White of the Eye

[colinr0380]

THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A HUNTER AND A KILLER …IS HIS PREY

A serial killer is on the loose in and around the small community of Globe, Arizona, and housewife Joan White (Cathy Moriarty) gradually comes to suspect that her opera-loving hi-fi engineer husband Paul (David Keith) might know more than he’s letting on...

So far so familiar, but in the hands of British visionary Donald Cammell (who wrote and co-directed Performance with Nicolas Roeg), the film becomes a dazzling kaleidoscope of images and ideas, spanning everything from Apache folklore, desert landscapes and stylish murder set-pieces that recall Dario Argento to a painfully vivid dissection of the emotional fissures undermining a modern marriage. It’s all set to an equally eclectic score co-written by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason.

Described by the distinguished critic David Thomson as "one of the great secret works in cinema", White of the Eye is one of the most bizarre and unforgettable thrillers ever made.

CONTENTS

• Limited Edition SteelBook™ Packaging featuring original artwork
• Brand new high definition digital transfer of the film from the original camera negative
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film, available in the UK for the first time
• Original uncompressed Stereo PCM audio
• Optional English SDH subtitles on the main feature
• Audio commentary by Donald Cammell biographer Sam Umland
• Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance – This feature length documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley looks over the life and career of the rebel filmmaker and features interviews with Cammell and his closest friends, family and colleagues including Nicolas Roeg, Mick Jagger, Kenneth Anger, James Fox and many more
• The Argument – a 1972 short film by Cammell, gorgeously shot by Vilmos Zsigmond in the Utah Desert. Rediscovered and assembled by Cammell’s regular editor Frank Mazzola in 1999, it is viewable with optional commentary by Sam Umland
• Rare deleted scenes, newly transferred from the original camera negative, with commentary by Sam Umland
• The flashback scenes as originally shot, prior to the bleach bypass processing that they underwent in the final film
• Original theatrical trailer
• Alternate credits sequence

[MichaelB]

Really excited to see White of the Eye getting out to more people. It's less a serial killer film (at least after the first couple of, disturbingly beautifully abstracted, murder scenes) and more about a wife of a serial killer discovering and coming to terms with her husband's secret life, along with trying to cope with a dwindling number of female friends in her social circle! Before eventually going into Cammell's trademark 'figures in a landscape' metaphysical and hallucinatory psychodrama territory at the end.

David Keith and Cathy Moriarty put in fantastic performances and the use of the Arizona landscapes (the modernist houses with all the mod cons and latest consumer goods contrasted with bombed-out quarries and rusting shacks; and glittering cities against empty landscapes) creates that same sense of location and the need for acquisition breeding jealousy and madness that can also be found in The Shining.

Perhaps the best scene in the film (albeit also the most unnerving one) is one that involves a demonstration of how to correctly set up a surround sound home hi-fi system!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here - apologies if I have - but White of the Eye will be another original James White restoration, after Zombie Flesh Eaters, Time Bandits and The Fury. So it should look and sound as good as it possibly can do on Blu-ray.

[Cronenfly]

Greatly looking forward to seeing this on Blu; is one correct to assume that this is a Cannon-via-MGM license like Runaway Train? Seems to have come out on VHS via Paramount in the US, I'm guessing the UK rights situation is a little less sticky...

Bring on as much more Cannon weirdness as possible, I say: King Lear, Tough Guys Don't Dance, The Apple...

[MichaelB]

Greatly looking forward to seeing this on Blu; is one correct to assume that this is a Cannon-via-MGM license like Runaway Train? Seems to have come out on VHS via Paramount in the US, I'm guessing the UK rights situation is a little less sticky...

That's certainly the impression I'm under.

In fact, I originally saw it at what was then the Cannon Shaftesbury Avenue - it's now the four-screen Odeon Covent Garden, but back then it comprised two impressively huge screens and would often show some surprisingly interesting things (the original Norwegian Pathfinder in 70mm, for instance).

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Greatly looking forward to seeing this on Blu; is one correct to assume that this is a Cannon-via-MGM license like Runaway Train? Seems to have come out on VHS via Paramount in the US, I'm guessing the UK rights situation is a little less sticky...

That's certainly the impression I'm under.

In fact, I originally saw it at what was then the Cannon Shaftesbury Avenue - it's now the four-screen Odeon Covent Garden, but back then it comprised two impressively huge screens and would often show some surprisingly interesting things (the original Norwegian Pathfinder in 70mm, for instance).

Now PATHFINDER is something i'd like to see given the deluxe treatment. I seem to remember seeing it at the (then) NFT with a talk about the production difficulties by the director, who if memory serves was previously a geography master. A lot of the cast and crew deserted due to the extreme cold and he had to recruit local Sami non-actors to see it through. Be good if that had been recorded for an extra.

[MichaelB]

There's an excellent Norwegian BD, with English subtitles on the main feature, but all the extensive extras are in Norwegian only.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

There's an excellent Norwegian BD, with English subtitles on the main feature, but all the extensive extras are in Norwegian only.

Thanks for that info Michael. Cue someone, Arrow/MoC to render it english friendly?

[MichaelB]

FULL SPECS FOR WHITE OF THE EYE

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

• Brand new high definition digital transfer of the film from the original camera negative
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the film, available in the UK for the first time
• Original uncompressed Stereo PCM audio
• Optional English SDH subtitles on the main feature
• Audio commentary by Donald Cammell biographer Sam Umland
• Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance – This feature length documentary by Kevin Macdonald and Chris Rodley looks over the life and career of the rebel filmmaker and features interviews with Cammell and his closest friends, family and colleagues including Nicolas Roeg, Mick Jagger, Kenneth Anger, James Fox and many more
• The Argument – a 1972 short film by Cammell, gorgeously shot by Vilmos Zsigmond in the Utah Desert. Rediscovered and assembled by Cammell’s regular editor Frank Mazzola in 1999, it is viewable with optional commentary by Sam Umland
• Into the White - an interview with co-cinematographer and Steadicam wizard Larry McConkey
• Rare deleted scenes, newly transferred from the original camera negative, with commentary by Sam Umland
• The flashback scenes as originally shot, prior to the bleach bypass processing that they underwent in the final film
• Original theatrical trailer
• Alternate credits sequence
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Nathanael Marsh
• Collector’s booklet featuring new writing by Brad Stevens and Sam Umland, and a previously unpublished extract from the memoirs of producer Elliott Kastner, illustrated with original archive stills.

More details here

[FerdinandGriffon]

An incredible release. The inclusion of The Argument is stellar news.

[MichaelB]

I suspect a lot of people will be very very happy about the big Donald Cammell documentary too. Frankly, it's good enough to release separately.

[warren oates]

Never heard of this film before, but I'm definitely blind buying Arrow's release. Thanks for your work on this, Michael.

[MichaelB]

My work on this was pretty minimal - I oversaw the final production stages, but it's mainly Francesco Simeoni's baby. And Cammell biographer Sam Umland, who was very heavily involved.

Oh, and it's an original James White transfer. In fact, that was a major bonus of having access to the original neg - a couple of deleted scenes (sadly sans soundtrack) and the flashbacks before they were run through the bleach bypass process were added to the extras as a result of discoveries made during restoration.

[colinr0380]

Very glad to see Sam Umland involved, Rebecca Umland's and his book Donald Cammell: A Life On The Wide Side is the key work on the director.

The Ultimate Performance documentary is an absolutely fantastic primer and overview to Cammell's life, career and preoccupations (it is just as essential to Cammell as that Giggle And Give In documentary is to Altman, and it is great to see these decade plus old television documentaries finally getting wider exposure), though the one area it is (understandably) a little sketchy on is relating to Cammell's final studio re-edited film Wild Side, which could really do with a special edition as well at some point in the future. Though the documentary does feature Cammell's last interview while in the editing room of the picture!

The short film The Argument is also very interesting too - not quite Kenneth Anger but certainly the closest anything else has come to Lucifer Rising! Both filmmakers kind of share the same mythical/playacting preoccupations.

Which makes sense as Cammell actually turns up playing Osiris in Anger's film!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

The inclusion of Donald Cammell: The Ultimate Performance is indeed a superb extra! I saw it years ago on YouTube and have wanted to revisit it since. Now that I've got a copy of Umland's book, this release will help fill more of the gaps in my Cammell library.

[manicsounds]

dvdbeaver

[David M.]

DVDBeaver: The image varies -swinging quite extensively from the sharpness of the well-lit close-ups to the darker, grainy and a bit noisy flashback sequences.

Actually, there's no noise. It was scanned on the Arriscan. It's 100% all grain, yo

[Finch]

Above the covers of the US DVD and Arrow's BD, Beaver states the BD is from Studio Canal. That'll be news to them and to Arrow. Not a biggie, but Jeez, is it too much to ask to get some very basic facts right?

[manicsounds]

Beaver states the BD is from Studio Canal. That'll be news to them and to Arrow.

Maybe it's been fixed? I don't see it.

[Finch]

Yes, he's amended it.

[colinr0380]

Major spoilers:

I like the way that this film is about learning to come to terms with your partner's secret life, or finding out if you can cope with that knowledge at all or have to start making plans to divorce yourself from your malfunctioning other half so that they don't destroy you or what remains of your family. In a strange way I kept being reminded of Bigger Than Life throughout, with another family, particularly the wife, starting to feel like they would be happier if their father was a lamented absence rather than a malfunctioning presence! And the idolising child 'betraying' their much loved father in a final act reversal - something that I think gets brought out fully in the perversely touching final scene of finally being able to celebrate a life with a psychopath now that they are rid of him.

How much responsibility does Carol White herself have to take responsibility for? For not asking the questions, or realising her husband's true nature sooner? Had he just started committing the acts at the point we meet the characters at the start of the film, or was this something that had always gone on, just not on 'home turf'? I think it is the reason for such an emphasis on the flashbacks and the ex-boyfriend being in the film and almost becoming a supporting character, as he confronts her with all of her own failings and blindnesses, along with his being in his own kind of purgatory, unable to move on from his cuckolding failed relationship and emasculating hunting trip.

I also wonder about Carol White herself, given that she is introduced to us berating her daughter (a normal parent teaching lessons, or frustration towards her child coming out in the form of low level parental abuse? Annoyance at her daughter being a 'Daddy's girl'?)

Talking about the hunting trip, this sequence made me think a little of Straw Dogs, especially the editing patterns which, though not as ambitious as those in Peckinpah's film, fluidly segue from present day into the flashbacks to the past (remembrances, or just flashy filmic technique?) and back again; and especially in the magnificently troubling flashback to the earlier scene of wife-on-top 'lovemaking by the fire' declaration of love contrasted with the bedroom semi-rape (OK, entirely rape) scene following Carol's discovery of her husband's shameful secret stash.

I also have no problems with the ending of this film going into generic chase and slasher film territory - it helps to move the action from a domestic setting to a ruined, mined out landscape to match the shattered relationship, and anyway events soon move on to the ex-boyfriend and husband battling it out, brought together by the woman they are wanting to control but almost ignoring her in their over masculine posturing (which is why the guys strapping up with dynamite or wielding enormous, extremely phallic guns becomes very amusing, turning the subtext ludicrously literal at that point! This section of the film is also very reminiscent of Shinya Tsukamoto's films that would arrive later such as Tetsuo II, Tokyo Fist and A Snake of June).

It was also great to see Art Evans in the film, as this is the period where he seemed to be trapped doing a run of incredulous cop characters in great but bizarrely-premised films, from the comedy Ruthless People (the one where Bette Midler gets kidnapped and Danny DeVito doesn't want to pay the ransom, being happy to get rid of her!) and the original Fright Night from the year before this! His scene here as the police detective able to appreciate a serial killer's works of art (strange this film came out the same year as Manhunter!) and then emphathising with Carol about her husband, and telling her to celebrate her ten years of marriage for the time the couple were together rather than for the way it ended (perverse if we consider that the husband was murdering people!) is completely unrealistic and bizarre, yet a strangely touching nonetheless way to leave the film.

Yet is the look Carol gives her daughter at the end (triumphant? victorious? dominant? motherly?) purely happy?

[MichaelB]

Mondo Digital.

[MichaelB]

A really bizarre review in DVD Active gives 3/10 for picture quality.

Since this transfer came directly from the original camera negative via a pin-registered Arriscan (with James White supervising the entire process), and was then encoded by David Mackenzie with a video bitrate averaging nearly 35 MB/sec, it represents the current state of the art in terms of accuracy of reproduction in 1080p - so the reviewer is in fact criticising the original cinematography, not the Blu-ray!

I wonder what he'd make of Performance, especially when it also goes all grainy and "grubby" in the second half?

[tenia]

A really bizarre review in DVD Active gives 3/10 for picture quality.

"The HD boost is there but really it will only be fans that appreciate it I’d imagine." It's all non sense.

[antnield]

White of the Eye: The Arrow Video Story.

[Forrest Taft]

Received this today, and it looks like yet another extraordinary package from Arrow. Did not know until I read on the back that Nick Mason scored this (he co-wrote the score with Rick Fenn, with whom he also did the 1985 album Profiles)! I really have no idea what to expect from this film, and cannot wait to dig in this weekend.