Criterion’s Blu-ray release of Ernst Lubitsch’s final completed feature, Cluny Brown (1946), presents this richly layered comic gem in a luminous 4K restoration. This underrated romantic comedy which skewers rigid British class attitudes on the eve of World War Two is one of Lubitsch’s masterpieces.
Two modest documentaries delve into the compulsion to create and the fraught relationship between creator and creation.
Indicator’s third box set of Hammer movies highlights some interesting issues about the treatment of race in popular culture.
This week, I revisited several classic horror and sci-fi movies, plus a few more recent exploitation movies.
Three Blu-rays from Twilight Time span the espionage genre from World War Two to the fall of Communism in the late 1980s, each mixing personal drama with larger political issues in their own distinct ways.
Criterion once again showcases the prodigious talent of French writer and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol with their Blu-ray release of The Baker’s Wife (1938), considered to be his best film.
Criterion’s exemplary Blu-ray release of Alan Pakula’s second feature, Klute (1971), offers a superb 4K scan from the original negative and extensive extras which highlight the film’s importance in the evolution of American cinema at a particularly turbulent time in both politics and popular culture, with a particular emphasis on Jane Fonda’s development as both actor and activist.
Although a very prolific director (of mostly television) from the 1950s to the ’90s, Paul Wendkos isn’t a well-known name today, though at his best he had a real flair for unsettling visuals which suited the burgeoning paranoia of the ’70s. That style is well showcased in The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) and The Mephisto Waltz (1971).
Recent viewing includes a stark western (compared to the work of Dreyer by Bertrand Tavernier), an entertaining adventure souffle from frequent collaborators John Huston and Humphrey Bogart, and a ground-breaking satirical drama from Robert Aldrich which dealt sympathetically with lesbianism in the late 1960s.
Recent viewing includes an obscure arty film by the producer of Blow-Up and a pair of lesser known horrors from the heyday of British Gothic.