Numerous filmmakers have tried but failed to bring Marcel Proust's monumental novel Remembrance Of Things Past to the screen. Thankfully, Raul Ruiz was the first director to truly live up to the task of finally translating the epic novel with his striking adaptation Time Regained (Le temps retrouvé, d'après l'oeuvre de Marcel Proust), which explicitly tackles the last volume of Proust's masterwork, while seamlessly integrating those that came prior.

Time Regained tells the story of an anonymous narrator, lying on his deathbed, recalling the past events of his life. Looking at the photographs that surround him, he begins to remember his childhood, his youth, his lovers and the Great War that put an end to his perception of society. Moving back and forth through time, we see him, at various ages of his life crossing paths with – among others - Odette (Catherine Deneuve – Dancer In The Dark, Belle De Jour), the beautiful Gilberte (Emmanuelle Beart – La Belle Noiseuse) and the pleasure-seeking Baron de Charlus (John Malkovich – Being John Malkovich, Dangerous Liaisons). It seems as if to live is to remember, and to capture memories is to create the greatest of all works of art.

Valentin Louis Georges Eugene Marcel Proust is widely regarded to be one of the greatest writers to ever live; his masterpiece In Search Of Lost Time, considered by many scholars to be the definitive modern novel. Not only did it have a profound effect on literary thinking, but it also influenced writers such as Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh and Vladimir Nabokov. Widely thought to be unfilmable due to its staggering length and dreamlike structure it was only in 1999 when Chilean director Raul Ruiz approached the work, that a filmmaker finally managed to capture the essence of the towering original work, and was able to cinematically tell one of the great stories of 20th Century literature.

Time Regained was prebviously released on UK DVD by Artificial Eye, one of their early DVD titles and one of the last to feature a non-anamorphic transfer. Now the film is to be re-released on DVD by Second Sight on 7th September 2009 at the RRP of £19.99. No picture and sound details are available at this moment, but we can hope that the picture has had an anamorphic upgrade. No extras have been listed.