MoC Forthcoming, Wishlist, and Random Speculation

[Awesome Welles]

...which I've just realised doesn't make sense, as Granger would certainly have recognised Leslie Arliss, on account of being directed by him in The Man in Grey the previous year!

I assumed it was the first time they had worked together. Perhaps it was one of the screenwriters? (Story by J. D. Drawbell)

...the Gainsborough directors generally weren't liked much by the actors, being either hacks like Arliss or former cinematographers like Arthur Crabtree and Bernard Knowles, who generally ignored the actors in favour of the visual elements. As a result, the actors usually rehearsed and directed themselves)

Yes, I've heard this before. The impression I had of Gainsborough was that it was an outfit of hacks who made cheap, low quality melodramas. Though I supposed they got lucky by hiring some decent directors (Asquith - who directed quite a few didn't he?).

[Tommaso]

If Network isn't interested, the greatest British addition to the MoC . But they did a very decent job on Peeping Tom a year or so ago, so they're clearly not ignorant of Powell's work (or, presumably, what they have in their own vaults).

This is precisely what I can't understand. Optimum are doing a new version of "Peeping Tom" and provide a bunch of extras including an Ian Christie commentary despite of the fact that there isn't exactly a shortage of discs of that film. Same goes for the Institut Lumiere discs: here again it's always the same bunch of films that are being done over and over. No doubt "Tom" or "Black Narcissus" are more important than the two films I mentioned, but if P&P sells so well that it is feasible to produce new discs of the major works all the time, I can't see the reason why these other films do not show up. "Rosalinda" had been announced for a brief while by some French company, but the disc never got released (rights issues?).

[MichaelB]

Optimum are doing a new version of "Peeping Tom" and provide a bunch of extras including an Ian Christie commentary despite of the fact that there isn't exactly a shortage of discs of that film.

Yes, but it was the first decent British edition - and not everyone imports. And Peeping Tom is always going to sell far, far better than The Elusive Pimpernel or Oh!! Rosalinda - it can tap into the lucrative horror market, for starters.

"Rosalinda" had been announced for a brief while by some French company, but the disc never got released (rights issues?).

There shouldn't be any rights issues that I can see. Associated-British made it, which means the world rights would currently be held by Studio Canal when they took over the catalogue. The original operetta has been out of copyright for decades, and I'm not aware of any third-party rights problem to do with any other part of the film. Unless of course this French company hadn't cleared the rights with Canal?

[Tommaso]

Yes, but it was the first decent British edition - and not everyone imports. And Peeping Tom is always going to sell far, far better than The Elusive Pimpernel or Oh!! Rosalinda - it can tap into the lucrative horror market, for starters.

Absolutely true of course, and the Optimum disc is really fine (better than the CC in my view, especially because I find Christie far more interesting than Mulvey). I could imagine (as I've never seen the films) that "Pimpernel" and "Rosalinda" would fit nicely into the 'Glorious Technicolor'/Musicals market that WB have been exploiting so nicely in the last few years.

Unless of course this French company hadn't cleared the rights with Canal?

I'm actually quite happy in retrospect that this French company (can't recall its name at the moment) didn't release it, as apparently they had a bad track record and had announced the film in a wrong aspect ratio on top of it. Though that doesn't probably signify too much.

[MichaelB]

The impression I had of Gainsborough was that it was an outfit of hacks who made cheap, low quality melodramas. Though I supposed they got lucky by hiring some decent directors (Asquith - who directed quite a few didn't he?).

Asquith made one - Fanny By Gaslight - and he was arguably the only really strong director to helm a Gainsborough melodrama. No-one rates Leslie Arliss that highly (even the ostensibly celebratory Screenonline biography reads very defensively), and Bernard Knowles and Arthur Crabtree made a far stronger contribution to British cinema in their earlier jobs as cinematographers.

That said, Crabtree is arguably the key auteur of the Gainsborough cycle, since he was the cinematographer on The Man in Grey and Fanny by Gaslight (and was therefore primarily responsible for the look of the cycle as a whole), before going on to direct Madonna of the Seven Moons, They Were Sisters (two of the more intriguing Gainsboroughs) and Caravan. Though he's probably more famous in cult-film circles for the immortal Fiend Without A Face, the cinema's definitive flying killer brain film (and one of Criterion's British titles!)

But I wouldn't necessarily agree that Gainsborough was "an outfit of hacks" - the films were certainly made quickly and cheaply, but the melodramas achieved visual miracles on tiny budgets (costume designer Elizabeth Haffenden and production designer John Bryan deserve a huge amount of credit), and there are some fascinating gems lurking in their catalogue - notably Launder and Gilliat's early films as writer/producer/director (Millions Like Us, Two Thousand Women, Waterloo Road), a number of deservedly acclaimed comedies, and of course Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (dodgy model work and all).

[Awesome Welles]

So my wanting to see more of them was not unfounded! I think even if they aren't great they're still always worth checking out - as a valuable piece of British cinema history - as much also as I'd like to see some of the quota quickies prior to this.

[John Hodson]

Granada International do indeed licence out titles from their catalogue to Network (and, until they fell into administration, DD Home Entertainment - I believe the new owners are attempting to renegotiate the deal), but of course also market titles on their own home video label, ITV DVD. Recent box sets (the 'James Mason Screen Icon Collection' for example) have been joint ventures between 'Optimum', 'Network' and 'ITV DVD' and bear all their imprimatur.

If anyone's looking for a Gainsborough Collection, then they could do worse than last year's 'Stewart Granger Collection' from ITV DVD: 'Adam and Evelyne', 'Blanche Fury', 'Caesar And Cleopatra', 'Captain Boycott', 'Fanny By Gaslight' 'The Lamp Still Burns', 'Love Story', 'Madonna of The Seven Moons', 'The Magic Bow' and 'Waterloo Road'.

[Tommaso]

From the MoC site:

"Just before Christmas we released a trio of splendid new titles that many may have missed in the Christmas rush. "

Ouiii.... now please don't mean to say that "Nosferatu", "Tabu" and "Sansho" didn't yet sell very well... THAT would be a real shame!

Totally unrelated, and pertaining to audio commentaries: one of the great things about CC commentaries is that they are INDEXED. I rarely listen to audio commentaries in their entirety, but find them very helpful to find out special things that interested me while watching the film. And with the index that CC provides (the sole company I can think of who does so), it's much more convenient and time-saving because you know when the bit comes that you'd like to hear about. So my question is: would it be possible for MoC to do it the same way with their forthcoming audio commentaries (for the admittedly few discs that will have one)?

[Awesome Welles]

I don't know why but I am in the wishing mood. Here are my picks for 2008, if 25% of these are released I'll be a happy camper.

1. Antonio das Mortes
2. The Bandit (Lattuada)
3. The Black River
4. Chronique d'un ete
5. Eros + Massacre
6. The Hour of the Furnaces
7. The Letter that was Never Sent
8. The Lusty Men
9. The Mattei Affair
10. Out 1
11. Slap the Monster on Page One
12. The Spider's Stratagem

[mattkc]

Even though there are some great films there FSimeoni (and some I don't know), God I hope you're wrong. All I want is more Naruse. Seriously, if MoC and C just stopped everything and spent the next couple years working exclusively on Naruse's massive output, I'd be happy. Well, maybe they could throw in a Mizoguchi here are there too...

[Zazou dans le Metro]

I don't know why but I am in the wishing mood. Here are my picks for 2008, if 25% of these are released I'll be a happy camper.

1. Antonio das Mortes

I might be mistaken but I think Mr Bongo are bringing this out along with a couple of Antonionis.

[Michael Kerpan]

Even though there are some great films there FSimeoni (and some I don't know), God I hope you're wrong. All I want is more Naruse. Seriously, if MoC and C just stopped everything and spent the next couple years working exclusively on Naruse's massive output, I'd be happy. Well, maybe they could throw in a Mizoguchi here are there too...

I fear one needs to gradually build the Western Naruse market. I certainly would take out a second (or is it third) mortgage to get a complete set of Naruse's surviving films on DVD with English subtitles (all 69 or 70 of them , depending on how one counts). But how many other people would be similarly fanatic?

[MichaelB]

I might be mistaken but I think Mr Bongo are bringing this out along with a couple of Antonionis.

On the evidence of Cronaca di un amore and The Adversary, I'd avoid Mr Bongo releases like the proverbial pestilence until they work out how to encode DVDs properly.

Cronaca is a particular disappointment as there's strong evidence that the source print and Digibeta were in excellent condition, but they've royally fucked up the encode - a very soft, artefact-riddled picture and one of the most excessively-compressed soundtracks I've encountered in years, with tinny electronic artefacting audible pretty much throughout.

With The Adversary, a great deal of blame can also be laid on possibly unavoidably lousy original materials (an old distribution print with burned-in subtitles that are borderline unreadable against white backgrounds), but the soundtrack is also overly compressed and tinny.

In fact, the two DVDs I've seen are so awful that when I have a moment I'm going to analyse the files to see where they're going wrong, because there's no reason why the picture and sound need to be that heavily compressed: they're not long films.

[Zazou dans le Metro]

I might be mistaken but I think Mr Bongo are bringing this out along with a couple of Antonionis.

On the evidence of Cronaca di un amore and The Adversary, I'd avoid Mr Bongo releases like the proverbial pestilence until they work out how to encode DVDs properly.

Cronaca is a particular disappointment as there's strong evidence that the source print and Digibeta were in excellent condition, but they've royally fucked up the encode - a very soft, artefact-riddled picture and one of the most excessively-compressed soundtracks I've encountered in years, with tinny electronic artefacting audible pretty much throughout.

Well perhaps it's just as well that the release I was thinking of is in fact Black God White Devil and not ' Antonio das Mortes'. Doesn't bode well for the upcoming long version of Saragossa Manuscript or the other Antonionis then, unless the Bongos can get their shit together by then.

[MichaelB]

There are rival PAL editions of Saragossa in France and (imminently) Poland.

The French edition has English subtitles, the Polish one almost certainly will too (going by the two current Wojciech Has releases on the same label).

Of course, Mr Bongo could have improved by then, but given what I've seen so far I'm unconvinced that they'll be able to handle a three-hour film in anamorphic Scope, as that gives them two additional challenges on top of the ones they've fluffed so far.

But I'd be delighted to be proved wrong.

[Awesome Welles]

Even though there are some great films there FSimeoni (and some I don't know), God I hope you're wrong. All I want is more Naruse. Seriously, if MoC and C just stopped everything and spent the next couple years working exclusively on Naruse's massive output, I'd be happy. Well, maybe they could throw in a Mizoguchi here are there too...

I happy to take the Naruse as it trickles, and I think it is going to continue to trickle steadily from here on out. Plus I managed to catch The Song Lantern at a retrospective recently (which I adored) so that's one less I have to worry about so soon.

I might be mistaken but I think Mr Bongo are bringing this out along with a couple of Antonionis.

They are unfortunately bringing out Black God, White Devil, as you corrected yourself, which has a release in Brazil already, along with Terra em Transe.

[Michael Kerpan]

I happy to take the Naruse as it trickles, and I think it is going to continue to trickle steadily from here on out. Plus I managed to catch The Song Lantern at a retrospective recently (which I adored) so that's one less I have to worry about so soon.

Song Lantern -- what a totally unexpected stunner -- so much for the slump theory (especially considering some of the other wonderful films Naruse made during this period).

[knepo]

Hi folks!

I'm new here, really happy to have found this forum

I was wondering what movies that will be on spine 49 and 60? I searched the MoC titles on the forum but could not find them... have they been delayed?

[Awesome Welles]

I was wondering what movies that will be on spine 49 and 60?

They are both unannounced as yet, though I suspect that #49 will be another Visconti (Le Notti Bianche or Sandra - I hoping the latter).

[peerpee]

Later in 2008, in addition to releasing previously announced titles (including our SILENT LUBITSCH box set, PHANTOM, VAMPYR, and MAD DETECTIVE), we shall also be releasing previously unannounced MoC titles made in the years:

1924, 1931, 1932, 1963, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1969, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976, 1978, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1997, 1997, 1998, 2004.

by directors whose surnames begin with:

A, D, F, G, J, L, M, M, P, R, T, V (only two of which have films in the MoC Series already).

-- and there's more to come...

[Paupau]

The titles already mentioned already are enough to keep me excited, but c'mon, we need more information than that!!

Well, i find it unexpected to see such recent titles in MoC catalogue, but i'm glad you will pursue your mission of releasing some older or unknown gems. Keep up the good work.

I think i'll go mad by the sheer amount of new announced ( or not, to be more precise )in this manner.

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm matching 1924 and V and guessing Greed.

And 1976 and R and hoping for some Rivette.

[peerpee]

Both sadly not true, Michael.

[denti alligator]

I'm matching 1924 and V and guessing Greed.

Since Warner will eventually deliver on this, I'm hoping 1924 matches with L to give us:

L'Herbier's L'inhumaine

Please say it's so!

[Zazou dans le Metro]

I'm going with P for Pick and 1924 Sylvester.

and another Melville in 1963 with L'Ainé des Ferchaux