Few directors have portrayed the agonies and epiphanies of growing up as poetically - and scandalously - as Louis Malle. Laced with autobiographical details, Murmur of the Heart ; Lacombe, Lucien ; and Au revoir les enfants tell stories of youth, set against the tumult of World War II and postwar France. Controversial, tragic, amusing, and poignant, ...
In a dusty, under - populated California resort town, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a naive and impressionable Southern waif begins her life as a nursing home attendant. There, Pinky finds her role model in fellow nurse "Thoroughly Modern" Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a misguided would - be sophisticate and hopeless devotee of Cosmopolitan and Woman's Day magazines. When Millie accepts ...
At once a compelling piece of anti - isolationist propaganda and a quick - witted wartime thriller, 49th Parallel is a classic early work from the inimitable British filmmaking team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. When a Nazi U - boat crew, headed by the ruthless Eric Portman, is stranded in Canada during the thick of World War II, ...
One of the greatest films about film ever made, Federico Fellini's 8 1/2 (Otto e Mezzo) turns one man's artistic crisis into a grand epic of the cinema. Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) is a director whose film - and life - is collapsing around him. An early working title for the film was La Bella Confusione (The Beautiful Confusion), and ...
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's beloved classic A Canterbury Tale is a profoundly personal journey to Powell's bucolic birthplace of Kent, England. Set amid the tumult of the Second World War, yet with a rhythm as delicate as a lullaby, the film follows three modern - day incarnations of Chaucer's pilgrims - a melancholy "landgirl," a plainspoken American GI, and ...
Charles Kiselyak’s A Constant Forge—The Life and Art of John Cassavetes is a detailed journey through the career of one of film’s greatest pioneers and iconoclasts. Assembled from candid interviews with Cassavetes' collaborators and friends, rare photographs, archival footage, and the director's own words, the film paints a revealing portrait of a man whose fierce love, courage, and dedication changed ...
At the beginning of the 1960s, renowned film director Ingmar Bergman began work on what were to become some of his most powerful and representative works—the Trilogy. Already a figure of tremendous international acclaim for such masterworks as The Seventh Seal , Wild Strawberries , and The Virgin Spring , Bergman turned his back on the abundant ...
Stach is a wayward teen living in squalor on the outskirts of Nazi - occupied Warsaw. Guided by an avuncular Communist organizer, he is introduced to the underground resistance - and to the beautiful Dorota. Soon he is engaged in dangerous efforts to fight oppression and indignity, maturing as he assumes responsibility for others' lives. A coming - of - ...
On April 14, 1912, just before midnight, the unsinkable Titanic struck an iceberg. In less than three hours, it had plunged to the bottom of the sea, taking with it 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers. A Night to Remember depicts the ship's final hours in an unforgettable rendering of Walter Lord's book of the same name.
With his raw style of filmmaking, Maurice Pialat has been called the John Cassavetes of French cinema, and the scorching A nos amours is one of his greatest achievements. In a revelatory film debut, the dynamic, fresh - faced Sandrine Bonnaire plays Suzanne, a fifteen - year - old Parisian who embarks on a sexual rampage in an effort to ...
One of the all - time comedy classics, Rene Clair's A Nous la Liberte tells the story of Louis, an escaped convict who becomes a wealthy industrialist. Unfortunately, his past returns (in the form of old jail pal Emile) to upset his carefully laid plans. Featuring lighthearted wit, tremendous visual innovation, and masterful manipulation of sound, A Nous la Liberte ...
In 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A Story of Floating Weeds in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Ugetsu). Setting his later version in a seaside location, Ozu otherwise preserves the details of his elegantly simple plot wherein an aging actor returns to a small town with his troupe and reunites with his former lover ...
With A Woman is a Woman (Une Femme est une femme), compulsively innovative director Jean - Luc Godard presents "a neorealist musical - that is, a contradiction in terms." Featuring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean - Paul Belmondo, and Jean - Claude Brialy at their peak of popularity, A Woman is a Woman is a sly, playful tribute to - ...
John Cassavetes’ devastating drama details the emotional breakdown of a suburban housewife and her family’s struggle to save her from herself. Starring Peter Falk and Gena Rowlands (in two of the most harrowing screen performances of the 1970s) as a married couple, deeply in love, yet unable to express their love in terms the other can understand, the film is ...
Eisenstein drew on history, Russian folk narratives, and the techniques of Walt Disney to create this broadly painted epic of Russian resilience. This story of Teutonic knights vanquished by Prince Alexander Nevsky's tactical brilliance resonated deeply with a Soviet Union concerned with the rise of Nazi Germany. Widely imitated - most notably by Laurence Olivier's Battle of Agincourt re - ...
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of twenty - nine, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love - ...
Jane Wyman is a repressed wealthy widow and Rock Hudson is the hunky Thoreau - following gardener who loves her in Douglas Sirk's heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s small - town America. Sirk utilizes expressionist colors, reflective surfaces, and frames - within - frames to convey the loneliness and isolation of a matriarch trapped by the snobbery of her children ...
A cockeyed fusion of science fiction, pulp characters, and surrealist poetry, Godard's irreverent journey to the mysterious Alphaville remains one of the least conventional films of all time. Eddie Constantine stars as intergalactic hero Lemmy Caution, on a mission to kill the inventor of fascist computer Alpha 60.
In this carnivalesque portrait of provincial Italy during the Fascist period, Federico Fellini's most personal film satirizes his youth and turns daily life into a circus of social rituals, adolescent desires, male fantasies, and political subterfuge, all set to Nina Rota's classic, nostalgia - tinged score. The Academy Award - winning Amarcord remains one of cinema's enduring treasures.
With An Angel at My Table, Academy Award–winning filmmaker Jane Campion brings to the screen the harrowing true - life story of Janet Frame, New Zealand's most distinguished author. The film follows Frame along her inspiring journey, from a poverty - stricken childhood to a misdiagnoses of schizophrenia and electroshock therapy to, finally, international literary fame. Beautifully capturing the color ...
The astounding success of Roger Vadim's And God Created Woman revolutionized the foreign film market and turned Brigitte Bardot into an international star. Bardot stars as Juliette, an 18 - year - old orphan whose unbridled appetite for pleasure shakes up all of St. Tropez; her sweet but naive husband Michel (Jean - Louis Trintignant) endures beatings, insults, and mambo ...
In Fellini's quirky, imaginative fable, a motley crew of European aristocrats (and a lovesick rhinoceros!) board a luxurious ocean liner on the eve of World War I to scatter the ashes of a beloved diva. Fabricated entirely in Rome's famed Cinecitta studios, And the Ship Sails On (E la nave va) reaches spectacular new visual heights with its stylized re ...
Immediately suppressed by the Soviets in 1966, Andrei Tarkovsky's epic masterpiece is a sweeping medieval tale of Russia's greatest icon painter. Too experimental, too frightening, too violent, and too politically complicated to be released officially, Andrei Rublev has existed only in shortened, censored versions until the Criterion Collection created a complete 205 - minute director's cut special edition.
In 1999, Polish director Andrzej Wajda received an Honorary Academy Award for his body of work—more than thirty-five feature films, beginning with A Generation in 1955. Wajda’s second film, Kanal—the first ever made about the Warsaw uprising—secured him the Special Jury Prize at Cannes and started him on the path to international acclaim, secured with the release of his masterpiece, ...
An asteroid the size of Texas is heading directly toward Earth at 22,000 mph. NASAs executive director, Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), has only one option to send up a crew to destroy the asteroid. He enlists the help of Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis) the worlds foremost deep core oil driller and Stampers roughneck team of drillers to land ...
Jean - Pierre Melville's masterpiece about the French Resistance against the Nazi occupation went unreleased in the United States for thirty - seven years before its triumphant theatrical debut in 2006. Atmospheric and gripping, Army of Shadows is Melville's most personal film, featuring Lino Ventura, Paul Meurisse, Jean - Pierre Cassel, and the incomparable Simone Signoret as intrepid underground fighters ...
On the last day of World War Two in a small town somewhere in Poland, Polish exiles of war and the occupying Soviet forces confront the beginning of a new day and a new Poland. In this incendiary environment we find Home Army soldier Maciek Chelmicki, who has been ordered to assassinate an incoming commissar. But a mistake stalls his ...
A profound masterpiece from one of the most revered filmmakers in the history of cinema, director Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar follows the donkey Balthazar as he is passed from owner to owner, some kind and some cruel but all with motivations beyond his understanding. Balthazar, whose life parallels that of his first keeper, Marie, is truly a beast of ...
Au revoir les enfants tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss between two boys living in Nazi - occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie - until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer - director Malle's own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, ...
A stunning union of two of Sweden's national treasures, Autumn Sonata pairs Ingmar Bergman with Ingrid Bergman for their only joint effort. Ingrid plays a mother who, after forsaking her family for a music career, attempts a reconciliation with her oldest daughter (Liv Ullmann) through a night of painful revelation. Sven Nykvist contributes glorious Eastmancolor cinematography to this quietly beautiful ...
Amid the decaying elegance of cold-war Vienna, psychoanalyst Dr. Alex Linden (Art Garfunkel) becomes mired in an erotically charged affair with the elusive Milena Flaherty (Theresa Russell). When their all-consuming passion takes a life-threatening turn, Inspector Netusil (Harvey Keitel) is assigned to piece together the sordid details. Acclaimed for its innovative editing, raw performances, and stirring musical score—featuring Tom Waits, ...
Russian 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 ...
Two restless young men (Sami Frey and Claude Brasseur) enlist the object of their desire (Anna Karina) to help them commit a robbery - in her own home. French New Wave pioneer Jean - Luc Godard takes to the streets of Paris to re - imagine the gangster genre, spinning an audacious yarn that's at once sentimental and insouciant, romantic ...
The Beastie Boys are among the most influential groups of the last two decades. As their music has opened hip-hop to a wider audience and changed the parameters of its sound, their ambitious music videos have carried the medium to new levels of artistic expression. This groundbreaking two - disc anthology showcases the vast potential of DVD technology, with most ...
Once upon a time, in a world of magic and wonder, the true love of a beautiful girl may finally dispel the torment of a feral but gentle - hearted beast. Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete) is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire, and ...
The fourth installment in Francois Truffaut's chronicle of the ardent, anachronistic Antoine Doinel, Bed and Board plunges his hapless creation once again into crisis. Expecting his first child and still struggling to find steady employment, Doinel (Jean - Pierre Leaud) involves himself in a relationship with a beautiful Japanese woman that threatens to destroy his marriage. Lightly comic, with a ...
An all - star cast and jazzy score highlight this charming comedy, a deft satire of classic caper films like Rififi. Big Deal on Madonna Street hilariously details the plight of a sad - sack group of bumbling thieves and their desperate attempts to pull off the perfect heist.
Tom Courtenay gives a flawlessly nuanced performance as Billy Fisher, the underachieving undertaker's assistant whose constant daydreams and truth - deficient stories earn him the nickname "Billy Liar." Julie Christie is the handbag - swinging charmer whose free spirit just might inspire Billy to finally move out of his parents' house. Deftly veering from gritty realism to flamboyant fantasy, Billy ...
Plagued by uncertainties and worldly desires, five Protestant missionary nuns, led by Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, struggle to establish a school in the desolate Himalayas. All the elements of cinematic arts are perfectly fused in Powell and Pressburger's fascinating study of the age - old conflict between the spirit and the flesh, set against the grandeur of the snowcapped peaks ...
1960 Academy Award Winner and winner of the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival, Marcel Camus' Black Orpheus retells the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice against the madness of Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. With its magnificent color photography and lively soundtrack, this film brought the infectious bossa nova beat to the United States.
Allen Baron's chilly 1961 noir Blast of Silence follows hitman Frank Bruno (played by Baron) as he returns to New York City during Christmastime. Ostensibly in the city to perform a hit, the coldhearted Bruno finds himself unable to focus, instead choosing to lose himself in the winter festivities.
"Poets . . . shed not only the red blood of their hearts but the white blood of their souls," proclaimed Jean Cocteau of his groundbreaking first film - an exploration of the plight of the artist, the power of metaphor and the relationship between art and dreams. One of cinema's great experiments, this first installment of the Orphic Trilogy ...
Suffused with wry humor, Jean - Pierre Melville's Bob le Flambeur melds the toughness of American gangster films with Gallic sophistication to lay the roadmap for the French New Wave. As the neon is extinguished for another dawn, an aging gambler navigates the treacherous world of pimps, moneymen, and naive associates while plotting one last score - the heist of ...
Although the 1920s brought him acclaim as a stage actor and singer, Paul Robeson still had to prove himself as a viable screen performer. Mainstream avenues were limited, however, and his first two films, both silent, were made on the peripheries of the film business. Body and Soul (1925), directed by the legendary African-American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, is a direct ...
Before carving out a niche as one of the most distinct voices in nineties American cinema , Allison Anders made her debut, alongside codirectors and fellow UCLA film school students Kurt Voss and Dean Lent, with 1987's Border Radio. A low - key, semi - improvised postpunk diary that took four years to complete, Border Radio features legendary rocker Chris ...
Michel Simon gives one of the most memorable performances in screen history as Boudu, a Parisian tramp who takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine and is rescued by a well - to - do bookseller, Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval). The Lestingois family decides to take in the irrepressible bum, and he shows his gratitude by shaking the household to ...
Branded to Kill, the wildly perverse story of the yakuza's rice - sniffing "No. 3 Killer," is Seijun Suzuki at his delirious best. From a cookie - cutter studio script, Suzuki delivered this brutal, hilarious, and visually inspired masterpiece - and was promptly fired.
Pitting the imagination of common man Sam Lowry (the brilliantly befuddled Jonathan Pryce) against the oppressive storm troopers of the Ministry of Information, Terry Gilliam's Brazil has come to be regarded as an anti-totalitarianism cautionary tale equal to the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Gathering footage from both the European and American versions of this ...
From Noel Coward's play Still Life, legendary filmmaker David Lean deftly explores the thrill, pain, and tenderness of an illicit romance in the dour, gray Britain of 1945. From a chance meeting on a train platform, a middle - aged married doctor (Trevor Howard) and a suburban housewife (Celia Johnson) enter into a quietly passionate, ultimately doomed love affair, set ...
As hard - hitting as its title, Brute Force was the first of Jules Dassin's forays into the crime genre, a prison melodrama that takes a critical look at American society as well. Burt Lancaster is the timeworn Joe Collins, who, along with his fellow inmates, lives under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power - tripping guard Captain Munsey ...
For nearly five years, acclaimed German filmmaker Werner Herzog desperately tried to complete one of the most ambitious and difficult films of his career - Fitzcarraldo, the story of one man's attempt to build an opera house deep in the Amazon jungle. Documentary filmmaker Les Blank captured the unfolding of this production, made more perilous by Herzog's determination to shoot ...
Torben Skjodt Jensen's elegant documentary is a collage of memories and reflections on one of cinema's greatest directors. Visually rich and densely layered, Carl Th. Dreyer - My Metier illuminates an artist too little understood and too important to overlook. Through interviews, historical writings, and rare archival footage, a portrait of Dreyer emerges - an austere perfectionist, yes, but also ...
Herk Harvey's macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television and has been bootlegged for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, Carnival of Souls was intended to have the "look of a Bergman" and "feel of a Cocteau," and succeeds with its strikingly used locations and spooky organ score. Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) survives a ...
Jacques Becker lovingly evokes the Belle Epoque Parisian demimonde in this classic tale of doomed romance. When gangster's moll Marie (Simone Signoret) falls for reformed criminal Manda (Serge Reggiani), their passion incites an underworld rivalry that leads inexorably to treachery and tragedy. With poignant, nuanced performances and sensuous black - and - white photography, Casque d'or (Golden Marie) is Becker ...
A trio of crooks relentlessly pursue a young American (Audrey Hepburn) through Paris to recover the fortune her dead husband stole from them. The only person she can trust is a suave, mysterious stranger (Cary Grant). A deliciously dark comedic thriller, Stanley Donen’s Charade dazzles with style and macabre wit to spare. Unavailable for nearly three years, this ’60s spy ...
Chasing Amy is the third installment in the "New Jersey Trilogy" from award-winning writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats, Dogma). Cult comic-book artist Holden (Ben Affleck) falls in love with fellow artist Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams), only to be thwarted by her sexuality, the disdain of his best friend Banky (Jason Lee), and his own misgivings about himself. Filled with Smith's ...
Poetic realism reaches sublime heights with Children of Paradise (Les enfants du paradis), the ineffably witty tale of a woman loved by four different men. Deftly entwining theater, literature, music, and design, director Marcel Carne and screenwriter Jacques Prevert resurrect the tumultuous world of 19th - century Paris, teeming with hucksters and aristocrats, thieves and courtesans, pimps and seers.
"Why would I tie myself to one woman if I were interested in others?" says Jerome, even as he plans on marrying a diplomat's daughter by summer's end. Before then, Jerome spends his July at a lakeside boardinghouse nursing crushes on the sixteen - year - old Laura and, more tantalizingly, Laura's long - legged, blonde stepsister, Claire. Baring her ...
Visionary of the French New Wave, Agnes Varda captures the atmosphere of Paris in the '60s with this portrait of a singer searching for answers as she awaits test results from a biopsy. A chronicle of two crucial hours in one woman's life, Cleo from 5 to 7 is a spirited mix of vivid verite and melodrama. The film features ...
Our Take: A quiet but deep character portrait, Cleo from 5 to 7 invites you to share in the emotional journey of a woman facing death.
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher's apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self - discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot. Wry and tender, Academy ...
Jean - Luc Godard's subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star - studded Cinemascope epic. Contempt (Le Mepris) stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot) as he attempts to doctor ...
In 1840s London, Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff) dares to dream the unthinkable: to operate on patients without causing pain. Unfortunately, the road to general anesthesia is blocked by a ruthless killer (Christopher Lee), as well as Bolton's devastating addiction to his own chemical experiments.
Available only as part of the Monsters and Madmen Box Set.
Latvia, 1919: the end of the Russian Civil War. An aristocratic young woman (brilliantly played by Margarethe von Trotta) becomes involved with a sexually repressed Prussian soldier. When she is rejected by her love, the young woman is sent into a downward spiral of psychosexual depression, promiscuity, and revolutionary collaboration. A startling tale of heartbreak and violence set against the ...
An inspired rendering of Jim Thompson's pulp novel Pop. 1280, Bertrand Tavernier's Coup de torchon (Clean Slate) deftly transplants the story of an inept police chief - turned - heartless killer and his scrappy mistress from the American South to French West Africa. Featuring pitch - perfect performances by Philippe Noiret and Isabelle Huppert, this striking neo - noir straddles ...
Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking, in this seminal Sun Tribe (taiyozoku) film from director Ko Nakahira. Adapted from the controversial novel by Shintaro Ishihara, and critically savaged for its lurid portrayal of the postwar sexual revolution among Japan’s young and privileged, Crazed Fruit is an ...
Legendary director Ingmar Bergman creates a testament to the strength of the soul - and a film of absolute power. Karin and Maria come to the aid of their dying sister, Agnes, but jealousy, manipulation, and selfishness come before empathy. Agnes, tortured by cancer, transcends the pettiness of her sisters' concerns to remember moments of being - moments that Bergman, ...
Filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens dag) is a harrowing account of individual helplessness in the face of growing social repression and paranoia. Anna, the young second wife of a well - respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small 17th - century village. ...
America, 1976. The last day of school. Bongs blaze, bell-bottoms ring, and rock and roll rocks. Among the best teen films ever made, Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused eavesdrops on a group of seniors-to-be and incoming freshmen. A launching pad for a number of future stars, Linklater's first studio effort also features endlessly quotable dialogue and a blasting, stadium - ...
An acknowledged influence on Psycho, Henri - Georges Clouzot's horror classic is the story of a sadistic headmaster who brutalizes his fragile wife and his headstrong mistress. The two women murder him and dump his body in a swimming pool; when the pool is drained, no corpse is found.
This wicked adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel is classic Luis Buñuel . Jeanne Moreau is Celestine, a beautiful Parisian domestic who, upon arrival at her new job at an estate in provincial 1930s France, entrenches herself in sexual hypocrisy and scandal with her philandering employer (Buñuel regular Michel Piccoli). Filmed in luxurious black - and - white Franscope, Diary ...
A new priest (Claude Laydu) arrives in the French country village of Ambricourt to attend to his first parish. The apathetic and hostile rural congregation rejects him immediately. Through his diary entries, the suffering young man relays a crisis of faith that threatens to drive him away from the village and from God. With his fourth film, Robert Bresson began ...
Baron Ferdinando Cefalu (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). His solution? Since divorce is illegal, he hatches a plan to lure his spouse into the arms of another and then murder her in a justifiable effort to save his ...
The hottest day of the year explodes onscreen in this vibrant look at a day in the life of Bedford - Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Featuring a stellar ensemble cast that includes Danny Aiello, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Richard Edson, Giancarlo Esposito, Robin Harris, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Nunn, Rosie Perez, and John Turturro, Spike Lee's powerful portrait of urban racial tensions ...
Our Take: A hard-hitting portrait of a neighborhood - you'll feel the heat along with the characters.
Many films have drawn from classic Japanese theatrical forms, but none with such shocking cinematic effect as director Masahiro Shinoda's Double Suicide. In this striking adaptation of a bunraku puppet play (featuring the music of famed composer Toru Takemitsu), a paper merchant sacrifices family, fortune, and ultimately life for his erotic obsession with a prostitute.
When fate lands three hapless men - an unemployed disc jockey (Tom Waits), a small - time pimp (John Lurie), and a strong - willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni) - in a Louisiana prison, their singular adventure begins. Described by director Jim Jarmusch as a "neo - beat - noir - comedy," Down by Law is part nightmare and part ...
Each of the three films in this box-set, Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud, is an intense exploration of the clash between individual desire and social expectations, with Dreyer’s famously perfectionist attention to detail shining throughout. With brand new digital transfers supervised by Gertrud director of photography Henning Bendtsen, we are proud to present these Dreyer masterpieces on DVD for ...
The Mamiya family is seeking a husband for their daughter, Noriko, but she has ideas of her own. Played by the extraordinary Setsuko Hara, Noriko impulsively chooses her childhood friend, at once fulfilling her family's desires while tearing them apart. A seemingly simple story, Early Summer is one of Yasujiro Ozu's most complex works - a nuanced examination of life's ...
Sergei 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 ...
Set amidst the military maneuvers and Quatorze Juillet carnivals of turn - of - the - century France, Jean Renoir's delirious romantic comedy stars Ingrid Bergman in her most sensual role as a beautiful, but impoverished Polish princess who drives men of all stations to fits of desperate love.
Available only as part of the Stage and Spectacle: Three Films by ...
In his mesmerizing debut feature, twenty - four - year - old director Louis Malle brought together the beauty of Jeanne Moreau, the camerawork of Henri Decae, and a now legendary score by Miles Davis. A touchstone of the careers of both its star and director, Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l'echafaud) is a richly atmospheric thriller of murder ...
Before he took you to a galaxy far, far away, before he brought you face - to - face with living, breathing prehistoric beasts, Dennis Muren, the future nine - time Oscar - winning visual - effects artist (Star Wars, Jurassic Park), joined forces with a group of talented young filmmakers to create an homage to the creature features of ...
Secluded in the French countryside, a brilliant, obsessive doctor attempts a radical plastic surgery to restore the beauty of his daughter's disfigured face - but at a horrifying price. At once ghastly lyrical, Eyes Without a Face is a true rarity of horror cinema and has influenced countless films.
Trickery. Deceit. Magic. In Orson Welles's free - form documentary F for Fake, the legendary filmmaker (and self - described charlatan) gleefully engages the central preoccupation of his career - the tenuous line between truth and illusion, art and lies. Beginning with portraits of world - renowned art forger Elmyr de Hory and his equally devious biographer, Clifford Irving, Welles ...
The disintegration of a marriage is dissected in John Cassavetes' searing Faces. Shot in high - contrast 16mm black and white, the film follows the futile attempts of captain of industry Richard (John Marley) and his wife, Maria (Lynn Carlin), to escape the anguish of their empty marriage in the arms of others. Featuring astonishingly powerful, nervy performances from Marley, ...
Ingmar Bergman has described Fanny and Alexander as "the sum total of my life as a filmmaker." And in this, the full - length (312 - minute) version of his triumphant valediction, his vision is expressed at its fullest. Originally broadcast on Swedish television in 1984, in four episodes, Bergman's preferred rendition of Fanny and Alexander reinstates two hours worth ...
Through the eyes of ten - year - old Alexander (Bertil Guve), we witness the great delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling, convivial bourgeois clan in turn - of - the - century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) to be his swan song. Winner of the 1984 Academy Award for Best Foreign ...
Legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman made Fanny and Alexander (Fanny och Alexander) as his swan song, and it is his most autobiographical film, a masterpiece combining his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with a surprising joyfulness and sensuality. Included in this set are both versions of this great work: the theatrical release, winner of the 1984 Academy Award for Best Foreign ...
While on vacation with their parents, Anais tags along with Elena as she explores the dreary seaside town. Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student,who seduces her with promises of love, and the ever - watchful Anais bears witness to the corruption of her sister's innocence. Precise and uncompromising, Catherine Breillat's Fat Girl is a bold dissection of sibling rivalry ...
"We were somewhere around Barstow when the drugs began to take hold." It is 1971, and journalist Raoul Duke barrels towards Las Vegas to cover a motorcycle race, accompanied by a trunkful of contraband and his slightly unhinged Samoan attorney, Dr. Gonzo. But what is ostensibly a cut - and - dried journalistic endeavor quickly descends into a feverish psychedelic ...
A scientist's thoughts materialize as an army of invisible brain - shaped monsters (complete with spinal - cord tails!) who terrorize an American military base in this nightmarish chiller, directed by Arthur Crabtree (Horrors of the Black Museum). This outstanding sci - fi/horror hybrid is a special effects bonanza, and a high - water mark in British genre filmmaking.
High schooler Kiroku Nanbu yearns for the prim, Catholic Michiko, but her only desire is to reform Kiroku's sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, Kiroku channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence. Fighting Elegy (Kenka Erejii) is a unique masterpiece in the diverse career of Seijun Suzuki, combining the director's signature bravura visual style with a brilliantly ...
An agonizing portrait of desperate Japanese soldiers stranded in a strange land during World War II, Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain (Nobi) is a compelling descent into psychological and physical oblivion. Denied hospital treatment for tuberculosis and cast off into the unknown, Private Tamura treks across an unfamiliar Philippine landscape, encountering an increasingly debased cross section of Imperial Army ...
In this interstellar cautionary tale, brash U.S. Navy test pilot Dan Prescott, hungry for fame, rockets himself beyond Earth’s atmosphere, only to become encrusted with cosmic dust and return a blood-drinking monster.
Available only as part of the Monsters and Madmen Box Set.
John Lurie knows absolutely nothing about fishing, but that doesn't stop him from undertaking the adventure of a lifetime on Fishing With John. Traveling with his special guests to the most exotic and dangerous places on earth, John Lurie battles sharks with Jim Jarmusch off the tip of Long Island, goes ice fishing with Willem Dafoe at Maine's northernmost point, ...
Tormented by twisted desires, a young man takes drastic measures to rid his grotesquely dysfunctional family of its various afflictions in this astonishing 1965 debut from Marco Bellocchio. Charged by a coolly assured style, shocking perversity, and savage gallows humor, Fists in the Pocket (I pugni in tasca) was a gleaming ice pick in the eye of bourgeois family values ...
In July 1969, the space race ended when Apollo 11 fulfilled President Kennedy's challenge of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." No one who witnessed the lunar landing will ever forget it. Breathtaking both in the scope of its vision and the exhilaration of the human emotions it captures, For All Mankind is ...
Rene Clement's Forbidden Games tells the story of a young girl orphaned by war and the farm boy she joins in a fantastical world of macabre play. At once mythical and heartbreakingly real, this unique film features astonishing performances by its child stars and was honored with a special foreign language film Academy Award in 1952.
Nineteenth - century Paris comes vibrantly alive in Jean Renoir's exhilarating tale of the opening of the world - renowned Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin plays the wily impresario Danglard, who makes the cancan all the rage while juggling the love of two beautiful women - an Egyptian belly - dancer and a naive working girl turned cancan star. This celebration ...
In the shady black markets and bombed-out hovels of post–World War II Tokyo, a tough band of prostitutes eke out a dog-eat-dog existence, maintaining tenuous friendships and a semblance of order in a world of chaos. But when a renegade ex-soldier stumbles into their midst, lusts and loyalties clash, with tragic results. With Gate of Flesh (Nikutai no mon), visionary ...
In 1971, the small African nation of Uganda was taken over by self - styled dictator General Idi Amin Dada, beginning an eight - year reign of terror that would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In this chilling yet darkly comic documentary, director Barbet Schroeder turns his cameras on the infamous tyrant, revealing the dynamic, charming, and ...
Over the course of one hot summer, a group of children in the rural south are forced to confront a tangle of difficult choices in a decaying world. An ambitiously constructed, sensuously photographed meditation on adolescence, the first feature film by director David Gordon Green features breakout performances from an award - winning ensemble cast.
Carl Dreyer's last film neatly crowns his career: a meditation on tragedy, individual will and the refusal to compromise. A woman leaves her unfulfilling marriage and embarks on a search for ideal love - but neither a passionate affair with a younger man nor the return of an old romance can provide the answer she seeks. Always the stylistic innovator, ...
Called "the greatest rock film ever made," this landmark documentary follows the Rolling Stones on their notorious 1969 U.S. tour. When 300,000 members of the Love Generation collided with a few dozen Hell's Angels at San Francisco's Altamont Speedway, direct cinema pioneers David and Albert Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin immortalized on film the bloody slash that transformed a decade's dreams ...
Ozu's hilarious Technicolor re - working of his silent I Was Born, But. . ., Good Morning (Ohayo) is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. Shot from the perspective of the petulant brothers, Good Morning is an enchantingly satirical portrait of ...
One of the great translations of literature into film, David Lean's Great Expectations brings Charles Dickens' masterpiece to robust onscreen life. Pip, Magwitch, Miss Havisham, and Estella populate Lean's magnificent miniature, beautifully photographed by Guy Green and designed by John Bryan.
In the midst of Nazi air raids, a postman dies on the operating table at a rural English hospital. But was the death accidental? A delightful and wholly unexpected murder mystery, British writer/director Sidney Gilliat's Green for Danger features Trevor Howard and Sally Gray as suspected doctors and Alastair Sim in a marvelous turn as Scotland Yard's insouciant Inspector Cockrill. ...
Meet Big and Little Edie Beale—high-society dropouts, mother and daughter, reclusive cousins of Jackie O.—thriving together amid the decay and disorder of their ramshackle East Hampton mansion. An impossibly intimate portrait and an eerie echo of the Kennedy Camelot, Albert and David Maysles’s 1976 Grey Gardens quickly became a cult classic and established Little Edie as a fashion icon and ...
Winner of four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor, Sir Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet continues to be the most compelling version of Shakespeare’s beloved tragedy. Olivier is at his most inspired—both as director and as the melancholy Dane himself—as he breathes new life into the words of one of the world’s greatest dramatists.
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Rod Steiger is ferocious as a scheming land developer in Francesco Rosi's Hands over the City, a blistering work of social realism and the winner of the 1963 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion. This expose of the politically driven real - estate speculation that has devastated Naples's civilian landscape moves breathlessly from a cataclysmic building collapse to the backroom negotiations ...
(Tatsuya Nakadai) arrives at the manor of Lord Iyi, begging to commit ritual suicide on his property. Iyi's clansmen, believing the desperate ronin is merely angling for charity, try to force him to eviscerate himself - but they have underestimated his honor and his past. Winner of the 1963 Cannes Film Festival's Special Jury Prize, Masaki Kobayashi's Harakiri is a ...