THE END OF VIOLENCE – WENDERS           ARROW FCD336

Wilhelm Ernst Wenders was born in Düsseldorf in 1945. He received his first 8mm film camera at the age of twelve and soon developed an interest in American music and films, especially westerns and road movies. His first professional feature, The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1971), received critical attention and he became internationally known with The American Friend, starring Dennis Hopper and based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. Wenders went to the States and finished Hammett and in 1984 made his biggest success there, Paris, Texas, which won the Palme d’Or. He returned to Germany to shoot Wings of Desire and in the late 90s completed more films in the States, including The End of Violence. Made in 1997, it stars Gabriel Byrne, Bill Pullman and Andi Mcdowell, and tells the story of a Hollywood producer who has become rich and powerful thanks to brutal and bloody action films. He cuts himself off from his home life and neglected wife with banks of phones and computers that he uses to remain in contact with his business associates. Suddenly he is kidnapped by two bandits, but escapes and hides out with his Mexican gardener’s family. In order to track him down, the police call in a scientist who is forced to use an Orwellian surveillance system that enables government agents to assassinate their enemies at will. Visually stunning and with soundtrack music by Ry Cooder, this is a slow yet compelling exploration of violence and alienation – themes even more relevant in today’s post 9/11 climate. Look out too for the last acting appearance by Sam Fuller, director of the great Pickup on South Street. Special Features with this DVD include a trailer, an introduction by Luc Lagier, and an informative documentary, ‘Wenders and America’.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON  - SINGTON           4DVD   F4DVD90105

The Apollo 11 mission was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. It was the fifth human spaceflight of the Apollo program and the third human voyage to the moon. Launched on July 16, 1969, it carried Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin, Jr. On July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy’s pledge to reach the moon by the end of the 1960s. Between 1968 and 1972, nine American spacecraft voyaged to the Moon, and twelve men walked on its surface - the only human beings ever to have stood on another world. Filmmaker David Sington’s critically acclaimed and multi-award-winning documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, includes breathtaking never before seen footage from the NASA archives and brings together for the first, and possibly the last, time surviving crew members from every Apollo mission which flew to the Moon, allowing them to tell their story in their own riveting words. The many DVD extras include ‘Behind the Shadow’ showing unseen footage and astronaut stories, ‘Scoring Apollo’ a featurette presented by composer Philip Sheppard and the theatrical trailer. A favourite with critics and cinema audiences alike, this uplifting movie is an intimate epic that vividly captures the spirit, daring and passion of an extraordinary era. Highly recommended.

DUCK SOUP – MARX BROTHERS               UNIVERSAL

‘Remember, you’re fighting for this woman’s honour, which is probably more than she ever did.’ - Rufus T. Firefly in Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey in 1933 and featuring the Marx Brothers at their anarchic best. Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo (his last film as one of the brothers) are joined by the wonderful  Margaret Dumont, Raquel Torres, Louis Calhern and Edgar Kennedy. Compared to the Marx Brothers’ previous films, Duck Soup was a disappointment at the box-office after opening to mixed reviews but is now considered one of the funniest films of all time. The small Ruritanian state of Freedonia is in financial trouble after borrowing a huge sum of cash from wealthy widow Mrs Teasdale (Dumont). She insists on replacing the current president with the outrageous Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) and mayhem ensues. To complicate matters, a neighbouring state of Sylvania sends in inept spies Chicolini and Pinky (Chico and Harpo) to obtain top secret information and cause further chaos. Highlights include the beautifully timed mirror sequence (a vaudeville classic) and the relentless stream of one-liners, puns and riddles (‘what has four pairs of pants, lives in Philadelphia, and it never rains but it pours?’). This satire on politics and warmongering is one of four early Marx Brothers’ films – the others are Monkey Business, Animal Crackers and Horse Feathers – included in a range of essential films released on DVD by Universal under the banner Cinema Classics. They include ‘the greatest film of all time’, Citizen Kane (with a brilliant optional commentary by film historian Ken Barnes), and a total of 31 award winners, from Film Noir (see below), Thriller, Comedy, Westerns, Horror, War, Drama, Romance and Musicals.

FILM NOIR – UNIVERSAL CLASSICS

From the early 1940s to the late 1950s, Hollywood made a series of great crime dramas that came to be known as Film Noir. The term was first applied by the French critic Nino Frank in 1946, although most of those involved in the making of the classic Noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film. What these stylish movies had in common was an emphasis on moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Often made on a modest budget, these Hollywood films had low-key black-and-white photography influenced by German Expressionism and featured stories derived from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that flourished in the United States during the Great Depression. With tough guys, tougher – and gorgeous – women, alongside hard-bitten police and cynical, wise-cracking private eyes, the Film Noir genre was pioneered by Universal and other studios and has been one of the most enduring of all modern film genres. Universal’s new Cinema Classics range celebrates these much-loved films by re-issuing some of the finest examples, including A Touch Of Evil (starring Orson Welles, Janet Leigh, Charlton Heston and an uncredited Marlene Dietrich), The Killers (a definitive noir with one of the greatest opening sequences in film history), Double Indemnity (directed by Billy Wilder, screenplay by Raymond Chandler, starring the wonderful Babara Stanwyck as Phyllis Dietrichson and Edward G. Robinson as Barton Keyes), The Blue Dahlia (starring Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake and also written by Chandler), The Glass Key (with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd), a Philip Marlow tale, Murder My Sweet (aka Farewell My Lovely) and This Gun For Hire (an early example of the genre, based on a Graham Greene novel). ‘Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money - and a woman, and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?’ - Walter Neff.

SLEUTH – KENNETH BRANAGH           PARAMOUNT

Michael Caine and Jude Law star in the gripping remake of the 1972 classic, stylishly directed by Kenneth Branagh, with a sharply adapted script by Nobel prizewinner Harold Pinter. The film was produced by Jude Law, who plays Milo Tindle opposite Caine as Andrew Wyke (Caine starred as Tindle opposite Laurence Olivier’s Wyke in the original). This is the second film in which Law takes on a role originated by Caine - the first being Alfie. Although classed as a ‘remake’, this new version is very different from the original both the original Anthony Shaffer play and the earlier film, which Pinter had not seen prior to writing his screenplay. Locked up in a high-tech English manor, bound in a deadly duel of wits Wyke Tindle come together as English gentlemen to discuss the matter of Wyke’s wife; the woman both men are sleeping with. But as wit becomes wicked and clever becomes cut-throat, their game of one-upmanship spirals out of control in an escalating series of cat and mouse twists that can only lead to a deadly outcome. The Pinteresque dialogue crackles enjoyably and Branagh’s direction elicits all the menace and sly humour. Caine gives one of his finest recent performances, revealing a real chemistry as he spars verbally and otherwise with Jude Law in this fascinating two-hander. Special features with the DVD include commentaries by Kenneth Branagh, Michael Caine and Jude Law, as well as behind the scenes documentaries.

BORSTAL BOY - SHERIDAN                 REVOLVER

In Brendan Behan’s autobiographical novel, Borstal Boy, published in 1958, he memorably related his experience of imprisonment at Hollesley Bay for carrying explosives into the United Kingdom on a mission for the IRA.. The story takes its name from the Borstal, a British jail for juveniles, of which Hollesley was one. The book was banned in Ireland on the grounds of obscenity but in 1967 it was adapted as an award-winning play by Frank McMahon and staged at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In 2000, the book was adapted again for this film by its director Peter Sheridan. An emotionally moving coming-of-age drama, the film stars the talented young American actor Shawn Hatosy as sixteen year-old republican Behan on a bombing mission from Ireland to Liverpool during the Second World War. His mission is thwarted when he is apprehended and sent to a Borstal in East Anglia, where he is forced to live face-to-face with those he perceived as ‘the enemy’. This confrontation reveals deep inner conflict and forces self-examination that is both traumatic and revealing as events take an unexpected and tragic turn. In the emotional vortex, Brendan finally faces up to the truth. Shawn Hatosy gives a remarkable performance as the teenager gone wrong and the ensemble cast also includes the excellent Danny Dyer as an openly gay sailor, Michael York as the warden, Eva Birthistle as the warden’s beautiful daughter and a brief appearance by Ronnie Drew (of Dubliners fame). Sheridan has taken a few liberties with Behan’s original book but this is a touching, thoughtful and engrossing film. Extras include a documentary with comments by the actors and director plus a brilliant short film, ‘The Breakfast’, also directed by Peter Sheridan. Official website: http://www.borstalboy.co.uk

SILENT LIGHT - REYGADAS     TARTAN

Mexican director Carlos Reygadas Castillo is best known for three films – the sexually explicit Battle in Heaven, Japón and Silent Light (otherwise known as Stellet Licht or Luz Silenciosa). Silent Light was made in 2007 film written and filmed in Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua, a city in the north of Mexico. Set in a Mennonite community with dialogue in Plautdietsch, the language of Russian Mennonites, the film tells the story of a married man who goes against the law of both God and men by falling in love with another woman. He is honest with his wife about the affair but his actions create conflict in their otherwise tranquil existence. From the long, luminous opening shot the film weaves its slow, intricate way to one of cinema’s most exquisite finales. This is the work of a visionary filmmaker who is challenging himself and trying to address genuinely deep human issues. Silent Light is beautiful and profound - an enlightening and engaging exploration of moral and spiritual crises that at times invokes Dreyer, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Malick and even Kubrick. Winner of the jury prize at Cannes, this striking film fully repays the patient viewing required. Extras on the DVD include a making of featurette, interviews with members of the cast and notes on the film by Jason Woods. ‘All the scenes shine with a visual and emotional brilliance’ – Time.

DEPARTMENT S - COMPLETE SERIES SPECIAL EDITION   NETWORK 7952234

The cult espionage/science fiction adventure series Department S was first shown on British television in 1969-70 and starred Peter Wyngarde as flamboyant crime writer Jason King (who later had in his own spin-off series), Joel Fabiani as straight laced action man Stewart Sullivan and Rosemary Nicols as glamorous computer expert Annabelle Hurst. The trio were agents for a fictional special department of Interpol, headed by Sir Curtis Seretse (Dennis Alaba Peters), and attempt to unravel bizarre and inexplicable mysteries which have other police forces beaten. ‘When a case proves too baffling for the minds of Interpol, they turn to the talents of Department S.’ The series was created by the prolific writer Dennis Spooner and producer Monty Berman for ITC, which also produced other 1970s classics such as The Prisoner. Department S is typically quirky and sophisticated, with witty dialogue, unexpected plot twists and excellent performances from a talented cast. The plots are highly inventive – often enjoyably absurd – and invariably feature beautiful women, nostalgic glimpses of 1960s cars and technology such as reel-to-reel tape recorders. This splendid box set from Network includes all 28 episodes (almost 24 hours in all) of this lavishly photographed series. The stories have intriguing titles such as One Of Our Aircraft Is Empty, The Man In The Elegant Room, The Double Death Of Charlie Crippen, A Cellar Full Of Silence and The Bones Of Byrom Blaine. Extras include a new documentary on the making of Department S, with contributions from Joel Fabiani, Rosemary Nicols, Peter Wyngarde, Cyril Frankel and others, plus an extensive image gallery (more than 1300 images, including many behind the scenes)  accompanied by a suite of incidental music from the series. Effortlessly entertaining.

BLEAK MOMENTS – LEIGH     SODA SODA074

Mike Leigh studied theatre at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company before becoming a theatre director and playwright in the 1960s. In the 1970s, he made the transition to television with classic plays such Nuts in May and Abigail’s Party. His projects begin without a script; instead, he sets out a basic premise, and lets the ideas develop through improvisation by the actors, who explore their character. The experimental Bleak Moments was Leigh’s debut feature - a haunting and disturbing study of a young woman’s isolation. Released in 1971, it  won the Golden Leopard in Locarno the following year and is available now for the first time on DVD. Secretary Sylvia (Anne Raitt) spends her evenings drinking sherry and taking care of her mentally disabled sister, Hilda (brilliantly played by Sarah Stephenson). Lonely for male company, she meets a repressed schoolteacher Peter (Eric Allan) and the shy, guitar-playing Norman (Mike Bradwell), who has rented her garage to print copies of a magazine. Peter and Sylvia go out for a meal at a wincingly inhospitable Chinese restaurant while Sylvia’s annoying fellow office worker Pat (Joolia Cappleman) looks after Hilda. Back home, Sylvia makes an unsuccessful pass at Peter, who awkwardly declines and leaves. Norman then quits the garage, leaving Sylvia and Hilda once more to face the boredom and loneliness of their lives. Bleak Moments fully lives up to its title but there are undercurrents of dark humour that become more apparent with a second viewing. The unique Mike Leigh acting style is already in evidence, with a memorable performance by the Liz Smith in her first important screen role. A fascinating commentary by the director is included as an extra.

THE PRISONER 40TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION     NETWORK 7952663

This British television allegorical science fiction series, created by and starring the charismatic Patrick McGoohan, tells the enigmatic story of a man who abruptly resigns from his position as a top-level government agent and is held captive in a small, colourful village by unknown people who are concerned about his resignation. Each episode typically features the imprisoned former agent - labelled ‘Number Six’ by his captors who refuse to use names - failing to escape ‘The Village’ (exteriors were filmed primarily on location at the Hotel Portmeirion resort village in North Wales) but resisting the interrogation and brainwashing attempts by his captors. This multilayered drama asks challenging questions about democracy and individual freedom, making its political commentary as relevant in today’s era of mass CTV surveillance and ID cards as it was when the series was first broadcast. Only seventeen episodes of The Prisoner were produced, with the first being shown on ITV on 1 October 1967 and the last airing on 4 February 1968. Network is now releasing a special edition DVD box set to mark the 40th anniversary of one of the most radical, thought-provoking dramas in the history of television. Newly restored from the programme’s original film elements, this is the only release of the show ever to be endorsed by Patrick McGoohan and is essential viewing for all fans of his surreal, mesmeric and enchanting masterpiece. The seven discs contain all 17 episodes digitally restored with Dolby 5.1 sound treatment, as well as an alternate version of first episode ‘Arrival’ with music only track. The generous array of extras include a 288 page book by television historian Andrew Pixley, original script PDFs including ones never filmed, seven audio commentaries by production members, a new 90 minute documentary titled Don’t Knock Yourself Out with contributions from cast and crew (including McGoohan, Annette Andre, George Baker, Wanda Ventham, Fenella Fielding, Earl Cameron, Sheila Allen, Leo McKern and ITV chairman Michael Grade), behind-the-scenes footage, a stills gallery with many previously unseen pictures, production documentation, trailers and Easter Eggs (including Television’s Greatest Hits clip with Patrick McGoohan and a McGoohan audio interview with Roger Goodman). An undisputed landmark in television history.

THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT - HAS       MR BONGO FILMS  MRBDVD06

Based on the book by the acclaimed Count Jan Potocki, The Saragossa Manuscript is the English title for a Polish film released in 1965, directed by Wojciech Has. Set in Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, Alphonse Van Worden (Zbigniew Cybulski) is a young army captain who discovers an old book that tells the story of his grandfather, who was a captain in the Walloon Guard. The younger van Worden reads of how his ancestor sought the shortest route through the Sierra Morena Mountains. At an apparently deserted inn, he dined with Moorish princesses, Emina (Iga Cembrzynska) and Princess Zibelda (Joanna Jedryka), who inform the captain that they are his cousins and he must marry them both to provide heirs. He will have to convert to Islam, but then delights of all sorts will await him. This appeals to the captain and he drinks with the ladies, only to wake and find himself back in a forbidding countryside, lying next to a heap of skulls under a gallows. He meets a hermit priest and a goatherd; each tells his story; he wakes again by the gallows. He is then rescued from the Spanish Inquisition, meets a cabalist and hears more stories within stories, usually of love. Described by directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Luis Bunuel as their favourite film, Worcieck Has’ masterpiece is a weird and wonderful experience unlike anything else. During the 1990s, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia, together with Scorsese and Coppola, helped finance a restoration and subtitling of the film, which was re-released in 2001. It now makes its DVD debut in a lovingly restored full 180-minute version. The film creates a magical, mysterious and sometimes disturbing world of the supernatural, set among the arid landscapes of 17th Century Spain, populated with ghosts, alluring demons, debauched royalty and mystical priests. Spanning centuries and nations, the manuscript encompasses a rich slew of stories from the humorous to the horrifying, climaxing with its final chilling revelations. Stylish and unique, this amazing film is one of the few in which Zbigniew Cybulski does not appear in his customary dark glasses. ‘Simultaneously horrific, erotic and funny…this is one mother of a film’ - David Lynch.

MARGIN FOR ERROR & A ROYAL SCANDAL – PREMINGER       BFI BFIVD669

Otto Ludwig Preminger was born in the Austria-Hungarian town of Wiznitz in 1906. His father was a prosecutor and Otto also intended to be a lawyer before falling in love with the theatre and becoming a stage director instead. He directed the first of his 35 feature films in 1931 before moving to the United States in 1936 to direct on Broadway, alternating between stage and film until the success of Laura (1944) made him a sought-after director in Hollywood. There he was one of the founding fathers of film noir, with movies such as Whirlpool, Angel Face, Where the Sidewalk Ends and the Thirteenth Letter. In the 1950s and 60s, he directed high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works, including The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder, and Advise and Consent. He also took a few acting roles, usually playing an exaggerated version of himself. Two of his earliest films, Margin for Error (1943) and A Royal Scandal (1945), are released together on this double-disc DVD set by the BFI. In Margin for Error, wisecrackin’ Jewish cop Moe Finkelstein (Milton Berle) has just been put in charge of guarding the proto-Nazi German embassy in New York. He encounters the egoistical, villainous consul (a scene-stealing performance by Preminger himself), his American wife Sophie (Joan Bennett) who is desperate for a divorce, and the Consul’s secretary, the sheltered Baron Von Alvenstor whose blind allegiance to his motherland is being severely tested by both his boss’s increasingly maddening power-hungry pursuits and his own growing affection for Sophie. A Royal Scandal is a risqué comedy produced by Ernst Lubitsch, who was going to direct until prevented by ill-health. Set at the height of the Russian dynasty, the film features a rare appearance by the outrageous Tallulah Bankhead as the equally outrageous Empress Catherine the Great. Other Hollywood stalwarts involved include Charles Coburn, Anne Baxter, William Eythe and the brilliant Sig Ruman as General Ronsky. There is also a hilarious cameo from Vincent Price as an unlikely French Ambassador, a sparkling script by Edwin Justus Mayer and stunning black and white cinematography. The DVDs are accompanied by an illustrated 14-page booklet with film essays by Philip Kemp, a director biography and cast and credit details.

IRMA VEP – ASSAYAS     SECOND SIGHT 2NDVD 3135

The award-winning Chinese actress Maggie Cheung was born in Hong Kong and grew up in England. She returned to Hong Kong in 1982 for a holiday but ended up staying to work as a model, entering the Miss Hong Kong and Miss World beauty contests before starting her film career in 1983. Since then she has made over 80 films, often in collaboration with director Wong Kar-Wai. Audiences outside Asia have become increasingly familiar with her work, including her roles in Centre Stage, In the Mood for Love, and epic martial arts films such as Hero. Irma Vep was made in 1996 in just three weeks, with the French director Olivier Assayas, who she later married and divorced. Maggie Cheung plays herself in this story about the disasters that ensue as a middle-aged French film director (played by Jean-Pierre Léaud of Francois Truffaut fame) unwisely attempts to remake Louis Feuillade’s classic silent serial Les vampires (the heroine’s name is an anagram of the word ‘vampire’). This smart, playful film sends up French arthouse pretensions with a vengeance as the director – a once big name who is sinking into obscurity – slowly but surely loses the plot. Cheung becomes the target for plenty of female attention, and, before long, has taken to putting on tight-fitting latex outfits and prowling the hotel as a cat burglar, much like her character in the film. This is a wonderful insight into the often twisted world of film-making and the weird and eccentrics to be found on both side of the camera. Jean-Pierre Léaud looks suitably disippated as the director and there are fine performances by Nathalie Richard and the beautiful Maggie Cheung. Irma Vep is an affectionate and intelligent film satire, with stylish cinematography, effective use of music and sly humour. This post-modern cult classic is now available for the first time on DVD, with special features that include ‘Man Yuk – Portrait of Maggie Cheung’, and interviews with Olivier Assayas and Maggie Cheung.

W.C. FIELDS: THE MOVIE COLLECTION     UNIVERSAL  8250881

W. C. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania in 1880. His father came from an English-Irish family of noble origins (being descendants of Lord Dukenfield), and his mother was also of British descent. Fields started in vaudeville as an ‘eccentric juggler’, often practicing until he was in considerable pain and his fingers bled. He performed with cigar boxes, hats and a variety of other paraphernalia, becoming a world-class juggler and an international star. He found that he could get more laughs by adding dialogue to his routines and was soon performing skits in Broadway’s ‘Ziegfeld Follies’ revues before. He made a number of movie shorts but his film career only took off with the coming of sound, when he worked for Mack Sennett and Paramount Pictures in the 1930s. He created one of the great American comic personas of the first half of the 20th century - a misanthrope who teetered on the edge of buffoonery but never quite fell in, an egotist blind to his own failings, a charming drunk; and a man who hated children, dogs, and women, unless they were the wrong sort of women. A rebellious character from childhood, he gained his instantly recognisable hoarse voice and battered red nose from sleeping and fighting on the streets. Altogether, he stared in 38 films and wrote many more, adopting idiosyncratic names such as Otis Criblecoblis, Mahatma Kane Jeeves, Charles Bogle, Larson E. Whipsnade, Egbert Sousé (pronounced 'soo-ZAY'), Ambrose Wolfinger and The Great McGonigle. The splendid 10-DVD box set from Universal Pictures features 17 of his funniest films, including the zany Million Dollar Legs, My Little Chickadee (with the marvelous Mae West), If I Had A Million, Tillie and Gus, Mississippi (with Bing Crosby), The Bank Dick (arguably Fields’ best film), Follow The Boys (cameo appearances by Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles), Six Of A Kind (with the legendary George Burns), International House (with horror legend Bela Lugosi), You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man, The Old Fashioned Way, You’re Telling Me, It’s A Gift, The Man On The Flying Trapeze, The Big Broadcast of 1938 (Bob Hope’s movie debut), Poppy (based on Fields’ highly successful 1920 Broadway show of the same name) and the surreal Never Give A Sucker An Even Break. The W.C. Fields Movie Collection is a great introduction to the work of this comedic genius and will be essential viewing for his many committed fans.

ON THE BLACK HILL – GRIEVE           FILM FIRST FF04

On the Black Hill is based on a novel of the same name by Bruce Chatwin, telling the story of 80 years of rural family life in the Welsh border countryside. The film was made in 1987 and directed by Andrew Grieve, who was brought up in mid-Wales and his understanding of the region and its people were crucial to the film’s success. The story begins in 1900 with the marriage of dour, puritanical Welsh farmer Amos Jones (Bob Peck) to his social superior, vicar’s daughter Mary Latimer (Gemma Jones). Her connections enable them to rent a vacant farm, The Vision’, a situation that is a cause for resentment in their relationship. It is against this background, along with a boundary feud with Watkins, a malicious neighbour, that the twins Lewis (Robert Gwilym) and Benjamin (Mike Gwilym) grow up. Having come through wars, romance and separation, they are still farming at ‘The Vision’ eighty years later. Bob Peck as the wild-eyed Amos Jones dominates the early scenes, though he is well matched by Gemma Jones as his wife Mary. With typical thoroughness, Peck immersed himself in the part, learning to ride, plough and pleach hedges. Although the film was made on a tight budget and time-scale, the director had time to scout out appropriate locations in the Welsh borders, notably The Black Mountains, Hay-on-Wye and Crickhowell. Locals and livestock were recruited to the film, most of the props were borrowed, and even the local Women’s Institute was enlisted to create knitting patterns of the correct period. This firmly locates the film in its region, and gives it a strong sense of reality. The stunning cinematography is by Thaddeus O’Sullivan and there are convincing performances thoughout, especially by Gemma Jones and the Gwilym brothers. This DVD edition includes an introductory booklet by writer/director Andrew Grieves and extras include Pinny Grylls’ profoundly touching short film Peter And Ben, a moving tale of friendship between the reclusive Peter and his utterly charming sheep Ben, which was filmed in the same location as On The Black Hill. ‘Ravishingly lovely’ - Time Out.

THE ROUND-UP – JANCSO       SECOND RUN

Hungarian film director and screenwriter Miklós Jancsó studied but avoided a legal career and moved to the capital Budapest, wher he received his Diploma in Film Directing at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in 1950. He achieved international prominence as a director in the 1960s, most notably with My Way Home, The Round-Up, and The Red and the White. His films are characterised by strong visual stylisation, elegantly choreographed shots and long takes, and frequent themes include the nature of power and how it is abused. His most famous works are set in historical periods but are often assumed to be allegories of contemporary Hungary under Communism. Set in a detention camp in Hungary 1869 at a time of guerrilla campaigns against the ruling Austrians, The Round-Up (Szegénylegények) shows attempts by the authorities to weed out those who took part in the rebellion. The brutal, dictatorial methods depicted were seen by many as an analysis of the clampdown that followed Hungary’s failed uprising against Russian-imposed Communism in 1956. The film was shot in widescreen in black and white by regular Jancsó collaborator Tamás Somló and uses the director’s favourite setting, desolate and usually burning landscape of the Hungarian puszta (plain), shot in characteristically oppressive sunlight. A profound influence on filmmakers from Sergio Leone to Béla Tarr, The Round-Up is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of world cinema. Jancsó deliberately avoids conventional heroics to focus on the persecution and dehumanization manifest in a time of conflict, using his formidable technique to create a remarkable and terrifyingly bleak picture of war and the abuse of power that can still shock, and which speaks eloquently to audiences today. On many writers, critics and filmmakers Best Film lists, this is the first ever DVD release of this provocative, haunting film in the English-speaking world.

THE FAITH TRILOGY - BERGMAN       TARTAN  TVD3804

These three Ingmar Bergman films from the early 1960s were not originally intended to be a trilogy but have come to be thought of as such because of their similar themes, in particular the director’s personal struggles with spiritual belief. Together, The Faith Trilogy proved a turning point for the director, securing his collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist and exhibiting his mastery for direction. In the visually stunning Through A Glass Darkly, a schizophrenic girl named Karin (Harriet Andersson) who has visions, believing that God’s presence is ever closer. However, as her descent into madness deepens, she becomes the focal point for the emotions of three men. In challenging the traditional notions of God, Bergman’s Academy Award-winning film is a devastating, harrowing portrayal of the uneasiness and creeping paranoia of contemporary life. In Winter Light, a susceptible and disillusioned fisherman is urged by his wife to seek solace from his local priest. However, the priest is struggling to regain his own belief. Bergman’s desire to define man’s relationship to God is beautifully played out in the film with stunning character performances and cinematography by Sven Nykvist. In the best-known of these films, The Silence, the intimacy of two sisters (superbly played by Ingrid Thulin and Gunnel Lindblom)  threatens to destroy them both mentally and physically. Travelling through Europe by train to a foreign city on the brink of war and whose language they do not understand, the setting becomes a metaphor for the strained relationship between the women. This is a shattering vision of emotional isolation and despair in a claustrophobic spiritual void. These are demanding, imaginative, bleakly honest, sometimes harrowing, yet ultimately rewarding examples of seminal work by a great artist. The films have been newly remastered for this three DVD set and extras include video introductions to the films, original theatrical trailers, and a book of essays on Bergman by critic Philip Strick. ‘I hope I never get so old I get religious’ - Ingmar Bergman.

THE MORECAMBE AND WISE SHOW     NETWORK  7952274

Morecambe and Wise were Britain’s most famous and successful comic double act, lasting for 43 years until Eric Morecambe’s death in 1984. Morecambe (the tall one with glasses) and Ernie Wise (he of the ‘short, fat, hairy legs’) perfected their characters in the 1970s at the BBC, where their Christmas Day shows became a national institution watched by up to 28 million people, a record that will probably never be broken. Morecambe and Wise subsequently moved back to ITV under contract to Thames Television and made The Morecambe & Wise Show with scripts by themselves, Barry Cryer and John Junkin, and later Eddie Braben. Unseen for many years and available for the first time on this double DVD, The Morecambe & Wise Show - The Thames Years comprises not only their first series for Thames Television in 1980 but also the first four Thames Specials - including three Christmas Shows. Dreadful puns, botched song and dance routines, and a little bit of magic are brought together into hilarious entertainment with the help of showbiz stalwarts such as Hannah Gordon, Hugh Paddick,  Deryck Guyler, Gemma Craven, David Frost, Glenda Jackson, Donald Sinden, Judi Dench, Leonard Rossiter and Alec Guinness. Great script writing combined with the comic timing of Eric and Ernie to ensure that The Morecambe & Wise Show stands up to repeated viewing and this DVD is one for all fans of television’s golden age. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, The Morecambe & Wise Show was placed 14th. In 2006, they were voted number two in a poll of TV’s greatest stars.

JINDABYNE – LAWRENCE           REVOLVER REVD2006

Adapted from a Raymond Carver short story - So Much Water So Close to Home - by writer Beatrix Christian and award-winning director Ray Lawrence, Jindabyne is an Australian drama film starring the excellent Gabriel Byrne, Laura Linney, Deborra-Lee Furness and John Howard. It was filmed on location in and around the town of the same name - Jindabyne, New South Wales, situated next to the beautiful Snowy Mountains. Stewart Kane, an Irishman living in Jindabyne, takes a fishing trip into isolated hill country with three other men when they discover the body of a murdered girl in the river. Rather than return to the town immediately, they continue fishing and report their gruesome find days later. Stewart’s wife Claire is the last to find out. Deeply disturbed by her husband’s action, her faith in her relationship with Stewart is shaken. She wants to understand and tries to make things right. In her determination to help the victim’s family Claire sets herself not only against her own family and friends but also those of the dead girl. Her marriage is taken to the brink and her peaceful life with Stewart and their young son hangs in the balance. The story of a murder and a marriage – this engrossing and convincingly acted film tells complex tale of doubt, anger, shame and responsibility, taking an incisive look at the sexual and racial climate of contemporary Australia. The follow up film to director Ray Lawrence’s masterpiece Lantana, Jindabyne is one of most intersting films to come from Australia in recent years. Extras include a ‘making of’ film, deleted scenes and a trailer. Raymond Carver’s short story was also adapted by Robert Altman as part of his 1993 film, Short Cuts.

ANGEL HEART SPECIAL EDITION - ALAN PARKER     MOMENTUM MP460D

Harry Angel is a hard-boiled New York private detective down on his luck, when the mysterious Louis Cyphre steps into his life, hiring him to track down a big band singer by the name of Johnny Favourite. What seems to be a routine job turns sinister when everyone connected to Johnny winds up dead. It seems Johnny doesn’t want to be found and soon Harry follows his trail south to New Orleans in the steamy state of Louisiana, and into the depths of something Harry cannot fathom or even possibly live through. Starring Mickey Rourke as the seedy, hard-bitten private eye Harry Angel, Alan Parker’s moody, atmospheric film is part thriller and part supernatural detective story. Robert De Niro co-stars as the sinister Louis Cyphre, a cool, calculating customer whose true identity and purpose become evident only at the story’s climax. To see him crack and eat an egg with those long fingernails is to recognise true evil! Lisa Bonet from The Cosby Show makes her controversially sexy big screen debut as Voodoo priestess Epiphany Proudfoot, and Charlotte Rampling sizzles briefly as the mysterious Margaret Krusemark. This cult classic was ahead of its time when released in 1987 and now receives a special edition double DVD release with over ninety minutes of extras, including an introduction and commentary by Alan Parker, three ‘making of’ documentaries, interviews with the director and cast, personality profiles, a look behind the scenes, a photo gallery, a guided tour, and some fascinating voodoo and dance featurettes. With fabulous cinematography by Michael Seresin and music by Courtney Pine, Angel Heart is Alan Parker’s masterpiece and gives Mickey Rourke his most memorable acting role. Like The Sixth Sense, this powerful supernatural thriller makes you want to watch it again as soon as you discover the twist ending.

BREAD AND ROSES – LOACH       FILM4  F4DVD90044

Ken Loach was born born in Nuneaton in 1936 and started out as an actor in repertory before becoming a television director in the 1960s, working on early episodes of Z-Cars. In 1966, he made the drama-documentary Cathy Come Home, a moving and socially influential portrait of homelessness that was powerfully critical of the Social Services. This hugely successful film revealed the director’s naturalistic style as well as his socialist beliefs, which were also evident in subsequent cinema films such as Kes (1969) and Riff-Raff (1990). Loach always strives for genuine interplay between actors, sometimes with scenes that are unscripted, and prefers to use unknown performers who have had actual life experience of the characters they portray. For Bread and Roses, made in the USA in 2000, he chose two leading actors who had been involved union organisation and had experienced life as an immigrant. The film deals with the struggle of poorly paid janitorial workers in Los Angeles and their fight for better working conditions and the right to belong to the union. It is highly critical of inequalities in the United States, especially regarding health insurance and the pay of those in menial jobs. The film’s title derives from a poem by James Oppenheim that is associated with the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which was largely led by women and resulted in uniting many different immigrant communities. The subject matter of Loach’s film, nominated for many awards, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, may sound unexciting but this is an engaging study of the struggle against poverty and economic exploitation. Bread and Roses is a humane and heartfelt film with fine performances by the mostly unfamiliar cast, especially Elpidia Carrillo, Pilar Padilla (who had to learn English in order to play the part) and the excellent Adrian Brodey. It is one of 20 classic Film4 titles recently released on DVD and available at discounted prices. They include another excellent Ken Loach film, My Name Is Joe, as well as Monsoon Wedding, the Oscar nominated thriller Sexy Beast, Heat and Dust, and My Beautiful Laundrette.

AFTER LIFE - KORE-EDA         SODA PICTURES  SODAO41

Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-Eda was born in Tokyo in 1962. He originally planned to be a novelist, but after graduating from Waseda University he worked as an assistant director making documentaries before directing his first film, Lessons from a Calf, in 1991. His work explores themes of memory, death and coming to terms with loss, as in his 1999 film, After Life. At a half-way station between heaven and earth, guides greet the newly dead. Over the next three days, they will help the dead sift through their memories to find the one defining moment of their lives. The chosen moment will be recreated on film and re-lived for eternity. With exquisite beauty, After Life shows us that while the memories people choose may seem simple, be it a first kiss or a last cigarette, their meaning is often more complex and deciding upon them is no easy task. Using humour and compassion the guides lead, urge and cajole their clients to discover meaning and value in their past, for without a decision the dead will be stuck in limbo, forever recreating and filming the happiness of others. Beautifully photographed and acted, this compassionate and thought-provoking film deals with the mystery of mortality in an elegant, gentle way that haunts the memory.

AGATHA CHRISTIE’S  SEVEN DIALS MYSTERY     ACORN  AVNE5013

Dame Agatha Christie has been called the best-selling writer of books of all time, and the best-selling writer of any kind together with William Shakespeare. Only the Bible sold more with about 6 billion copies. An estimated four billion copies of her novels have been sold and she is the most translated individual author in the world. Altough she also wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, she is best remembered for her 80 detective novels and her successful West End theatre plays, including the perennial Mousetrap. Her works, particularly those featuring Hercule Poirot or Miss Jane Marple, earned her the title the ‘Queen of Crime’ and made her one of the most influential writers in the genre. The Seven Dials Mystery was first published in 1929 and brings back the characters from an earlier Christie novel, The Secret of Chimneys. Two mysterious deaths mar an otherwise pleasant weekend in the English countryside, unflappable flapper Lady Eileen Brent teams up with the dashing Jimmy Thesinger to solve the dastardly deeds. Their sleuthing leads them into a world of espionage and international intrigue as they discover a secret society known as The Seven Dials and the attempted theft of top-secret government documents. The typical Christie plot involves a mysterious formula, shots in the night, a sumptuous country house, vintage cars, and people called Pongo and Bundle. Following the success of their version of Why Didn’t They Ask Evans the previous year, The Seven Dials Mystery was adapted by London Weekend Television as a drama and transmitted in 1981. The large cat enjoy themselves immensely and there are splendid performances by Cheryl Campbell as the delightfully sparky Lady Eileen Brent, Harry Andrews as wily Supt. Battle, Terence Alexander, Joyce Redman (a hoot as Lady Coote), Leslie Sands, James Warwick, Brian Wilde as a wonderfully dubious butler Tredwell, and Sir John Gielgud, all too briefly, as the Marquis of Caterhan. DVD extras include filmographies of the main actors and an Agatha Christie biography.

ROCCO AND HIS BROTHERS – VISCONTI         EUREKA EKA40257

The great Italian theatre and cinema director and writer Luchino Visconti di Modrone was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Milanese family in 1906. His privileged upbringing exposed him to art, music and theatre, meeting people such as composer Giacomo Puccini, conductor Arturo Toscanini and writer Gabriele D’Annunzio. At the age of 30, he went to Paris and began his film-making career as third assistant director in Jean Renoir’s Une Partie de Campagne. Visconti briefly visited Hollywood before returning to Rome, where he became part of the group associated with the journal Cinema. He sold some of the family jewels in 1943 to fund his first film, Ossessione, which proved a big success. After being imprisoned briefly by the Gestapo for allowing his palazzo to be used by the Communist Resistance during the Second World War, Visconti resumed his film career with La terra trema and the delightful Bellissima before going on to make such classics as The Leopard and Death in Venice.  The neo-realist Rocco and His Brothers (Rocco e i suoi fratelli) was completed in 1960, when it won the FIPRESCI Prize and the Special Prize at the Venice Film Festival. This epic study of family, sex and betrayal follows the lives of a mother and her sons as they struggle to adjust to metropolitan life in Milan after moving from Italy’s rural south. The shock of the new is violent and immediate. The mother meddles, a whore beguiles, brother faces brother and blood-ties come undone. Claudia Cardinale has one of her earliest film roles and there are outstanding performances by Alain Delon as the saintly Rocco, Renato Salvatori as doomed Simone, and Annie Girardot, touching as the tragic Nadia. The fine Nino Rota score influenced Coppola’s Godfather films and the superbly shot boxing sequences foreshadow Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. This double DVD in Eureka’s Masters of Cinema Series features Visconti’s masterpiece newly restored to its original Italian-language form of almost three hours. A host of extras includes newsreels from 1960, interviews with cinematographer Giuseppe Rotunno, Annie Girardot and Claudia Cardinale, the original Italian trailer, two excellent documentaries and a 40-page booklet. Rocco and His Brothers is a brilliant, complex and intensely moving film with some of the most powerful images ever seen, including the famously haunting final shot. Unmissable.

MR UNTOUCHABLE, THE ORIGINAL GANGSTER    REVOLVER REVD2036

Leroy Antonio ‘Nicky’ Barnes is a former drug dealer who at one time, along with Frank Lucas and Guy Fisher, was one of the biggest heroin dealers in New York city. He was eventually prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole but after several years in prison he turned State’s evidence, testifying against Fisher and others in order to reduce his sentence. Barnes was released from prison in 1998 and later co-operated in the making of this incredible documentary inspired by his notorious real life escapades in 1970s Harlem. This epic tale of drugs, money, power and revenge follows Barnes, who ran one of the largest organised crime syndicates the Unite States has ever seen. The riveting documentary takes us on an unforgettable journey, using archive footage and accounts from the people who knew him best as well as interviews with Barnes himself (his face concealed). From this we learn that drugs became a part of his life at a young age and eventually led to him becoming the biggest heroin dealer in America, dubbed Mr Untouchable by the New York Times, although today he claims to be a reformed man, albeit with his giant ego intact.  Director Marc Levin’s ferocious film brilliantly tracks the gangster’s rise and fall, even if it occasionally allows Barnes’s dominant personality and flashy lifestyle to obscure the harm he caused to so many people. Handing out free Thanksgiving turkeys to the poor didn’t make him a nice man.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK: THE BRITISH YEARS     NETWORK 7952741

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was one of the twentieth century’s most successful film directors, pioneering many techniques in the suspense and thriller genres. He directed more than sixty feature films, from the silent era through to the talkies and the classic colour era into the 1970s. As well as being one of the few publicly recognisable directors, Hitchcock was also hugely influential with other film-makers, such as Truffaut, Chabrol and Spielberg, although he famously never won an Oscar even for hits such as Psycho, Vertigo or The Birds. This superb DVD box set brings together for the first time some of Hitchcock’s best feature films made for British studios in the 1920s and 1930s. The collection includes such acclaimed classics as The Man who Knew Too Much, The Thirty-Nine Steps (starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Caroll), Secret Agent, The Lady Vanishes (with the inimitable Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) and Jamaica Inn, as well as less well-known but equally memorable pictures – Sabotage (a brilliant tour-de-force based confusingly on a Joseph Conrad novel called The Secret Agent), Young & Innocent, The Pleasure Garden (made in 1925 and the first film Hitchcock directed to completion), The Lodger (inspired by Jack the Ripper) and Downhill (with Ivor Novello). Many of the films have been digitally restored and the wide range of special features include an interview with Hitchcock about his life and career; an Aquarius programme with candid photography of Hitchcock filming Frenzy in London; featurettes in which film historian Charles Barr introduces and analyses each of the ten films; on location reports for Sabotage and The Thirty-Nine Steps, introduced by actor Robert Powell; the original theatrical trailer for The Lady Vanishes; script PDFs for The Thirty-Nine Steps, The Lady Vanishes and Jamaica Inn; and an eight-page booklet by Charles Barr on Hitchcock’s career. A treat for all fans of the man voted ‘greatest director of all time’ by Entertainment Weekly. ‘Drama is life with the dull bits cut out’ - Alfred Hitchcock.

DER LETZE MANN - MURNAU     EUREKA EKA40262

Friedrich Murnau (1888-1931) was one of the greatest film directors of the silent film era and part of the influential German expressionist movement of the 1920s. Unfortunately, much of Murnau’s output has been lost but those films that survive are widely regarded as masterpieces. Born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, Murnau took the name from a town in Germany. After making Nosferatu, Der Letze Mann (also known as The Last Laugh and Faust (his last German film), Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926 to direct Sunrise. Der Letze Mann has been voted the second greatest film of all time in international critics’ polls and is one of the most brilliant of German Expressionist silent films. Murnau uses a constantly moving and subjective camera to capture the emotional anguish of a man whose life is suddenly devoid of meaning. Because of his age, an elderly doorman (played by Emil Jannings) at the Atlantic Hotel finds himself ignominiously demoted to washroom attendant. Particularly galling to the poor man is the loss of his uniform, which gives him pride and prestige. Crestfallen, he spends the day wandering the city, getting drunk and dreaming of suicide, mourning the loss of his dignity, and trying desperately to hang on to a shred of hope. The director shows his flair for storytelling by using no title cards for this film, except for one just before the unlikely epilogue that was forced on Murnau by studio executives, who also pressed him and screenwriter Carl Mayer to change the film’s title from ‘The Last Man’ to ‘The Last Laugh’. With its masterful visual storytelling, great cinematography by Karl Freund, and groundbreaking technical innovations, this landmark work has been hugely influential in the history of the cinema. Emil Jannings is superb and there is a touching performance by Georg John as his friend, the night watchman. Eureka’s Masters of Cinema Series features the original German domestic version of the film, meticulously restored, with extras that include a documentary by Murnau expert Luciano Berriatúa and a lavishly illustrated 36-page booklet with writing by film scholars R. Dixon Smith, Tony Rayns and Lotte H. Eisner. Also newly available on DVD is Fritz Lang’s amazing, though little-known epic, FRAU IM MOND (EUREKA EKA40238), in which a scientist believes that there is gold on the moon and builds a spaceship to fly to there to find it. Frau im Mond was the first feature-length film (made in 1929) to portray space-exploration in a serious manner and was Fritz Lang’s last silent film. It enjoyably combines espionage, melodrama and comic-book sci-fi into a storyline that is by turns delirious, hushed and deranged. This DVD features Frau im Mond newly restored to its near-original length of almost three hours. Extras include The First Scientific Science-Fiction Film (a documentary about Frau im Mond made by Gabriele Jacobi) and a 36-page booklet containing analysis by Michael E. Grost of the film and of Fritz Lang’s work.

THE PLAYER & SHORTCUTS – ALTMAN     PARAMOUNT 

The revolutionary American film director Robert Bernard Altman was born in 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri. After serving in the US Air Force, he moved to Hollywood and tried his hand at acting (appearing in the The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in 1947), songwriting and screen-writing , with little success. Back in Kansas City, he joined a film production company and learned his craft by working on documentaries, training and educational films, and advertisements. Later, he directed for television (including Alfred Hitchcock’s show) and made his big-screen debut with The Delinquents. His Hollywood breakthrough came with MASH (1970), after more than fifteen directors had already turned it down. He went on to have major successes such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller, The Long Goodbye, Nashville and Gosford Park, becoming famous for his highly naturalistic style and trademark overlapping dialogue. The Player, released in 1992, stars Tim Robbins as a Hollywood executive who believes he is being blackmailed by a screenwriter whose script he once rejected. With an award-winning screenplay by Michael Tolkin, this affectionate satire features more than 60 cameo appearances by Hollywood producers, directors and actors such as Julia Roberts, Jeff Goldblum, Jack Lemon, Bruce Willis, Whoopi Goldberg and James Coburn, and is filled with movie references and insider jokes. The Player was a comeback film for Altman, winning him best director award at the Cannes Film Festival. The following year, he went on to make an epic adaption inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver, SHORT CUTS. The screenplay by Altman and Frank Barhydt substitutes Los Angeles for the Pacific Northwest setting of Carver’s stories as the film follows the actions of twenty-two characters, both in parallel and at occasional points of connection. The role of chance and luck is central to the film, and many of the stories concern death and infidelity. As usual, the director places more importance on character motivation than intricate plots and focuses on improvisation, with actors creating their own dialogue. Short Cuts also stars Tim Robbins, with Andie MacDowell, Chris Penn, Lyle Lovett, Peter Gallagher, Tom Waits and a young Julianne Moore, and is three hours of moving, compelling drama created by one of Hollywood’s most revered film-makers.

THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY - JOHN PILGER         LIONS GATE

The award-winning journalist, author and thought-provoking documentary filmmaker John Pilger began his career in his native Australia before moving to London in the 1960s. He has been a foreign correspondent and a front-line war reporter, beginning with Vietnam in 1967, and is an impassioned critic of foreign military and economic adventures by Western governments. He has won television academy awards in both Britain and America, including a BAFTA for a lifetime’s achievement in factual television. Noam Chomsky wrote: ‘John Pilger’s work has been a beacon of light in often dark times. The realities he has brought to light have been a revelation, over and over again, and his courage and insight a constant inspiration.’ The War on Democracy is John Pilger’s first feature-length film made for the cinema. He and the director, Christopher Martin, chart the extraordinary rise of a new people’s movement in Latin America against a vast historical mural of colonial intervention by the United States. Comprised of in-depth interviews and illuminating social and political examination, Pilger investigates the repercussions of American foreign policy, allowing the audience to better ‘understand the true nature of the so-called war on terror’. John Pilger’s interviews President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and speaks to US government officials who ran the CIA’s war in Latin America in the 1980s. The War on Democracy is an emotive, uplifting and ultimately hopeful film that received wide critical acclaim on its theatrical release. This powerful indictment of greed and the brutal reality of US foreign policy is now available for the first time on DVD from Lions Gate. ‘John Pilger unearths, with steely attention, the facts, the filthy truth, and tells it as it is’ - Harold Pinter.

THE COMPLETE COEN COLLECTION

Brothers Joel and Ethan Coen are arguably the most visionary, original and prodigious team in Hollywood - a formidable screenwriting, directing and producing duo. They constantly surprise and delight audiences and critics alike with their dark comedies, Westerns and noirs, and a stunning and yet hugely varied CV that takes in some of the finest films to come out of mainstream Hollywood in the past three decades. Now, for the first time ever, all 11 of their extraordinary films are available in this DVD boxed set from Spirit Entertainment. The Complete Coen Collection features all the movies alongside a whole host of extras, and a 48 page full colour companion booklet written by Eddie Robson, author of a bestselling book on the Coen Brothers. The Coen’s talent is such they have no trouble attracting great actors such as George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Goodman, Billy Bob Thornton, John Turturro and Albert Finney to their films over the years. This stunning set includes: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, The Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Intolerable Cruelty and The Ladykillers - an amazing collection of films from two hugely original filmmakers.

HINGE AND BRACKET – GALA EVENINGS     ACORN AV9632

Dr Evadne Hinge and Dame Hilda Bracket inhabit a genteel English inter-war world of cucumber sandwiches, bell-ringing, church fetes and old-fashioned values, affectionately recalled through an act that was frequently decorated with double entendres. Hinge and Bracket were the stage names of George Logan and Patrick Fyffe respectively. The characters of Hinge (somewhat brittle and acerbic) and Bracket (more flamboyant) were elderly, intellectual, female musicians; in these personae the male Logan and Fyffe played and sang songs to comic effect. The ladies shared a house (The Old Manse) in the small English village of Stackton Tressel in Suffolk, where they employed an eccentric housekeeper called Maud and amused themselves with recitals of Gilbert & Sullivan, Noel Coward and Ivor Novello. Hinge and Bracket first appeared at the 1974 Edinburgh Festival and toured as a double act for years before making several long-running radio series. They also featured in three series of their own on BBC2 television show, Dear Ladies, between 1983 and 1985, and continued to appear on stage. After years of entertaining the residents of Stackton Tressel, the irrepressible Dame Hilda Bracket and Dr. Evadne Hinge were delighted to be invited to bring their gala performances to a wider audience. These special live performances were filmed for the BBC between 1977 and 1981 at the Royal Hall, Harrogate and the Opera House Buxton, as the dear ladies perform with an orchestra and choir, valiantly ‘bringing culture to the masses’. Written Logan and Fyffe, Hinge and Bracket, Gala Evenings is now available for the first time on DVD. Special features include an exclusive interview with the George Logan (sadly, Patrick Fyffe died in 2002). This was one of the most successful drag acts ever in the saucy British variety tradition of Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) and Mrs Shufflewick (Rex Jameson) and these live shows find the ladies at their delightful best.

COLOURS! CLOUDS! & GOD!           BLUE DOLPHIN BDVD 2011

This DVD contains three fascinating documentaries on the subject of fractals, mathematics and geometry. ‘Colours of Infinity’, presented by Arthur C. Clarke, delves into the wonderful world of the Mandelbrot set and fractal geometry: a discovery that could only be realised fully with advanced computers, without which they could never be seen. A simple mathematical formula promises to lead to amazing uses in many branches of science, medicine, computer graphics, weather reporting and analysis, geography, topography and even economics. The music is by David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. ‘Clouds Are Not Spheres’ tells the story of the life and work of the highly regarded maverick mathematician, Benoît Mandlebrot - a great innovator and discoverer of the Mandlebrot set as well as fractal geometry, which he named. ‘Is God A Number?’ is a fascinating account of the science of mathematics and its connection to mind and consciousness. Presented in inimitable style by Michael Barnsley and featuring Sir Roger Penrose, the film looks at the mystery of consciousness, whilst exploring the links between mathematics, mind and the physical, observable universe. All titles were produced and directed by Nigel Lesmoir-Gordon. Available for the first time on DVD, these three extraordinary films are filled with beautiful images and profound thoughts that will open your mind. Also on the DVD is a bonus ‘chill-out’ film featuring further astonishing images and the music of David Gilmour.

DARATT - MAHAMAT-SALEH HAROUN       SODA PICTURES

Director Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s story is set in his native Chad, where the government has granted amnesty to all war criminals after the long civil war. Sixteen-year-old Atim is given a revolver by his grandfather so that he may find and kill the man who killed his father. Atim leaves his village for N’djamena and quickly locates the former war criminal Nassara, who is now married and has settled down as the owner of a small bakery. With the firm intention of killing him, Atim gets closer to Nassara under the guise of looking for work, and is hired as an apprentice baker. Intrigued by Atim’s attitude toward him, Nassara takes him under his wing and teaches him the secrets of making bread. Over the weeks, a strange relationship evolves between the two, and despite his disgust Atim seems to recognise in Nassara the father figure he has always needed. Meanwhile, Nassara sees the teenager as a potential son and even suggests adoption. This critically acclaimed tale of revenge and redemption is visually stunning and powerfully acted, especially by Youssouf Djaoro (Nassara) and Ali Barkai (Atim). Daratt (‘Dry Season’) is a subtle, intelligent and moving film that asks important questions about Africa and its future as well as about ourselves. DVD extras include a theatrical trailer, deleted scenes and Q&A with the director.

THE PAUL ROBESON COLLECTION       NETWORK 7952762

Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson (1898 - 1976) was one of the most remarkable men of the twentieth century - a multi-lingual American actor (he was an outstanding Othello), athlete, superb bass-baritone singer, writer, civil rights activist and Stalin Peace Prize laureate. He was also tall, handsome and hugely charismatic. Born the youngest son of five children, he was the grandson of slaves and the son of a Presbyterian minister who escaped slavery. Robeson became a star student at Rutgers University, where in addition to his academic achievements he had an fine athletic career on the track and was the first Black football player at the university. After graduating in law at Columbia he took a job with a law firm, leaving when a white secretary refused to take dictation from him. Robeson decided to use his artistic talents in theatre and music to promote African and African-American history and culture, starting a brilliant career which would span nearly four decades. He considered himself a ‘world citizen’, with friends such as Jomo Kenyatta, Nehru, and writers James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway. Unfortunately, during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, attempts were made to silence and discredit him, and illness ended his professional career in 1961. Between 1925 and 1942, Robeson appeared in eleven films - all but four of them British - after he and his wife moved to England in the late 1920s. This splendid box set features five Paul Robeson films, including his debut, Body And Soul, made in 1924 by pioneer African-American director Oscar Micheaux. The others are the anachronistic Sanders of the River, Song of Freedom (Robeson as a London docker with a great voice), Big Fella (an easy-going musical with Elizabeth Welch) and the enjoyable King Solomon’s Mines. The collection also includes an audio CD of re-mastered tracks, featuring 20 of Paul Robeson’s greatest hits, including Ol’ Man River, The Lonesome Road and Lazy Bones. This is a fitting tribute to a true polymath and Renaissance Man, who fought with dignity and forbearance against great adversity.

LEGACY – BABLUNAI   REVOLVER

Three French hipsters - Jean (Stanislas Merhar), Celine (Olga Lenegrad) and Pat (Sylvie Testud) - hire a translator (the wonderfully lugubrious Pascal Bongard) then set off on a ramshackle bus through beautiful rural Georgia countryside to claim a remote, ruined castle that one of them has inherited. They encounter many colourful locals on their journey, most notably an apparently mute rogue trader (Augustin Legrand), an old man (Leo Gaparidze) and his grandson (George Babluani) who board the coach with a coffin. The youth tells the fascinated French trio that the coffin is for his grandfather, because tomorrow he has an appointment with death. Director Gela Babluani, with his father Temur co-directing, has created a tense and absorbing psychological thriller. The naturalistic acting is subtly understated and beneath the tragic story is a sly, dark humour as the sophisticated tourists try to make sense of the superstitious, tradition-bound Georgians. This is a quirky, subversive, enigmatic road movie from a director to watch.

PAN’S LABYRINTH       OPTIMUM  OPTBD0756 & OPTHD0756

Visionary Mexican film-maker Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical film, Pan’s Labyrinth (Spanish: El Laberinto del Fauno, or ‘The Labyrinth of the Faun’) is an enchanting yet dark fairytale for adults – a compelling and beautiful vision that is the director’s most personal film yet. Inspired by the Brothers Grimm and Jorge Luis Borges, Pan’s Labyrinth is set during Spain after the Civil War and tells an allegorical story of a girl named Ofelia who is given three tasks by a mysterious faun. Meanwhile, her stepfather, the Falangist Captain Vidal, viciously hunts the Spanish Maquis, guerrillas who continued fighting the Franco regime in the region, as her pregnant mother grows ill. The alternate setting is a secret ‘dream world’ that Ofelia enters through an overgrown labyrinth garden, where she meets many strange and magical creatures who become central to her story. Sergi Lopez is excellent as the brutal Captain Vidal tasked and his stepdaughter Ofelia is wonderfully played by Ivana Baquero, who was only eleven when the film was made. Pan’s Labyrinth premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a 20-minute standing ovation, and has won numerous international awards, including three Academy Awards. Optimum has now released this magical film in two new high definition formats, Blu Ray and HD DVD, each providing a crisp picture and authentic sound. The host of extras includes a director’s commentary and prologue, The Power of the Myth featurette on DVD comics, El Fauno Y Las Hadas featurette, The Colour & The Shape featurette, director’s notebook, storyboard video prologue, notebook video prologue, Storyboard/Thumbnail Comparisons, UK theatrical trailer, picture galleries, Guardian/NFT interview with Guillermo del Toro, The Melody that Echoes the Fairy Tale featurette, Mercedes’ Lullaby featurette, DVD comic sketches: The Pale, the Fairies, the Giant Toad and Pan, VFX plate compare: Guillermo Del Toro and the Green Fairy.

BLACK SUN – GARY TARN           SECOND RUN DVD 032

The French artist and film-maker Hugues de Montalembert was walking home through Washington Square in New York City one night when he was mugged by two men. When they discovered that he had no money, they vicious and threw paint remover in his face. As de Montalembert explains in his extraordinary commentary to this art-fully constructed film, ‘It is a base, not an acid. Water will not make it go away. It continues to dig.’ A man whose life was based on seeing had lost his sight for good but rather than surrendering himself to the darkness, de Montalembert creates an internal visual world that is rich and full of beauty. He continues to travel the world - alone - documenting his experiences in a series of journals. Gary Tarn's evocative documentary Black Sun shows how de Montalembert adapted to his blindness, combining the subject’s understated narration with the director’s digital images of faces and places, often treated and distorted to suggest visual disturbance. Tarn’s footage of cities and street scenes from New York to Rajasthan reflects focuses on random moments of daily life - the face of a taxi driver, the mentally ill muttering on corners, a convention of deaf people signing excitedly, a grid of buildings seen from the air. ‘In vision, there is no reality,’ says de Montalembert. ‘What you see will be different from your neighbour.’ Despite its tragic genesis, this is an affirmative, uplifting and courageous story with many enlightening reflections on perception, time and existence itself. Highly recommended.

SANSHO DAYU / GION BAYASHI – MIZOGUCHI     EUREKA EKA 50332

Director Kenji Mizoguchi was born in 1898 in the middle class district of Hongo, in Tokyo, and together with Ozu and Kurosawa he is one of three undisputed masters from the golden age of Japanese cinema. His 1954 film Sanshō Dayū (Sansho the Bailiff) is one of the last films Mizoguchi made before his death in 1956. Based on Mori Ogai’s short story Sansho the Steward (itself based on an ancient legend), this film ranks alongside Ugetsu Monogatari and The Life of Oharu among the director’s finest achievements. Sansho Dayu is both distinctively Japanese and as deeply affecting as a Greek tragedy. Described in its opening title as ‘one of the oldest and most tragic in Japan’s history’, Mizoguchi depicts an unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, personal sacrifice and fateful tragedy. Set in Heian era (11th century) Japan, it follows an aristocratic woman, Tamaki (played by Tanaka Kinuyo), and her two children, Zushio (Hanayagi Yoshiaki) and Anju (Kagawa Kyoko), who are separated by feudal tyranny from Tamaki’s husband. When the children are kidnapped and sold into slavery to the eponymous ‘Sansho’ (Shindo Eitaro), the lives of each of the family members follow very different paths - each course uniquely and insufferably, tragic. Famed for its period reconstructions and powerful imagery, Sansho Dayu often features in lists of the greatest films ever made. With delicate photography by Mizoguchi regular Kazuo Miyagawa and excellent performances by the cast, this moving and beautiful film is a masterpiece from one of cinema’s true perfectionists. This Masters of Cinema Series double-DVD release also includes a lesser known Mizoguchi film, Gion Bayashi, set in the world of the geishas, produced the year before Sansho Dayu and available here for the first time on DVD. Extras include a video discussion about both Sansho Dayu and Gion Bayashi by Japanese film expert Tony Rayns, new and improved English subtitles and a splendid 80-page book featuring archival imagery, articles by Robin Wood and Mark Le Fanu, and a full reprint of a translation of Mori Ogai’s original 1915 story. ‘Quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers’ - Jean-Luc Godard.

IF.… LINDSAY ANDERSON             PARAMOUNT PHE8082

Director Lindsay Anderson’s 1968 masterpiece is a fascinating, powerful film set in a fictitious, archaic public school. Alternately funny and bizarre, the story moves from intimate scenes of life in a boys’ world, through fantasy and farce, to a violent climax as discontent ultimately turns into armed rebellion. The film is associated with the 1960s counterculture movement, being filmed at the time of the student uprisings in Paris in May 1968, and it includes controversial statements such as ‘There’s no such thing as a wrong war. Violence and revolution are the only pure acts’. The film stars Malcolm McDowell as Mick Travis (a character Anderson used in two sequels), Arthur Lowe as an ineffectual housemaster, Peter Jeffrey as the headmaster, the excellent Graham Cowden, Mona Washborne, David Wood, Christine Noonan as the Girl, and early film appearances by Robin Askwith and Simon Ward. Directed by Anderson and shot at his own school in Cheltenham, If.… explores the oppressive traditions of boarding school life as Travis and his disaffected friends embark on a series of misadventures that protract their experience of eroticism, authority and violence. ‘One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place- Mick Travis. Surreal, controversial and downright anti-establishment, this shocking, challenging and sexy film has won many accolades, including the 1969 Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival. Extras include a commentary with David Robinson and Malcolm McDowell, Lindsay Anderson’s wonderful Oscar-winning documentary Thursday’s Children and an interview with actor Graham Cowden. Essential viewing.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE       TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX  3462501000

Matt Groening’s fabulously successful animated sitcom is a brilliant satirical parody of Middle American lifestyle. Starring Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie and set in the fictional town of Springfield, the show exuberantly lampoons the human condition, popular culture, society in general and television in particular. The family was conceived by Groening for a series of animated shorts with the producer James L. Brooks and named after members of Groening’s own family, substituting Bart for his own name. The shorts became part of The Tracey Ullman Show before being developed into a half-hour prime time show that launched in 1989 and became an instant hit. Since then more than 400 episodes have been broadcast and The Simpsons has won countless awards, including 23 Emmies. Time magazine named this the 20th century’s best television series and it has become America’s longest-running sitcom as well as its most durable animated show. The world’s favourite dysfunctional family’s big screen debut reveals Homer’s heroic stupidity in all its glory as the family and fellow residents of Springfield wreak their usual havoc in this critically-acclaimed full-length film, now released on DVD.  Homer must save the world from a catastrophe he himself created when his pet pig triggers a disaster the likes of which Springfield has never experienced. As Marge is outraged by Homer’s monumental blunder, a vengeful mob descends on the Simpson household and the calamity draws the attention of U.S. President Arnold Schwarzenegger (voiced by Harry Shearer). With the fates of Springfield and the world hanging in the balance, Homer embarks on a personal odyssey of redemption - seeking forgiveness from Marge, the reunion of his splintered family and the salvation of his hometown. Starring Dan Castellaneta  (Homer), Julie Kavner (Marge), Nancy Cartwright (Bart), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe, Apu, Chief Wiggum) and Harry Shearer (Mr Burns), plus guest voices Albert Brooks, Green Day and Tom Hanks, this joyous film is essential viewing for new and committed fans alike. DVD extras include audio commentaries and deleted scenes. The Simpsons Movie successfully captures the spirit and quality of the show’s best years and proves to have been well worth the wait.

MACBETH – GEOFFREY WRIGHT       REVOLVER REVD 2062

Macbeth is one of William Shakespeare’s best known plays and his shortest surviving tragedy. Loosely based on the historical account of King Macbeth of Scotland by Raphael Holinshed and the Scottish philosopher Hector Boece, the play  is an archetypal tale of the dangers of the lust for power and the betrayal of friends. There have been numerous film adaptations, including versions by Orson Welles (1948), Akira Kurosawa (Throne of Blood, 1957), Roman Polanski (1971) and Trevor Nunn (1979). Australian director Geoffrey Wright’s gritty, violent film, made in 2006, updates the story and sets it against the backdrop of a violent gang war in the contemporary Melbourne underworld. Macbeth, a loyal henchman to his crime boss, Duncan, is told by three sexy teenage witches that he will one day assume great power. Driven by their prophecy, he plots with his wife to kill Duncan, and takes the leadership of the gang for himself. Maintaining his power will require more murders and violence, finally driving his surviving enemies to unite and destroy him. Starring Sam Worthington as the power-hungry Macbeth and Victoria Hill in a chilling performance as his devious wife, this is a bloody, guns-blazing ride, with a strong soundtrack and stylish cinematography. Shakespeare’s dialogue works remarkably well in this new setting and the film wisely keeps closely to his plot, with a startlingly inventive way for Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane. ‘The Bard meets Tarantino’ - Daily Mirror.

HETTY WAINTHROPP INVESTIGATES - SERIES IV       ACORN AV9619

Gently amusing, occasionally dramatic, quirky English television series starred national treasure Patricia Routledge as the sprightly Hetty Wainthropp, a retired working-class woman who has a knack for jumping to conclusions and solving crimes of varying bafflement which are often too minor to concern the police. was First broadcast in 1996 by the BBC, the series was based on characters from the novel Missing Persons by David Cook, who co-wrote the series with John Bowen. The incidents in the book were inspired by his own mother’s real-life experiences. Hetty Wainthropp, a sprightly, intelligent pensioner looking for a new challenge, decides to become a private investigator much to the disapproval of her husband Robert. Once she has made up her mind she becomes an unstoppable force as she gads about the Lancashire countryside with local teenager Geoffrey in search of resolution and justice, armed with little more than her pocketbook and undaunted common-sense. This double DVD contains all six episodes of the fourth series, with the Wainthropp Detective Agency busier than ever as Hetty and Geoffrey help a miner’s widow search for a book her husband was working on at the time of his death and then when a friend’s husband is brutally attacked in a pub washroom, Hetty tries to deduce whether it was a random attack or whether the man provoked it. Our sleuth is reunited with her long-lost cousin, but their happy reunion is short-lived when she stumbles across a criminal plot. Patricia Routledge, best known for her work with Alan Bennett and as Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances, is in determined form as Hetty and receives sturdy support from Derek Benfield as her patient husband and Dominic Monaghan as Robert. Nigel Hess composed the music, which in 1997 was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for best television theme.

THE TWELVE CHAIRS – ALEA       NETWORK 7952710

The influential Cuban filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea wrote and directed more than twenty features, documentaries and short films. After graduating from college, he studied film directing at the Centro Sperimentale de Cinematografia in Rome and returned to Cuba in 1953, joining the radical ‘Nuestro Tiempo’ cultural society and becoming active in the film section. Soon after the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Alea co-founded the national revolutionary film institute ICAIC ‘Instituto del Arte y Industria Cinematografica’. Whilst his beginnings were in documentary, influenced by Italian neorealism, he fully came into his own as an artist during Fidel Castro’s regime. Unlike any other Cuban filmmaker, he was able to retain a sophisticated balance between his dedication to the revolution and his critical judgement of it when its ideals had been betrayed, so his films give real insight into he Cuban revolution and its consequences. The Twelve Chairs (Las Doce Sillas, 1962) was based on a satirical novel of the same name by two Soviet writers, Ilya Ilf and Eugene Petrov. Post-revolutionary Cuba presented the perfect setting for this contemporary piece contrasting the disadvantages of greed and the rewards of socialism through a humorous tale. A wealthy lady confesses on her death-bed that she has hidden a fortune in jewels in one of her twelve imported English chairs. Her son-in-law Hipólito Garrigó (Enrique Saniesteban), stripped of his wealth in the new spirit of socialism, is desperate to find them. Unfortunately all his possessions have been ‘nationalised’ and the government will soon be auctioning them off. Completely out of place in Socialist Cuba, Hipolito is forced to join forces with the quick-witted Oscar (Reynaldo Miravalles), a man who used to be his servant. As the two journey far field in search of the chairs, the relationship between the two men quickly alters, as both Hipólito and indeed the audience are treated to an education about the structure of this new society. This is an entertaining tale that demonstrates the developing new social order through the eyes of two very different individuals. The Twelve Chairs is one of Network’s Cuban cinema series, which also includes an exceptional documentary, Che Guevara As You Have Never Seen Him Before (7952781), and two films by the great Humberto Solás - Beloved (7952778) and A Successful Man (7952779).

DIRECTED BY JOHN FORD             UNIVERSAL

John Ford was born of Irish heritage in 1894 in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA. Christened John Augustine Feeney, he worked as an actor, stuntman and special effects man before becoming a film director, most notably of westerns. He started in Hollywood in the early part of the 20th century and by 1917 he had worked his way into the director’s chair, gaining a reputation as a hard worker with an eye for composition. By the 1930s, he was directing studio features and won his first Academy Award in 1935 for The Informer, later winning again for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941). During the Second World War he made documentaries, including the Oscar winning Battle of Midway and December 7, and continued making movies after the war, mostly westerns shot in the Monument Valley in Arizona and Utah. Much praised for his artistic vision as well as for his prolific output, Ford’s style of film-making has been hugely influential on directors as varied as Kurosawa, Scorsese, Spielberg, Peckinpah, Truffaut and Godard. This new box set from Universal features four of John Ford’s best films: The Informer (set during the Irish Civil War in 1922), The Fugitive (based on Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and The Glory), Mary Of Scotland (with Katharine Hepburn and Fedric March in 16th century Scotland) and Wagon Master (a near-perfect western and one of the director’s personal favourites). Ford famously worked with a ‘stock company’ of actors, including Victor McLaglen, Harry Carey Jr, Ward Bond, Jane Darwell and Ben Johnson, all of whom appear in this collection. It’s the perfect gift for admirers of the man acclaimed by Ingmar Bergman and Orson Welles as one of the greatest directors of all time.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD – VADIM/MALLE/FELLINI     ARROW FCD338

This intriguing 1968 film, also known as ‘Histoires Extraordinaires’, is a horror anthology featuring stories by Edgar Allan Poe, directed by three of Europe’s most interesting directors: Roger Vadim, Louis Malle and Federico Fellini. Jane Fonda, Alain Delon, Peter Fonda, Brigitte Bardot and Terence Stamp are among the stars in these disturbing stories of souls tormented by their own phantasmal visions of guilt, lust and greed. The first segment, Metzengerstein, was directed by Vadim and features Jane Fonda as Countess Federica, who lives a life of promiscuity and debauchery but meets her match in her neighbour Baron Wilhelm, played by Peter Fonda. The middle segment, William Wilson, directed by Malle, tells the story of a cruel man who is haunted by his double and plays a memorable game of cards with a beautiful woman (Brigitte Bardot) that leads to his comeuppance. The final segment, Fellini’s brilliant Toby Dammit, is based on Poe’s ‘Never Bet the Devil Your Head’. Terence Stamp is entirely convincing as an English actor losing his career in a self-destructive fog of drugs and alcohol. This little-known gem has a haunting score by Nino Rota, superb cinematography by Giuseppe Rotunno, gloriously surreal Felliniesque imagery and a memorably creepy finale. Unforgettable.

DIARY OF A LOST GIRL – G W PABST             EUREKA EKA40075

Born in Bohemia in 1885 to Viennese parents, the great director Georg Wilhelm Pabst made only one American but was acclaimed by US film critics and historians for his brilliant silent works. Some of his most famous films concerned the plight of women in German society, including Joyless Street (1925) with Greta Garbo and Asta Nielsen, The Loves of Jeanne Ney (1927) with Brigitte Helm, Pandora’s Box (1928), and Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), the last two starring the American actress Louise Brooks, who he helped become a cinematic icon. A masterwork of the German silent cinema, Diary of a Lost Girl (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) traces the journey of a young woman from the pit of despair to the moment of personal awakening. Directed with virtuoso flair by Pabst, this was his second pairing with Louise Brooks, made just months after their collaboration in the legendary Pandora’s Box (Die Büchse der Pandora). Brooks plays Thymiane Henning, an innocent and naive young woman seduced by an unscrupulous and mercenary character employed at her father’s pharmacy (played with villainous relish by Fritz Rasp). After Thymiane gives birth to the child and then rejects her family’s expectations for marriage, the baby is taken from her care and Thymiane is relegated to a strict reform school for wayward girls, which functions less as an educational institution and more like a conduit for fulfilling the headmistress’s sadistic libidinal fantasies. Rebelling against the school’s rigid discipline, Thymiane and her friend Erika (Edith Meinhard) escape, but Thymiane’s relief is short-lived as she discovers that her baby is dead. After despondently wandering the streets, she re-unites with Erika, who is working in a brothel, and Thymiane also becomes a prostitute until her father’s death, when her life changes. Diary of A Lost Girl is a story about loss, redemption, forgiveness, sacrifice and hope, explored by a great director with superb black and white cinematography and the luminous presence of Louise Brooks, who is even better here than in the more famous Pandora’s Box. This new release has German intertitles, English subtitles and an excellent, unintrusive piano score. Extras include a 16-page booklet with an essay by R. Dixon Smith and vintage photographs. Highly recommended.

THE BLACK CAT - ULMER     SECOND SIGHT 2NDVD3129

The Black Cat was the first of eight films to feature Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Directed and written by Edgar G. Ulmer, this dark and subversive film became Universal Pictures’ biggest box office hit of 1934. Although Edgar Allan Poe is credited, the story has little to do with his 1843 tale. Two young American honeymooners, Joan (Julie Bishop) and Peter Allison (David Manners) share their train compartment with the splendidly named psychiatrist Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi), a courtly but tragic man who is returning to the remains of the town he defended before becoming a prisoner of war for fifteen years. When their hotel-bound bus crashes in a mountain storm, Joan is injured and the travellers seek refuge in the fortress-like home of cat-phobic Werdegast’s old friend, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), an Austrian architect. The futuristic house is built on the ruins of Fort Marmorisch, which Poelzig commanded during the war. After Werdegast treats Joan’s injury, he accuses Poelzig of betraying the fort to the Russians, resulting in the death of thousands of Hungarians. He also accuses Poelzig of stealing his wife while he was in prison. In its brief 63 minutes this horror film features wonderful art deco sets, women’s corpses on display, devil worship, an unforgettable torture scene and a classical music soundtrack. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are in top form and performances by the rest of the cast, including a the beautiful Lucille Lund as Werdegast’s long-lost daughter, are excellent. Despite its somewhat preposterous plot – ‘Things you never saw before, or ever dreamed of!’ - The Black Cat is a chilling masterpiece. Second Sight has also just released another Universal Pictures’ classic, THE RAVEN (2NDVD3130), directed by Lew Landers in 1935 and inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem. Starring Bela Lugosi as a Poe-obsessed surgeon with a torture chamber in his basement and Boris Karloff as a murderer on the run from the police, The Raven is another treat for all horror fans.