INSIGNIFICANCE
Four unnamed people who look and sound a lot like Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, and Joseph McCarthy converge in one New York City hotel room for this compelling, visually inventive adaptation of Terry Johnson’s play, from director Nicolas Roeg (Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth). With a combination of whimsy and dread, Roeg creates a fun-house-mirror picture of cold war America that questions the nature of celebrity and plays on a society’s simmering nuclear fears. Insignificance is a delirious, intelligent drama, featuring magnetic performances by Michael Emil (Tracks, Always) as “the professor,†Theresa Russell (Bad Timing, Black Widow) as “the actress,†Gary Busey (The Buddy Holly Story, Lethal Weapon) as “the ballplayer,†and Tony Curtis (Sweet Smell of Success, Spartacus) as “the senator.â€
1985 • 108 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.77:1 aspect ratio
DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• Newly restored digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Nicolas Roeg and producer Jeremy Thomas, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• New video interviews with Roeg, Thomas, and editor Tony Lawson
• Making “Insignificance,†a short documentary shot on the set of the film
• Original theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Chuck Stephens and a reprinted exchange between Roeg and screenwriter Terry Johnson
TITLE: Insignificance (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2017BD
UPC: 7-15515-08141-2
ISBN: 978-1-60465-430-1
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 5/17/11
STREET: 6/14/11
TITLE: Insignificance (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2018D
UPC: 7-15515-08151-1
ISBN: 978-1-60465-431-8
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/17/11
STREET: 6/14/11
THE MAKIOKA SISTERS
This lyrical adaptation of the beloved Japanese novel by Junichiro Tanizaki was a late-career triumph for world-class director Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Fires on the Plain). Revolving around the changing of the seasons, The Makioka Sisters (Sasame-yuki) follows the lives of four sisters who have taken on their family’s kimono manufacturing business, over the course of a number of years leading up to the Pacific War. The two oldest have been married for some time, but according to tradition, the rebellious youngest sister cannot wed until the third, conservative and terribly shy, finds a husband. This graceful study of a family at a turning point in history is a poignant evocation of changing times and fading customs, shot in rich, vivid colors.
1983 • 140 minutes • Color • Monaural • In Japanese with English subtitles • 1.85:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Audie Bock
TITLE: The Makioka Sisters (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2019BD
UPC: 7-15515-08161-0
ISBN: 978-1-60465-432-5
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/17/11
STREET: 6/14/11
TITLE: The Makioka Sisters (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2020D
UPC: 7-15515-08171-9
ISBN: 978-1-60465-433-2
SRP: $19.95
PREBOOK: 5/17/11
STREET: 6/14/11
KISS ME DEADLY
In this atomic adaptation of Mickey Spillane’s novel, directed by Robert Aldrich (What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, The Dirty Dozen), the good manners of the 1950s are blown to smithereens. Ralph Meeker (Paths of Glory, The Dirty Dozen) stars as snarling private dick Mike Hammer, whose decision one dark, lonely night to pick up a hitchhiking woman sends him down some terrifying byways. Brazen and bleak, Kiss Me Deadly is a film noir masterpiece as well as an essential piece of cold war paranoia, and it features as nervy an ending as has ever been seen in American cinema.
1955 • 106 minutes • Black & White • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Audio commentary by film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
• New video tribute from director Alex Cox (Repo Man, Walker)
• Excerpts from The Long Haul of A. I. Bezzerides, a 2005 documentary on the Kiss Me Deadly screenwriter
• Excerpts from Mike Hammer’s Mickey Spillane, a 1998 documentary on the author whose book inspired the film
• A look at the film’s locations
• Altered ending
• Theatrical trailer
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic J. Hoberman and a 1955 reprint by director Robert Aldrich
TITLE: Kiss Me Deadly (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2021BD
UPC: 7-15515-08181-8
ISBN: 978-1-60465-434-9
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 5/24/11
STREET: 6/21/11
TITLE: Kiss Me Deadly (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2022D
UPC: 7-15515-08281-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-435-6
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/24/11
STREET: 6/21/11
PEOPLE ON SUNDAY
People on Sunday (Menschen am Sonntag) represents an astonishing confluence of talent—an early collaboration by a group of German filmmakers who would all go on to become major Hollywood players, including eventual noir masters Robert Siodmak (The Killers, Criss Cross) and Edgar G. Ulmer (Detour, Bluebeard) and future Oscar winners Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard, Ace in the Hole) and Fred Zinneman (High Noon, A Man for All Seasons). This effervescent, sunlit silent film, about a handful of city dwellers enjoying a weekend outing (a charming cast of nonprofessionals), offers a rare glimpse of Weimar-era Berlin. A unique hybrid of documentary and fictional storytelling, People on Sunday was both an experiment and a mainstream hit that would influence generations of film artists around the world.
1930 • 73 minutes • Black & White • Silent • German intertitles with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, created in collaboration with the Filmmuseum Amsterdam
• Two scores—a silent-era-style score by the Mont Alto Orchestra and a modern composition by Elena Kats-Chernin, performed by the Czech Film Orchestra—both presented as uncompressed stereo soundtracks on the Blu-ray edition
• Weekend am Wannsee, Gerald Koll’s 2000 documentary about the film, featuring an interview with star Brigitte Borchert
• Ins Blaue Hinein, a thirty-six-minute short from 1931 by People on Sunday cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring a new essay by film scholar Noah Isenberg and reprints by scriptwriter Billy Wilder and director Robert Siodmak
TITLE: People on Sunday (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2023BD
UPC: 7-15515-08291-4
ISBN: 978-1-60465-436-3
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
TITLE: People on Sunday (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2024D
UPC: 7-15515-08301-0
ISBN: 978-1-60465-437-0
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
BLACK MOON
Louis Malle (The Lovers, Au revoir les enfants) meets Lewis Carroll in this bizarre and bewitching trip down the rabbit hole. After skirting the horrors of an unidentified war being waged in an anonymous countryside, a beautiful young woman (Cathryn Harrison) takes refuge in a remote farmhouse, where she becomes embroiled in the surreal domestic odyssey of a mysterious family. Evocatively shot by cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Cries and Whispers, Fanny and Alexander), Black Moon is a Freudian tale of adolescent sexuality set in a postapocalyptic world of shifting identities and talking animals. It is one of Malle’s most experimental films and a cinematic daydream like no other.
1975 • 100 minutes • Color • Monaural • 1.66:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Archival interview with director Louis Malle
• Gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
• Alternate French-dubbed soundtrack
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau
TITLE: Black Moon (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2027BD
UPC: 7-15515-08331-7
ISBN: 978-1-60465-440-0
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
TITLE: Black Moon (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2028D
UPC: 7-15515-08341-6
ISBN: 978-1-60465-441-7
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO
A brash and precocious eleven-year-old (Catherine Demongeot) comes to Paris for a whirlwind weekend with her rakish uncle (La Pointe Courte’s Philippe Noiret); he and the viewer get more than they bargained for in this anarchic comedy from Louis Malle (Murmur of the Heart, My Dinner with André), which treats the City of Light as though it were a pleasure island just waiting to be destroyed. Based on a popular novel by Raymond Queneau that had been considered unadaptable, Malle’s audacious hit Zazie dans le métro is a bit of stream-of-conscious slapstick, wall-to-wall with visual gags, editing tricks, and effects, and made with flair on the cusp of the French New Wave.
1960 • 93 minutes • Color • Monaural • In French with English subtitles • 1.33:1 aspect ratio
SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
• New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
• Archival interviews with director Louis Malle, novelist Raymond Queneau, and the young actress Catherine Demongeot
• Le Paris de Zazie, an interview with assistant director Philippe Collin
• Original theatrical trailer
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau
TITLE: Zazie dans le métro (BLU-RAY EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2025BD
UPC: 7-15515-08311-9
ISBN: 978-1-60465-438-7
SRP: $39.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
TITLE: Zazie dans le métro (DVD EDITION)
CAT. NO: CC2026D
UPC: 7-15515-08321-8
ISBN: 978-1-60465-439-4
SRP: $29.95
PREBOOK: 5/31/11
STREET: 6/28/11
Eclipse Series 27: Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, film critics, international festivalgoers, and other studious viewers were swept up by the tide of Italian neorealism. Meanwhile, mainstream Italian audiences were indulging in a different kind of cinema experience: the sensational, extravagant melodramas of superstar director Raffaello Matarazzo. These galvanic hits about splintered lovers and broken homes, all written by Aldo De Benedetti and starring mustachioed matinee idol Amedeo Nazzari and icon of feminine purity Yvonne Sanson, luxuriate in delirious plot twists and overheated religious symbolism. Four of them, each more unbridled and entertaining than the last, are collected here, chronicles of men and women on winding roads to redemption.
FOUR-DVD BOX SET INCLUDES:
CHAINS
After years of working mostly on comedies and literary adaptations, Raffaello Matarazzo turned to melodrama with this intense tale of a tight-knit working-class family shattered by temptation. There’s a touch of noir in Chains (Catene), in which the virtuous yet earthy Yvonne Sanson, as the devoted wife of a mechanic (Amedeo Nazzari), finds herself unwillingly drawn back toward a criminal ex-lover.
1949 · 94 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Italian with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
TORMENTO
Anna (Sanson) flees her home, where she has been victimized for years by her spineless father’s mean-spirited second wife, to be with her lover (Nazzari), an honest businessman yet to make his fortune. When he is accused of a murder he didn’t commit, the couple’s domestic tranquillity is upended, and a desperate Anna must rely on her cruel stepmother for support for her child.
1950 · 98 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Italian with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
NOBODY’S CHILDREN
Bursting at the seams as it is with outlandish twists and turns, Nobody’s Children (I figli del nessuno) is only the first half of Matarazzo’s supersized diptych of melodramas, which chronicles the labyrinthine misfortunes of a couple torn cruelly apart by fate (and some meddling villains). When Guido (Nazzari), a young count, falls for Luisa (Sanson), the poor daughter of one of the miners who works at his family’s quarry, his mother and her nefarious henchman scheme epically to separate the two forever.
1952 · 96 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Italian with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
THE WHITE ANGEL
In The White Angel (L’angelo bianco), Matarazzo’s sequel to his blockbuster Nobody’s Children, the perpetually put-upon Guido and Luisa (the Italian director’s eternal star couple, Nazzari and Sanson) return for a new round of trials and tribulations. This time, the reversals of fortune are even more insanely ornate, a plot twist involving doppelgängers beats Vertigo to the punch by three years, and the whole thing climaxes with a jaw-dropping women-in-prison set piece.
1955 · 100 minutes · Black & White · Monaural · In Italian with English subtitles · 1.33:1 aspect ratio
TITLE: Eclipse Series 27: Raffaello Matarazzo’s Runaway Melodramas
CAT. NO: ECL124
UPC: 7-15515-08351-5
ISBN: 978-1-60465-442-4
SRP: $59.95
PREBOOK: 5/24/11
STREET: 6/21/11
Attention Canada: PEOPLE ON SUNDAY is a US only release. BLACK MOON & ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO are available in English-speaking Canada only. KISS ME DEADLY, THE MAKIOKA SISTERS & INSIGNIFICANCE, are available in all Canada.