even abstract, a succession of images full of both beauty and horror. Featuring an intense performance by Michael Fassbender, HUNGER is an unflinching, transcendent depiction of what a human being is willing to endure to be heard.I vitelloni Federico FelliniThe Idiots Lars von TrierThe second of the controversial Dogma 95 films. Set in present-day Denmark, it begins with a chance encounter between the timid Karen and a group of drop-outs engaged in a strange, informal experiment where they pretend to be mentally disabled. Initially shocked, Karen finds herself compelled to stay and eventually joins them in the experiment. However, as the group's acts of 'idiocy' grow more extreme, and the reality of the outside world becomes more intrusive, the border between liberation and self-destruction begins to blur.If.... Lindsay AndersonIf…., directed by Lindsay Anderson (This Sporting Life), is a daringly chaotic vision of British society, set in a boarding school in late-sixties England. Before Kubrick made his mischief iconic in A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell made a hell of an impression as the insouciant Mick Travis, who, along with his school chums, trumps authority at every turn, finally emerging as a violent savior against the vicious games of one-upmanship played by both students and masters. Mixing color and black and white as audaciously as it mixes fantasy and reality, If…. remains one of cinema’s most unforgettable rebel yells.Ikiru Akira KurosawaOne of the greatest achievements by Akira Kurosawa (Seven Samurai), Ikiru presents the director at his most compassionate—affirming life through an exploration of death. Takashi Shimura (Rashomon) beautifully portrays Kanji Watanabe, an aging bureaucrat with stomach cancer who is impelled to find meaning in his final days. Presented in a radically conceived two-part structure and shot with a perceptive, humanistic clarity of vision, Ikiru is a multifaceted look at what it means to be alive. BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • Audio commentary from 2004 by Stephen Prince, author of The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa • A Message from Akira Kurosawa (2000), a ninety-minute documentary produced by Kurosawa Productions and featuring interviews with Kurosawa • Documentary on Ikiru from 2003, created as part of the Toho Masterworks series Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create, and featuring interviews with Kurosawa, script supervisor Teruyo Nogami, writer Hideo Oguni, actor Takashi Shimura, and others • Trailer • Essays by critic and travel writer Pico Iyer and critic Donald RichieIl bidone Federico FelliniIn the Heat of the Night Norman JewisonIn the Mood for Love Wong Kar-waiHong Kong, 1962: Chow Mo-wan (Hero’s Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Irma Vep’s Maggie Cheung Man-yuk) move into neighboring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their spouses sparks an intimate bond between them. At once delicately mannered and visually extravagant, In the Mood for Love, directed by Wong Kar-wai (Chungking Express), is a masterful evocation of romantic longing and fleeting moments. With its aching musical soundtrack and its exquisitely abstract cinematography by Christopher Doyle (2046) and Mark Lee Ping-bin (Flight of the Red Balloon), this film has been a major stylistic influence on the past decade of cinema, as well as a milestone in Wong’s redoubtable career.Ingmar Bergman's Cinema Ingmar BergmanInsignificance Nicolas RoegFour unnamed people who look and sound a lot like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy converge in one New York City hotel room for this compelling, visually inventive adaptation of Terry Johnson’s play, from director Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth). With a combination of whimsy and dread, Roeg creates a fun-house-mirror picture of cold war America that questions the nature of celebrity and plays on a society’s simmering nuclear fears. Insignificance is a delirious, intelligent drama, featuring magnetic performances by Michael Emil (Tracks, Always) as “the professor,” Theresa Russell (Bad Timing, Black Widow) as “the actress,” Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story, Lethal Weapon) as “the ballplayer,” and Tony Curtis (Sweet Smell of Success, Spartacus) as “the senator.”Interspecies Reviewers Blu-Ray Collection -Intervista Federico FelliniIvan the Terrible, Part II Sergei M. EisensteinPART TWO OF SERGEI EISENSTEIN'S TWO-PART EPIC CHRONICLING THE LIFE OF THE 16TH CENTURY TSAR, IVAN GROZNY, IS ONE OF FILM'S MOST ARTISTIC AND ABSORBING CREATIONS. OVER THREE YEARS IN THE MAKING, IVAN THE TERRIBLE FEATURES AN OPERATIC SCORE BY THE ESTEEMED SOVIET COMPOSER SERGEI PROKOFIEV.Ivan's Childhood Andrei TarkovskyJan Švankmajer: The Complete Short Films Jan ŠvankmajerQuick Shipping !!! New And Sealed !!! This Disc WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. A multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player is request to view it in USA/Canada. Please Review Description.Jirí Barta: Labyrinth of Darkness Jirí BartaLe Jour se Lève Marcel CarnéOne of the great works of 1930s poetic realist cinema, Le Jour Se Leve was Marcel Carne's third collaboration with screenwriter and poet Jacques Prevert. A story of obsessive sexuality and murder, in which the working-class Francois (Jean Gabin) resorts to killing in order to free the woman he loves from the controlling influence of another man, the film cemented the reputations of Gabin and Carne.Jules and Jim François TruffautBrand Name: CRITERION COLLECTION INC Mfg#: 715515056717, Shipping Weight: 1.00 lbs, Manufacturer: CRITERION, Genre: Drama, All music products are properly licensed and guaranteed authentic.Juliet of the Spirits Federico FelliniKatie Tippel Paul VerhoevenThe Kid with a Bike Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc DardenneTwelve-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), all coiled anger and furious motion, is living in a group home but refuses to believe he has been rejected by his single father (Summer Hours’ Jérémie Renier). He spends his days frantically trying to reach the man, over the phone or on his beloved bicycle. It is only the patience and compassion of Samantha (Hereafter’s Cécile de France), the stranger who agrees to care for him, that offers the boy the chance to move on. Spare and unsentimental but deeply imbued with a heart-rending tenderness, The Kid with a Bike is an arresting work from the great Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Rosetta), masters of the empathetic action film.Kind Hearts and Coronets Robert HamerDirector Robert Hamer's fiendishly funny Kind Hearts and Coronets stands as one of Ealing Studios' greatest triumphs, and one of the most wickedly black comedies ever made. Dennis Price is sublime as an embittered young commoner determined to avenge his mother's unjust disinheritance by ascending to the dukedom. Unfortunately, eight family members (all played by the incomparable Alec Guinness) must be eliminated before he can do so. SPECIAL FEATURES: New, restored high-definition digital transfer, BBC programs on Alec Guinness and the history of Ealing Studios, Gallery of archival production and publicity photographs, Original theatrical trailer and A new essay by film critic and historian Philip Kemp.Knife in the Water Roman PolanskiKoyaanisqatsi Godfrey ReggioLand of Silence and Darkness Werner HerzogLars von Trier's Europe Trilogy The Last Seduction John DahlLast Year at Marienbad Alain ResnaisNot just a defining work of the French New Wave but one of the great, lasting mysteries of modern art, Alain Resnais’ epochal visual poem has been puzzling appreciative viewers for decades. A surreal fever dream, or perhaps a nightmare, Last Year at Marienbad (L’année dernière à Marienbad), written by the radical master of the New Novel, Alain Robbe-Grillet, gorgeously fuses the past with the present in telling its ambiguous tale of a man and a woman (Giorgio Albertazzi and Delphine Seyrig) who may or may not have met a year ago, perhaps at the very same cathedral-like, mirror-bedecked château they now find themselves wandering. Unforgettable in both its confounding details (gilded ceilings, diabolical parlor games, a loaded gun) and haunting scope, Resnais’ investigation into the nature of memory is disturbing, romantic, and maybe even a ghost story.
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES: • New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Alain Resnais, with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack • New audio interview with Resnais • New documentary on the making of Last Year at Marienbad, featuring interviews with many of Resnais’ collaborators • New video interview with film scholar Ginette Vincendeau on the history of the film and its many mysteries • Two short documentaries by Resnais: Toute la mémoire du monde (1956) and Le chant du styrène (1958) • Theatrical trailer • Optional original, unrestored French soundtrack • New and improved subtitle translation • PLUS: A booklet featuring essays by critic Mark Polizzotti and film scholar François Thomas, and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s introduction to the published screenplay and comments on the film
Stills from Last Year at Marienbad (Click for larger image)The Leather Boys Sidney J. FurieA Lesson in Love Ingmar BergmanA couple deep into their married years seek fresh pastures. David, a gynecologist, falls for one of his patients, while his wife, Marianne, flounces off to Copenhagen to renew her fling with a sculptor.
Lessons of Darkness Werner HerzogLicorice Pizza Paul Thomas AndersonLittle Dieter Needs to Fly Werner HerzogThe Lodger: A Story of the London Fog Alfred HitchcockWith his third feature film, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, Alfred Hitchcock took a major step toward greatness and made what he would come to consider his true directorial debut. This haunting silent thriller tells the tale of a mysterious young man (matinee idol Ivor Novello) who takes up residence at a London boardinghouse, just as a killer who preys on blonde women, known as the Avenger, descends upon the city. The film is animated by the palpable energy of a young stylist at play, decisively establishing the director s formal and thematic obsessions. In this edition, The Lodger is accompanied by Downhill, another 1927 silent exploration of Hitchcock s wrong man trope, also headlined by Novello making for a double feature that reveals the great master of the macabre as he was just coming into his own.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
-2K digital restoration, with a new score by composer Neil Brand, performed by the Orchestra of Saint Paul s
-Downhill, director Alfred Hitchcock s 1927 feature film starring Ivor Novello, in a 2K digital restoration with a new piano score by Brand
-New interview with film scholar William Rothman on Hitchcock s visual signatures
-New video essay by art historian Steven Jacobs about Hitchcock s use of architecture
-Excerpts from audio interviews with Hitchcock by filmmakers François Truffaut (1962) and Peter Bogdanovich (1963)
-Radio adaptation of The Lodger from 1940, directed by Hitchcock
-New interview with Brand on composing for silent film
-PLUS: Essays on The Lodger and Downhill by critic Philip KempLola Montes Max OphulsThe 19th-century courtesan recalls Franz Liszt and the king of Bavaria. Director Max Ophuls' last film.Lone Wolf and Cub Kenji MisumiBased on the best-selling manga series, the six intensely kinetic Lone Wolf and Cub films elevated chanbara to bloody, new heights. The shogun s executioner, Itto Ogami (Tomisaburo Wakayama), takes to wandering the countryside as an assassin along with his infant son Daigoro (Akihiro Tomikawa) and an infinitely weaponized perambulator helping those he encounters while seeking vengeance for his murdered wife. Delivering stylish thrills and a body count that defies belief, Lone Wolf and Cub is beloved for its brilliantly choreographed and unbelievably violent action sequences as well as for its tender depiction of the bonds between parent and child.
SPECIAL EDITION THREE-BLU-RAY BOX SET FEATURES
- New 2K digital restorations of all six films, with uncompressed monaural soundtracks
- High-definition presentation of Shogun Assassin, the 1980 English-dubbed reedit of the first two Lone Wolf and Cub films
- New interview with Kazuo Koike, writer of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga series and screenwriter on five of the films
- Lame d un père, l âme d un sabre, a 2005 documentary about the making of the series
- New interview in which Sensei Yoshimitsu Katsuse discusses and demonstrates the real Suio-ryu sword techniques that inspired those in the manga and films
- New interview with biographer Kazuma Nozawa about filmmaker Kenji Misumi, director of four of the six Lone Wolf and Cub films
- Silent documentary from 1937 about the making of samurai swords, with an optional new ambient score by Ryan Francis
- Trailers
- New English subtitle translations
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay and film synopses by Japanese pop culture writer Patrick MaciasLord of the Flies Peter BrookIn the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding’s legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot LORD OF THE FLIES with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters’ ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.Love Meetings Pier Paolo PasoliniLOVE MEETINGS is a Cinema Verite investigation in Italy, including impressive appearances by famed author Alberto Moravia and noted psychologist Cesare Musatti. Pasolini, the poet turned filmmaker, appears as the interviewer and asks a wide range of individuals to share their tales of love, prostitution, homosexuality, marital and non marital liaisons. The film is full of wit and sensuality, and is as topical as today's headlines.Loves of a Blonde Milos FormanA Czech musician seduces and abandons a factory worker. Directed by Milos Forman.Made in U.S.A. Jean-Luc GodardMamma Roma Pier Paolo PasoliniAnna Magnani is Mamma Roma, a middle-aged prostitute who attempts to extricate herself from her sordid past for the sake of her son. Filmed in the great tradition of Italian neorealism, Mamma Roma offers an unflinching look at the struggle for survival in postwar Italy, and highlights director Pier Paolo Pasolini#s lifelong fascination with the marginalized and dispossessed. Though banned upon its release in Italy for obscenity, today Mamma Roma is considered a classic: a glimpse at a country#s most controversial director in the process of finding his style and a powerhouse performance by one of cinema#s greatest actresses.The Man Who Knew Too Much Alfred HitchcockAn ordinary British couple vacationing in Switzerland suddenly find themselves embroiled in a case of international intrigue when their daughter is kidnapped by spies plotting a political assassination. This fleet and gripping early thriller from the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, was the first film the director made after signing to the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation. Besides affirming Hitchcock’s brilliance, it gave the brilliant Peter Lorre (M) his first English-speaking role, as a slithery villain. With its tension and gallows humor, it’s pure Hitchcock, and it set the tone for films like The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes.Maria's Lovers Andrey KonchalovskiyMarketa Lazarová František VláčilIn its home country, František Vlácil’s Marketa Lazarová has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation. Based on a novel by Vladislav Vancura, this stirring and poetic depiction of a feud between two rival medieval clans is a fierce, epic, and meticulously designed evocation of the clashes between Christianity and paganism, humankind and nature, love and violence. Vlácil’s approach was to re-create the textures and mentalities of a long-ago way of life, rather than to make a conventional historical drama, and the result is dazzling. With its inventive widescreen cinematography, editing, and sound design, Marketa Lazarová is an experimental action film.Martyrs Michael Goetz, Kevin GoetzMemories of Murder Bong Joon-ho, Joon-ho BongMidnight Cowboy John SchlesingerThe Mirror Andrei TarkovskyMiss Julie Alf SjöbergSwedish filmmaker Alf Sjöberg s visually innovative, Cannes Grand Prix winning adaptation of August Strindberg s renowned 1888 play (censored upon its first release in the United States for its adult content) brings to scalding life the excoriating words of the stage s preeminent surveyor of all things rotten in the state of male-female relations. Miss Julie vividly depicts the battle of the sexes and classes that ensues when a wealthy businessman s daughter (Anita Bjork, in a fiercely emotional performance) falls for her father s bitter servant. Celebrated for its unique cinematic style, Sjöberg s film was an important turning point in Scandinavian cinema.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer
New video essay by film historian Peter Cowie
Archival television interview with director Alf Sjöberg
A 2006 television documentary about the play Miss Julie and author August Strindberg
Theatrical trailer
New and improved English subtitle translation
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by film scholars Peter Matthews and Birgitta SteeneModern Times Charles ChaplinThe Moment of Truth Francesco RosiThe Moment of Truth, from director Francesco Rosi (Salvatore Giuliano) is a visceral plunge into the life of a famous torero—played by real-life bullfighting legend Miguel Mateo, known as Miguelin. Charting his rise and fall with a single-minded focus on the bloody business at hand, the film is at once gritty and operatic, placing the viewer right in the thick of the ring’s action, as close to death as possible. Like all of the great Italian truth seeker’s films, this is a not just an electrifying drama but also a profound and moving inquiry into a violent world—and perhaps the greatest bullfighting movie ever made.Monsieur Verdoux Charles ChaplinMoonlight Barry JenkinsThe Academy BEST PICTURE beautifully remastered for the first time on 4K Ultra HD!
A timeless story of human connection and self-discovery, Academy Award® ''Best Motion Picture'' Winner MOONLIGHT chronicles the life of a young black man from childhood to adulthood as he struggles to find his place in the world while growing up in a rough neighborhood of Miami. Anchored by extraordinary performances from a tremendous ensemble cast, MOONLIGHT is a profoundly moving portrayal of the moments, people, and unknowable forces that shape our lives and make us who we are.Muriel, or The Time of Return Alain ResnaisAlain Resnais s Muriel, or The Time of Return, the director s follow-up to Last Year at Marienbad, is as radical a reflection on the nature of time and memory as its predecessor. The always luminous Delphine Seyrig (Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles) stars as an antique shop owner and widow in Boulogne-sur-Mer, whose past comes back to haunt her when a former lover reenters her life. Meanwhile, her stepson is tormented by his own ghosts, related to his service in France s recently ended war in Algeria. Featuring a multilayered script by Jean Cayrol, and inventively edited to evoke its middle-class characters political and personal realities, the fragmented, emotionally powerful Muriel reminds viewers that the past is always present.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Excerpt from the 1980 documentary Une approche d Alain Resnais, révolutionnaire discret
- Excerpt from a 1969 interview with actor Delphine Seyrig
- Interview with composer Hans Werner Henze from 1963
- New interview with film scholar François Thomas, author of L atelier d Alain Resnais
- Trailer
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by film scholar James QuandtThe Music Room Satyajit RayWith The Music Room (Jalsaghar), Satyajit Ray (Pather Panchali) brilliantly evokes the crumbling opulence of the world of a fallen aristocrat (the beloved actor, Chhabi Biswas) desperately clinging to his way of life. His greatest joy is the music room in which he has hosted lavish concerts over the years—now a shadow of its former vivid self. An incandescent depiction of the clash between tradition and modernity, and a showcase for some of India’s most popular musicians of the day, The Music Room is a defining work by the great Bengali filmmaker.My Best Fiend Werner HerzogMy Life as a Dog Lasse HallstromMy Life as a Dog (Mitt liv som hund) tells the story of Ingemar, a twelve-year-old from a working-class family sent to live with his uncle in a country village when his mother falls ill. There, the boy finds both refuge from his misfortunes and unexpected adventure with the help of the town’s warmhearted eccentrics. Featuring an incredibly mature and unaffected performance from the young Anton Glanzelius, this is a beloved and bittersweet evocation of the struggles and joys of childhood from Oscar-nominated director Lasse Hallström (The Cider House Rules).The Naked Kiss Samuel FullerThe setup is pure pulp: A former prostitute (a crackerjack Constance Towers) relocates to a buttoned-down suburb, determined to fit in with mainstream society. But in the strange, hallucinatory territory of writer-director-producer Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor, The Big Red One), perverse secrets inevitably simmer beneath a seemingly wholesome surface. Featuring radical visual touches, full-throttle performances, brilliant cinematography by Stanley Cortez (The Night of the Hunter), and one bizarrely beautiful musical number, The Naked Kiss is among Fuller’s greatest, boldest entertainments.Neptune Frost Saul Williams, Anisia UzeymanNight has a Thousand Desires Jesús FrancoIn this surreal and sensuous mystery/noir, Lina Romay (The Female Vampire, Lorna the Exorcist) plays Irina, a partner in a male-female mind reading act. At night she experiences vivid and charged dreams which end in murder. It seems that the people whose minds she reads are being killed off one by one.
In the 1980s, after the death of the Spanish dictator, Jess Franco returned to his native country and made a series of films in which he was given almost total freedom. Night Has A Thousand Desires is one of the most artistically successful of these films. It's filled with familiar Franco touches - artful cinematography, atmospheric locations, naked women, an avant-garde soundtrack - and it features one of Lina Romay's most committed performances. This world Blu-ray premier includes a number of exclusive extra features.
Special Features:Interview with writer Stephen ThrowerEurotika! Documentary on Jess FrancoThe Nightingale Jennifer KentNights of Cabiria Federico FelliniNostalghia Andrei TarkovskyOedipus Rex Pier Paolo PasoliniOne-Eyed Jacks Marlon BrandoA western like no other, One-Eyed Jacks combines the mythological scope of that most American of film genres with the searing naturalism of a performance by Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront, The Fugitive Kind), all suffused with Freudian overtones and male anxiety. In his only directing stint, Brando captures the rugged landscapes of California s Central Coast and Mexico s Sonoran Desert in gorgeous widescreen, Technicolor images, and elicits from his fellow actors (including Karl Malden and Pina Pellicer) nuanced improvisational depictions of conflicted characters. Though overwhelmed by its director s perfectionism and plagued by production setbacks and studio re-editing, One-Eyed Jacks stands as one of Brando s great achievements, thanks above all to his tortured turn as Rio, a bank robber bent on revenge against his one-time partner in crime, the aptly named Dad Longworth (Malden). Brooding and romantic, Rio marks the last, and perhaps the most tender, of the iconic outsiders Brando imbued with such remarkable intensity throughout his career.
BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New 4K digital restoration, undertaken with the support of The Film Foundation and supervised by filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- New introduction by Scorsese
- Excerpts from voice-recordings director and star Marlon Brando made during the film s production
- New video essays on the film s production history and its potent combination of the stage and screen icon Brando with the classic Hollywood western
- Trailer
- PLUS: An essay by film critic Howard HamptonOut of the Blue Dennis HopperP.O. Box Tinto Brass Tinto Brass, Massimiliano ZaninPale Flower Masahiro ShinodaParis, Texas Wim WendersA lost man surfaces, reunites with his brother and son, and finds his wife working in a peep show. Directed by Wim Wenders. Music by Ry Cooder.The Passion of Anna Ingmar BergmanNot long after the dissolution of his marriage and a fleeting liaison with a neighbor, the reclusive Andreas begins an ill-fated affair with the mysterious, beguiling Anna, who has recently lost her own husband and son.The Passion of Joan of Arc Carl DreyerSpiritual rapture and institutional hypocrisy come to stark, vivid life in one of the most transcendent masterpieces of the silent era. Chronicling the trial of Joan of Arc in the days leading up to her execution, Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer depicts her torment with startling immediacy, employing an array of techniques including expressionistic lighting, interconnected sets, and painfully intimate close-ups to immerse viewers in her subjective experience. Anchoring Dreyer's audacious formal experimentation is a legendary performance by Renée Falconetti, whose haunted face channels both the agony and the ecstasy of martyrdom.
TWO-DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
- New high-definition digital restoration of the film by Gaumont, presented at 24 frames per second
- Alternate presentation of the film at 20 frames per second with original Danish intertitles
- Three scores: Richard Einhorn's VOICES OF LIGHT, a choral and orchestral work performed by vocal group Anonymous 4, soloist Susan Narucki, and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic and Choir; another by Goldfrapp's Will Gregory and Portishead's Adrian Utley; and the third composed and performed by pianist Mie Yanashita
- Audio commentary from 1999 by film scholar Casper Tybjerg
- New interview with Einhorn
- New conversation between Gregory and Utley
- New video essay by Tybjerg exploring the debate over the film's frame rate
- Interview from 1995 with actor Renée Falconetti's daughter and biographer, Hélène Falconetti
- Version history
- Production design archive
- New English subtitle translation
- PLUS: An essay by critic Mark Le Fanu, a 1929 director's statement by Carl Theodor Dreyer, and the full libretto for VOICES OF LIGHTPaul Verhoeven Collection Paul VerhoevenThe Paul Verhoeven Collection consists of five films the Dutch director made in Europe before graduating to the Hollywood mainstream with such films as Total Recall and Basic Instinct. A bawdy though sympathetic look at the lives of two Amsterdam prostitutes, 1971's Business Is Business was Verhoeven's film debut. Ronnie Biermann stars as Greet, a worldly wise prostitute who is decently protective of her neighbor and friend in the trade, the busty, younger Nell (Sylvia de Leur). Finally, she decides they must both break out of their decreasingly fulfilling lives and seek out matrimonial stability. Business Is Business probably seemed like an authentic depiction of the Amsterdam demi-monde in its day, but today its kinky peccadilloes look rather quaint. However, both Biermann and Sylvia De Leur forcefully resist any of the clichés of the era in their strong characters.
When Turkish Delight (1973) opens on a brutal attack and then a succession of one-night stands, it seems that bohemian artist Eric Vonk (Rutger Hauer, collaborating for the first time with Verhoeven) is a complete jerk. Then a sudden flashback reveals the motivations for both his dreams and behavior, as well as the subject of the photos he spends his time pining for. He meets Olga (a fantastic Monique van de Ven), but their tempestuous relationship is shaken by many peculiar events: a surreal wedding ceremony, unveiling a statue to the Queen, and the death of Olga's father. The real problem is Olga herself, however, which leads to a shock ending many have compared to Love Story. Somewhat dated now, Turkish Delight is nonetheless unmistakably a product of the now-familiar Verhoeven style.
Katie Tippel (1975) is a handsome period drama set in 19th-century Holland, based on a true story. The second eldest daughter in a poor family, Katie (Monique van de Ven) must find whatever work is going to make ends meet. As she enters a succession of jobs in which she experiences both exploitation and sexual harassment, she learns that men want her for only one thing and so she enters prostitution. However, she is finally able to escape the poverty trap and ascend the social ladder, particularly when banker Hugo (Rutger Hauer) takes her as his lover. All this is set against a backdrop of social foment as the workers' impatience at poor social conditions increases.
Based on real events, Soldier of Orange (1977) tells the story of Dutchman Erik Lanshof (a star-making performance by Rutger Hauer) and a small group of students as they struggle to survive the Nazi occupation to the end of the Second World War. Across a canvas lasting almost three hours, Verhoeven unfolds a saga of friendship, espionage, and romance with almost documentary realism, crafting a deeply affecting film widely regarded as the greatest ever made in Holland.
Only two years separate The Fourth Man (1983), Verhoeven's final Dutch language movie, and the explosive commencement of his Hollywood career. This savage comedy shocker could well be seen as a trial run for Basic Instinct, since it features an ice-cold seductress (Renée Soutendijk) with mysterious motivations and sexual preferences. The hallucinatory tale follows a novelist (Jeroen Krabbé) first falling for her, and then feverishly investigating whether she's a serial husband killer. The film is full of what would soon be recognized as Verhoeven trademarks: a little blasphemy, a lot of nudity, dispassionate characters, and hidden agendas.Pépé le Moko Julien DuvivierThe notorious Pepe le Moko (Jean Gabin, in a truly iconic performance) is a wanted man: women long for him, rivals hope to destroy him, and the law is breathing down his neck at every turn. On the lam in the labyrinthine Casbah of Algiers, Pepe is safe from the clutches of the police—until a Parisian playgirl compels him to risk his life and leave its confines once and for all. Once of the most influential films of the 20th century and a landmark of French poetic realism.The Pervert's Guide to Cinema Sophie FiennesUnited Kingdom released, NTSC/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), French ( Subtitles ), German ( Subtitles ), Japanese ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA takes the viewer on an exhilarating ride through some of the greatest movies ever made. Serving as presenter and guide is the charismatic Slavoj Zizek, acclaimed philosopher and psychoanalyst. With his engaging and passionate approach to thinking, Zizek delves into the hidden language of cinema, uncovering what movies can tell us about ourselves. Whether he is untangling the famously baffling films of David Lynch, or overturning everything you thought you knew about Hitchcock, Zizek illuminates the screen with his passion, intellect, and unfailing sense of humour. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA cuts its cloth from the very world of the movies it discusses; by shooting at original locations and from replica sets it creates the uncanny illusion that Zizek is speaking from 'within' the films themselves. Together the three parts construct a compelling dialectic of ideas. Described by The Times in London as 'the woman helming this Freudian inquest,' director Sophie Fiennes' collaboration with Slavoj Zizek illustrates the immediacy with which film and television can communicate complex ideas. Says Zizek: 'My big obsession is to make things clear. I can really explain a line of thought if I can somehow illustrate it in a scene from a film. THE PERVERT'S GUIDE TO CINEMA is really about what psychoanalysis can tell us about cinema.' SCREENED/AWARDED AT: British Independent Film Awards, ...The Pervert's Guide to Cinema ( The Pervert's Guide to Cinema Parts 1, 2, 3 ) ( The Pervert's Guide to Cinema Parts One, Two, Three )Peter Greenaway Box Peter GreenawayPorcile Pier Paolo PasoliniPorcile, (Pigsty) the story of a cannibal in a medieval wasteland is interwoven with that of the son of an ex-Nazi industrialist in modern day Germany. The young German, who is more attracted to pigs than his fiancee, and the cannibal become sacrificial victims of their different societies. This strange, grotesque and thought provoking parable is filmed with such a calm beauty and underlying disgust that it gains a deep significance as an attack on the middle classes of the 20th century.Port of Call Ingmar BergmanA sailor falls for a woman at a dance hall but has second thoughts when he learns about her checkered past.Portrait of a Lady on Fire Celine SciammaIl Posto Ermanno OlmiWhen young, fragile Domenico (Sandro Panseri) ventures from the small village of Meda to Milan in search of employment, he finds himself on the bottom rung of the bureaucratic ladder in a huge, faceless company. The prospects may be daunting, but Domenico finds reason for hope in the fetching new worker Antonietta (Loredana Detto). A tender coming-of-age story and a sharp observation of dehumanizing corporate enterprise, Ermanno Olmi's Il Posto is a touching and hilarious tale of one young man's stumbling entrance into the perils of modern adulthood.Prospero's Books Peter GreenawayPurple Rain Prince, Albert MagnoliPutney Swope Robert Downey Sr.Pygmalion Anthony Asquith Leslie HowardBrand Name: IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT Mfg#: 715515043519, Shipping Weight: 0.17 lbs, Manufacturer:, Genre: MISCELLANEOUS, All music products are properly licensed and guaranteed authentic.The Qatsi Trilogy Godfrey ReggioA singular artist and activist, Godfrey Reggio is best known for his galvanizing trio of films The Qatsi Trilogy. Astonishingly photographed, and featuring unforgettable, cascading scores by Philip Glass (Mishima), these are immersive sensory experiences that meditate on the havoc humankind’s fascination with technology has wreaked on our world. From 1983’s Koyaanisqatsi (the title is a Hopi word that means “life out of balance”) to 1988’s Powaqqatsi (“life in transformation”) to 2002’s Naqoyqatsi (“life as war”), Reggio takes us on an edifying journey from the ancient to the contemporary, from nature to industry and back again, all the while keeping our eyes wide with wonder.
KOYAANISQATSI
An unorthodox work in every way, Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi was nevertheless a sensation when it was released in 1983. The film wordlessly surveys the rapidly changing environments of the northern hemisphere. The director, cinematographer Ron Fricke, and composer Philip Glass created an astonishing collage; the film shuttles the viewer from one jaw-dropping vision to the next, moving from images of untouched nature to others depicting human beings’ increasing reliance on technology. Often using hypnotic time-lapse photography, Koyaanisqatsi looks at our world from an angle unlike any other.
1983 86 minutesColor5.1 surround1.85:1 aspect ratio
POWAQQATSI
Five years after Godfrey Reggio stunned audiences with Koyaanisqatsi, he joined forces again with composer Philip Glass and other collaborators for a second chapter. Here, Reggio turns his sights on third world nations in the southern hemisphere. Forgoing the sped-up aesthetic of the first film, Powaqqatsi employs a meditative slow motion in order to reveal the everyday beauty of the traditional ways of life of native people in Africa, Asia, and South America, and to show how those cultures are being eroded as their environment is gradually taken over by industry. This is the most intensely spiritual segment of Reggio’s philosophical and visually remarkable Qatsi Trilogy.
1988 99 minutesColor5.1 surround1.85:1 aspect ratio
NAQOYQATSI
Godfrey Reggio takes on the digital revolution in the final chapter of his Qatsi Trilogy, Naqoyqatsi. With a variety of cinematic techniques, including slow motion, time-lapse, and computer-generated imagery, the film tells of a world that has completely transitioned from a natural environment to a human-made one. Globalization is complete, all of our interactions are technologically mediated, and all images are manipulated. From this (virtual) reality, Reggio sculpts a frenetic yet ruminative cinematic portrait of a world that has become officially postlanguage.
2002 89 minutesColor5.1 surround1.78:1 aspect ratioQuadrophenia Frank Rodam, The WhoRebel Without a Cause Nicholas RayIn one of moviedom's most influential roles, James Dean is Jim, the new kid in town whose loneliness, frustration and anger mirrored those of postwar teens — and reverberates 40 years later.Ride with the Devil Ang LeeRide with the Devil follows four people fighting for truth & justice amidst the turmoil of the American Civil War. The action takes us to no man's land on the Missouri/Kansas border where a staunch loyalist (Ulrich), an immigrant's son (Maguire), a freed slave (Wright) and a young widow (Jewel) learn how to survive in a place without rules and redefine the meaning of bravery and honor.The Rite Ingmar BergmanActors Thea, Sebastian, and Hans are sequestered in the offices of Judge Abrahamson, who questions them about the play they have been performing, which has been accused of being obscene. As the judge interviews them separately and together, the three performers work through their considerable psycho-sexual baggage with each other, while collectively laying siege to the sensibilities of their authoritarian interrogator.
The Road Trilogy Wim WendersRollerbabies Carter StevensSade Benoit JacquotSade, based on the Serge Bramly novel of the same title, is an account of how the famous philanthropist and infamous pornographer met, befriended and fell in love with a young woman during his incarceration.Sanjuro Akira KurosawaA sloppy-looking samurai helps young warriors expose corrupt elders. Sequel to "Yojimbo." Directed by Akira Kurosawa.Sawdust and Tinsel Ingmar BergmanAging circus performer Albert angers his mistress when he visits his estranged wife, triggering a roundelay of sexual betrayal and emotional anguish.Scenes from a Marriage Ingmar BergmanShame Ingmar BergmanFormer musicians Jan Rosenberg and his wife, Eva, have left the city to avoid a civil war and now live on a rural island where they tend a farm. While the situation seems idyllic, the couple's isolation begins to wear on their relationship, and eventually the armed conflict that they've tried to flee arrives on the quiet island in the form of soldiers. Try as they might, Jan and Eva ultimately can't evade either the war or their own marital problems.A Ship to India Ingmar BergmanThe hunchbacked sailor Johannes longs to escape his home on a salvage ship helmed by his cruel, drunken father—and so does the captain himself, who is slowly going blind and planning to leave his wife and son for a music-hall performer named Sally. The family begins to unravel when the captain invites Sally to live on the ship, where she and Johannes form a tender connection.The Shooting/Ride in the Whirlwind Monte HellmanCriterion 734/735 (2014 First Printing)The Silence Ingmar BergmanTwo sisters—the sickly, intellectual Ester and the sensual, pragmatic Anna—travel by train with Anna's young son, Johan, to a foreign country that appears to be on the brink of war. Attempting to cope with their alien surroundings, each sister is left to her own vices while they vie for Johan's affection, and in so doing sabotage what little remains of their relationship.Slaughterhouse-Five George Roy HillSmiles of a Summer Night Ingmar BergmanA trio of couples meet at a country estate for a weekend vacation, but there, under the idyllic summer moonlight, a series of swapping interludes ensues.
A Snake of June Shinya TsukamotoSoldier of Orange Paul VerhoevenSolid Metal Nightmares: The Films of Shinya Tsukamoto Shinya TsukamotoSolo Con Tu Pareja Alfonso Cuarón, Carlos CuarónBefore Alfonso Cuarón helmed the international sensation Y tu mamá también, he made his mark on Mexican cinema with the ribald and lightning-quick contemporary social satire Sólo con tu pareja. Don Juan-ish yuppie Tomás Tomás (Daniel Giménez Cacho, from Bad Education) spends his nights juggling so many beautiful women that he can’t keep their names straight—until one of his many conquests, a spurned nurse, gives him a taste of his own medicine. Beautifully filmed in widescreen by the inimitable Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World), Cuarón’s wildly successful feature debut (which has never been released in the U.S.) gave voice to a Mexican middle-class that had remained largely unseen onscreen, and surveys contemporary urban sexual mores with style to spare.Something Wild Jack GarfeinThe Spirit of the Beehive Víctor EriceThe Criterion Collection is proud to present Víctor Erice’s spellbinding The Spirit of the Beehive, widely regarded as the greatest Spanish film of the 1970s. In a small Castilian village in 1940, directly following the country’s devastating civil war, six-year-old Ana attends a traveling movie show of Frankenstein and becomes haunted by her memory of it. Produced as Franco’s long regime was nearing its end, The Spirit of the Beehive is both a bewitching portrait of a child’s inner life and an elusive, cloaked meditation of a nation trapped under tyranny—from one of cinema’s most mysterious auteurs.Spotlight On a Murderer Georges FranjuStart the Revolution Without Me Bud YorkinProduced and directed by comedy veteran Bud Yorkin, Start the Revolution Without Me broke ground for a comedy revolution. It takes the tumultuous "let them eat cake" days of the French Revolution and gives everyone a figurative pie in the face. Two sets of twins are mismatched at birth so that years later, each set will have one Gene Wilder and one Donald Sutherland. One set grows up to be aristocratic swashbucklers; the other set are peasants. In a hilarious fluke of fate, they crisscross across classes. In the years following Start the Revolution Without Me, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks and the Abrahams/Zucker/Zucker team would all create madcap comedy masterpieces. A lineup like that must have had a tremendous Start.Stiff Competition Paul VatelliThe Story of Temple Drake Stephen RobertsLa strada Federico FelliniSummer Interlude Ingmar BergmanAn accomplished ballet dancer is haunted by her tragic youthful affair with a shy, handsome student.Summer with Monika Ingmar BergmanA girl and boy from working-class families in Stockholm run away from home to spend a secluded, romantic summer at the beach. Inevitably, it is not long before the pair are forced to return to reality.Summertime David LeanJANE HUDSON, A LONELY AND SHELTERED MIDDLE-AGED SPINSTER ON HOLIDAY IN VENICE. HER LONG-DREAMED-OF ROMANCE FINALLY BECOMES A REALITY WHEN SHE MEETS A HANDSOME BUT MARRIED VENETIAN. THEIR ILL-FATED LOVE AFFAIR MAKES FOR A FRESHLY ENDEARING FILM.Swedish Nympho Slaves Jesús FrancoWhen a woman has been found by the police she tells of being kidnapped, drugged and tortured by Arminda, a brothel madam. For many years they have been trying to shut down her sex palace called The Pagoda, but can't get close enough as she has friends in high places. But now the woman will help put Arminda away for years.
Teorema Pier Paolo PasoliniTetsuo - The Bullet Man Shin'ya TsukamotoTetsuo II: Body Hammer Shinya TsukamotoTetsuo: The Iron Man Shinya TsukamotoThe Adventure of Denchu-Kozo Shinya TsukamotoThe Naughty Victorians Robert SickingerTheatre of Mr & Mrs Kabal Walerian BorowczykThe Thin Blue Line Errol MorrisFilmmaker Errol Morris studies the 1976 slaying of a Dallas policeman, from different points of view. Music by Philip Glass.Thirst Ingmar BergmanA couple return on a train from a holiday in Sicily. As their relationship sours into acrimony and accusation, flashbacks reveal romantic entanglements on both sides that help explain their current malaise.Three Documentaries Saul J. TurellThrone of Blood Akira KurosawaThrough a Glass Darkly Ingmar BergmanWhile vacationing on a remote island retreat, a family's fragile ties are tested when daughter Karin discovers her father has been using her schizophrenia for his own literary ends. As she drifts in and out of lucidity, Karin's father, her husband, and her younger brother are unable to prevent her descent into the abyss of mental illness.
To Be or Not To Be Ernst LubitschTo Joy Ingmar BergmanTwo violinists playing in the same orchestra fall in love and get married, but they can't get along.Tokyo Fist Shinya TsukamotoTurkish Delight Paul VerhoevenTwo Undercover Angels Jesús FrancoUmberto D. Vittorio De SicaShot on location with a cast of nonprofessional actors, Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpiece follows Umberto D., an elderly pensioner, as he struggles to make ends meet during Italy’s postwar economic boom. Alone except for his dog, Flike, Umberto strives to maintain his dignity while trying to survive in a city where traditional human kindness seems to have lost out to the forces of modernization. Umberto’s simple quest to fulfill the most fundamental human needs—food, shelter, companionship—is one of the most heartbreaking stories ever filmed and an essential classic of world cinema.The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Jacques DemyVariety Lights Federico FelliniViolent Saturday Richard FliescherVivre Sa Vie Jean-Luc GodardTwelve vignettes show a young woman's life as a Paris prostitute. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.Waiting Women Ingmar BergmanWhile at a summerhouse, awaiting their husbands' return, a group of sisters-in-law recount stories from their respective marriages.Walerian Borowczyk - Short Films and Animation Walerian BorowczykUnited Kingdom released, Blu-Ray/Region A/B/C : it WILL NOT play on regular DVD player. You need Blu-Ray DVD player to view this Blu-Ray DVD: LANGUAGES: French ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), French ( Dolby Linear PCM ), French ( Mono ), English ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: 2-DVD Set, Black & White, Blu-Ray & DVD Combo, Booklet, Documentary, Interactive Menu, Remastered, Scene Access, SYNOPSIS: For the first decade of his career, Walerian Borowczyk exclusively made short films, initially in his native Poland, but then mostly in France, where he settled permanently in the late 1950s. This disc includes the vast majority of the shorts that he made between 1959 and 1984, apart from ones that were originally intended to accompany specific features. Far from being prentice work or optional extras, the shorts include many of his greatest films, such as the cut-out Astronauts, the reverse-motion Renaissance and the extraordinary Angels Games, a one-off masterpiece of the macabre that would alone establish Borowczyk as one of the cinema s most innovative artists. In 1967, Borowczyk made his feature debut, a grotesque and surreal fantasy about the physically and temperamentally mismatched couple Mr & Mrs Kabal. Made with a tiny production team at a time when animated feature films were far scarcer than they are now, it s almost the polar opposite of a Disney film, with angular, mainly monochrome graphics bringing the Kabals universe to startlingly vivid life. Both this and all the short films are presented in brand new high-definition restorations from original 35mm elements. ...Walerian Borowczyk (Short Films & Animation Collection) ( Le concert de M. et Mme. Kabal (Concert of Mr. & Mrs. Kabal) / L'encyclopedie de grand-maman enWaltz with Bashir Ari FolmanThe Watcher in the Attic Noboru TanakaThe film is set in 1923 in a cheap Tokyo boarding house. The landlord, Goda, roams through the attic, observing the weird lives of his tenants through holes in the ceiling. One day he sees a prostitute murder one of her clients and decides that at last he has found his soul mate... Based on stories by the Japanese master of horror, Edogawa Rampo, the film features some of the most bizarre sex scenes ever, including the story of a man who hides inside a special chair, so that a naked woman can sit on him.Where the Green Ants Dream Werner HerzogWhite Dog Samuel FullerSamuel Fuller's throat-grabbing exposé on American racism was misunderstood and withheld from release when it was made in the early eighties; today, the notorious film is lauded for its daring metaphor and gripping pulp filmmaking. Kristy McNichol stars as a young actress who adopts a lost German Shepherd, only to discover through a series of horrifying incidents that the dog has been trained to attack black people, and Paul Winfield plays the animal trainer who tries to cure him. A snarling, uncompromising vision, White Dog is a tragic portrait of the evil done by that most corruptible of animals: the human being.
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the uncut version, approved by producer Jon Davison
New video interviews with producer Davison, co-writer Curtis Hanson, and Sam Fuller s widow, Christa Lang-Fuller
An interview with dog trainer Karl Lewis-Miller
Rare photos from the film s production
PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by critics J. Hoberman and Armond White, plus a rare 1982 interview in which Fuller interviews the canine star of the filmWild Strawberries Ingmar BergmanTraveling to accept an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg—masterfully played by veteran director Victor Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage)—is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and make peace with the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries dramatizes one man’s remarkable voyage of self-discovery. This richly humane masterpiece, full of iconic imagery, is a treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema and one of the films that catapulted Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) to international acclaim.Winter Light Ingmar BergmanSmall-town pastor Tomas Ericsson performs his duties mechanically before a dwindling congregation, including his stubbornly devoted lover, Märta. When he is asked to assuage a troubled parishioner's debilitating fear of nuclear annihilation, Tomas is terrified to find that he can provide nothing but his own doubt.Women Without Innocence Jesús FrancoGermany released, Blu-Ray/Region A/B/C : it WILL NOT play on regular DVD player. You need Blu-Ray DVD player to view this Blu-Ray DVD: LANGUAGES: German ( Dolby Digital 5.1 ), German ( DTS-HD Master Audio ), Dutch ( Subtitles ), English ( Subtitles ), WIDESCREEN (1.78:1), SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Photo Gallery, Scene Access, Uncut, SYNOPSIS: Spending her holidays on the Swiss/Italian border, Margareta (Lina Romay) meets charming Sandra Mauro (Monica Swinn) and her husband. She agrees to stay in their house for the rest of her vacation, unaware that they are going to use her for smuggling diamonds over the border. There they get a little 'deeper' into knowing each other, but one night she awakens to strange noises and finds the couple brutally murdered in their living room. Margareta, deeply traumatized and unable to speak, is taken to Dr. Antonio's asylum. Antonio tries his very best to get her to speak and to reveal the events of the dreadful night. His attempts are not unselfish, since every member of the medical staff has already tried to be the first to find out where the missing diamonds are hidden. One night a mysterious black robbed person kills one of the nurses. Is this just a random attack or has somebody tried to get rid of a possible competitor. Only Margareta, who saw the killer, is able to uncover the mystery... ...Wicked Women (1978) ( Frauen ohne Unschuld ) ( Women Without Innocence )The Worst Person in the World Joachim TrierZorba the Greek Michael CacoyannisAn uptight English writer traveling to Crete on a matter of business finds his life changed forever when he meets the gregarious Alexis Zorba. |
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