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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > French New Wave > Fantasy > Crime > Relationships > Avant-Garde > Romance > Sex > Japan > Jacques Rivette Collection (1971 - 1981) + Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (1969 - 1973/MVD Visual/Arrow Blu-ray w/DVD Sets)

Jacques Rivette Collection (1971 - 1981) + Kiju Yoshida: Love + Anarchism (1969 - 1973/MVD Visual/Arrow Blu-ray w/DVD Sets)



Picture: B+ & B/B+ & B- Sound: B+ & B/B+ & B- Extras: B+/B Film: B/B/B-/B/B



The Jacques Rivette Collection


Multiple films from French Director Jacques Rivette are now available in this new The Jacques Rivette Collection box set from Arrow Films, that is defiantly a great watch for film students and those who like foreign cinema. Never before available in this way, the films are low budget but still pretty captivating.


Starting off the set is Out 1 (1979) and it has been hailed as Rivette's masterwork by film critics and audiences alike. Epic in length and character study, it was recut into shorter film and retitled Out 1: Spectre, and is a drastic cut down from its initial television mini series length, that was nearly fourteen hours long!


The set also includes what are described as two 'parallel films', Duelle (une quarantaine) and Noroit (une vengeance). Both from 1976, are more fantasies and yet are profoundly written and very interesting to watch. Duelle circles around the Queen of the Sun (Bulle Ogier) and the Queen of the Night (Juliet Berto) search for a magical diamond in present-day Paris. Noroit is a bizarre pirate/fantasy that stars Geraldine Chaplin (Nashville, Cria cuervos).


Also included is Merry-Go-Round (1981) that stars Joe Dallesandro (Flesh for Frankenstein, Blood For Dracula) and Maria Schneider (The Passenger, Last Tango in Paris).


The films in this set overall star Jean-Pierre Leaud, Bulle Ogier, Michael Lonsdale, Juliet Berto, Geraldine Chaplin, Joe Dallesandro, and Maria Schneider to name a few.


Presented in 1080p high definition with widescreen aspect ratios of 1.85:1 and 1.37:1, and paired with nice sounding 1.0 PCM Mono tracks to preserve the original recordings, the films look and sound great on Blu-ray disc with little to complain about. Also included are standard DVD versions of the films with similar specs, but obviously compressed, that are up to snuff with the format but not as impressive as the Blu-ray copies.


Special Features...


The Mysteries of Paris: Jacques Rivette's Out 1 Revisited - a brand-new feature length documentary by Robert Fischer and Wilfried Reichart containing interviews with actors Bulle Ogier, Michael Lonsdale and Hermine Karagheuz, cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn, assistant director Jean-Francois Stevenin and producer Stephane Tchalgadjieff, as well as rare archival interviews with actors Jacques Doniol-Valcroze and Michel Delahaye, and director Jacques Rivette.


Scenes from a Parallel Life: Jacques Rivette Remembers - archive interview with the director, in which he discusses Duelle (une quarantaine), Noroit (une vengeance) and Merry-Go-Round, featuring additional statements from Bulle Ogier and Hermine Karagheuz.


Brand-new interview with critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, who reported from the sets of both Duelle (une quarantaine) and Noroit (une vengeance).


Exclusive perfect-bound book containing new writing on the films by Mary M. Wiles, Brad Stevens, Ginette Vincendeau and Nick Pinkerton.



Kiju Yoshida/Love + Anarchism


Next we have three arthouse films from Japanese filmmaker Kiju Yoshida land in this very special limited edition release from Arrow Films in grand fashion. The set dubbed Love + Anarchism includes Eros + Massacre (1969), presented here in both its 169-minute theatrical version and the full-length 220-minute director's cut, Heroic Purgatory (1970), and Coup d'etat (1973) - all of which intertwine to tell a complicated story of politics in the late 1960s - early 1970s in Japan.


The films star Mariko Okada, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Yuko Kusunoki, and Etsushi Takahashi.


In Eros+Massacre, which is considered Kiju Yoshida's most groundbreaking work, he compares in glorious black and white, the love and independence of anarchist Osugi Sakae, who was assassinated by the military in 1923, to the vanguard of modern day Japan. The story tells of Sakae's relationship with three women: Hori Yasuko, his wife; Ito Noe, his third lover, who was to die with him; and his jealous second lover, Masaoka Itsuko, a militant feminist who attempts to kill him in a tea house in 1916. Parallel to the reconstitution of Osugi's life, two students do research on the political theories and ideas of free love that he upheld. Some of the characters from the past and from the present meet and engage the themes of the movie.


In Heroic Purgatory, Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan after spending a few years studying at the MIT. He's working on a new project involving the creation of laser beams. One day, his wife Nanako, comes back home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, who pretends to be Ayu's father, come to get her back but Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. With this girl entering their peaceful life, Rikiya suddenly begins to remember his youth when he was a revolutionary and a much different person.


In Coup d'etat, we follow the story of Ikka Kita who is a revolutionary that suffers when he is brought his younger brother's clothes, still smeared with his blood. Ikka's brother followed the revolutionary's precept and acted, attempting on the life of a financial group manager and then, unable to escape, stooped to suicide. Now, Ikka is more determined than ever to take his own teachings to the ultimate end in this conclusion to the loose trilogy.


Presented in black and white 1080p high definition with widescreen aspect ratios of 2.35:1(on Eros) and 1.33:1 respectively, the restored films look magnificent on Blu-ray disc with uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM Audio on all films and newly translated English subtitles to boot. Also included are standard DVD versions of the films with the same widescreen aspect ratio and compressed mono tracks that don't sound or look as good as the Blu-rays but are up to standards with the format.



Special Features...


Yoshida ...or: The Explosion of the Story - a 30-minute documentary on Eros + Massacre with contributions from Yoshida and film critics Mathieu Capel and Jean Douchet


Introductions to Heroic Purgatory and Coup d'etat by Yoshida


Newly-filmed discussions of Eros + Massacre, Heroic Purgatory and Coup d'etat by David Desser, author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave, recorded exclusively for this release


Scene-select commentaries by David Desser on all three films


Heroic Purgatory theatrical trailer


Coup d'etat theatrical trailer


Limited edition packaging featuring newly commissioned artwork by Maarko Phntm


Illustrated 80-page perfect-bound book featuring new writing on the films by David Desser, Isolde Standish (author of Politics, Porn and Protest: Japanese Avant-Garde Cinema in the 1960s and 1970s) and Dick Stegewerns (author of Kiju Yoshida: 50 Years of Avant-Garde Filmmaking in Post-War Japan).


If you're a fan of Japanese cinema and some of the political aspects to the culture, then these are definitely worth checking out. A bit heavy for their time in a dramatic sense, these films may make you feel uneasy... which is kind of the point.



- James Lockhart

https://www.facebook.com/jamesharlandlockhartv/


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