Radiance has announce another four excellent-looking Blu-ray releases of films by notable directors for March 2025 in the shape of Je t'aime, je t'aime from Alain Resnais, The Eel from Imamura Shohei, Rulers of the City from Fernando Di Leo, and a box set of three films, Hardboiled: Three Pulp Thrillers by Alain Corneau. Full details below.
JE T'AIME, JE T'AIME (France 1968)
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 24 March 2024 | £17.99 – pre-order here from Radiance store
Claude leaves hospital recovered from a failed suicide attempt when some scientists offer him the chance to be part of a project. He will be the first human subject in a time travel experiment. Travelling back in time one year for just one minute, he becomes lost in a continually shifting mosaic of temporal episodes.
A noted influence on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, in Je t’aime, je t’aime, Alain Resnais (Last Year in Marienbad, Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour) brings his cinematic obsession of time to the fore in this ingenious melding of sci-fi and romance.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- 2K restoration, presented on UK Blu-ray for the first time
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- Interview with critic and David Jenkins (2024)
- Audio interview with director Alain Resnais (2007)
- Interview with actor Claude Rich (2007)
- Interview with screenwriter Jacques Sternberg and film historian and Resnais expert François Thomas (2007)
- In the Ears of Alain Resnais – a documentary on the filmmaker with a focus on music and voices in his work, featuring collaborators and critics including the filmmaker himself, actor Lambert Wilson, writer and actress Agnés Jaoui, critic Michel Ciment and others (Geraldine Boudot, 2020, 54 mins)
- Optional English subtitles
- Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original poster designs
- Limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Catherine Wheatley
- Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
RULERS OF THE CITY [I PADRONI DELLA CITTÀ] (Italy 1976)
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 24 March 2024 | £17.99 – pre-order here from Radiance store
Tony (Harry Baer, Fox and His Friends), a debt collector for a small-time Roman boss, dreams of making it big. He meets Rick (Al Cliver, Zombie Flesh Eaters) and decides to back him up in order to screw over an American gangster, called Scarface Manzari (Jack Palance, Shane), who monopolizes all the crime in the city. But Rick is driven by revenge on Manzari because he had treacherously killed his father after a robbery years earlier.
An Italian crime classic from Fernando Di Leo (Milano Calibro 9, The Boss, The Italian Connection), Rulers of the City features his trademark violence and action with a strain of dark humour producing one of the filmmaker's most enjoyable slices of Eurocrime. Newly restored in 4K it is presented on Blu-ray in the UK for the first time.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- 2020 4K restoration of the original negative, presented with both original Italian and English audio options, available on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- Violent City – an archival featurette including interviews with Fernando Di Leo, Al Cliver, editor Amedeo Giomini, and weapons expert Gilberto Galimberti
- A new interview with Eurocrime authority Mike Malloy on the childhood revenge theme in poliziotteschi
- Reversible sleeve featuring artwork based on original posters
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Limited edition booklet with new writing by Francesco Massaccesi
THE EEL [UNAGI] (Japan 1997)
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 24 March 2024 | £17.99 – pre-order here from Radiance store
After serving time in prison for murdering his unfaithful wife, Yamashita (Yakusho Koji, Perfect Days, Cure) is released on parole, accompanied only by his pet eel. Hoping to stay out of trouble, he takes over a rural barber shop that quickly becomes a gathering point for the eccentric locals. However, the discovery of a woman’s failed suicide starts a chain reaction that brings back past demons - and not just his own.
The Eel won master filmmaker Imamura Shohei his second Palme d’Or, after 1983’s The Ballad of Narayama and was the breakthrough film for its star Yakusho.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- High-Definition digital transfer
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio
- Interview with critic Tony Rayns (2024)
- Interview with screenwriter Tengan Daisuke (2024)
- Visual essay by Tom Mes on the year 1997 as a turning point in Japanese cinema (2024)
- Trailer
- Newly improved English subtitle translation
- Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow
- Limited edition booklet featuring a newly translated archival interview with Imamura
- Limited edition of 3000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
HARDBOILED: THREE PULP THRILLERS BY ALAIN COPRNEAU
Limited Edition Blu-ray | 24 March 2024 | £39.99 – pre-order here from Radiance store
The hardboiled genre of crime fiction evolved from the mystery crime novels of the early 20th century – closely associated with the US pulp magazines, these cynical and unsentimental stories of desperate criminals and social corruption were both influenced by and an influence on the golden era of film noir.
As their popularity waned in the US, the hardboiled genre remained hugely popular and relevant throughout the 1960s and 70s in France, thanks to the successful Serie Noire imprint and a succession of new translations. In Alain Corneau’s early films, he sought to continue the noir tradition in his native France, and was both directly and indirectly inspired by titans of hardboiled genre, including Kenneth Fearing and Jim Thompson. A heady combination of classic noir and 70s grit, these three darkly thrilling films are vastly underrated and important works in the canon of crime cinema.
In Police Python 357, Yves Montand (The Wages of Fear) plays a tough cop who, when his lover is found murdered, finds himself implicated in her death and in a battle of wits with a powerful rival, in the second screen adaptation of Kenneth Fearing’s The Big Clock.
Série noire adapts Jim Thompson’s A Hell of A Woman to the banlieues of Paris: in an astonishing performance, Patrick Dewaere (Themroc) attempts to save a young girl from prostitution, with murder the only solution.
In Choice of Arms [Le choix des armes], Yves Montand heads an all-star cast, including Catherine Denueve and Gerard Depardieu, as a former crook pulled out of retirement when a gang on the run turn to him for shelter after a prison break.
LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY FEATURES:
- 4K restorations from the original negatives by Studio Canal, presented on three discs
- Uncompressed mono PCM audio for each film
- Audio commentary by Mike White on Police Python 357 (2024)
- Maxim Jakubowski on Police Python 357’s source novel and adaptation (2024)
- Archival interview with Alain Corneau and François Périer about Police Python 357 from Belgian Television (1976)
- Série noire set interviews with Alain Corneau, Patrick Dewaere and Miriam Boyer from Belgian Television (1981)
- Série noire: The Darkness of the Soul – An archival documentary featuring cast and crew on the making of the film (2013, 53 mins)
- Archival interview with Alain Corneau and Marie Trintignant about Série noire (2002, 30 mins)
- A visual essay about Jim Thompson adaptations for the screen by Paul Martinovic (2024)
- Introduction by documentary filmmaker Jérôme Wybon (2024)
- Shooting Choice of Arms – interviews with the cast and crew including behind-the-scenes footage (1981)
- Interviews with Deneuve, Montand and Depardieu from the set (1981)
- Interview with Manuela Lazic on Yves Montand in the 1970s (2024)
- Trailers
- Optional English subtitles for each film
- Limited edition 80-page booklet featuring new writing by Andrew Male, Nick Pinkerton, Charlie Brigden, and newly translated archival writing
- Limited edition of 2500 copies, presented in a rigid box with full-height Scanavo cases and removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and marking
|
