Jan 2011
Ophuls and Late Mizoguchi
With winter come winds that whip like Max Ophuls’ camera, and fogs and mists as thick as any in Ugetsu monogatari. As such, we’re proud to draw attention to our recent releases…
We’ve released a single-disc DVD edition (spine number 100) of Ophuls’ astonishing La signora di tutti. Anyone familiar with the master’s late, great films like La Ronde, Le Plaisir, Madame de…, or Lola Montès will feel in this 1934 work starring the bewitching Isa Miranda the same exuberance, the same fatalistic delirium of the final masterpieces: it is Ophuls in a mode of full expressivity. The disc presents the film in a gorgeous new transfer, with newly translated optional English subtitles, and features a new and exclusive half-hour video essay about the film by videomaker-scholar-author Tag Gallagher called So Alone…. A 44-page booklet features a new and exclusive essay by filmmaker-critic-cinema hero Luc Moullet, along with newly translated testimonials from Max Ophuls, Isa Miranda, and filmmaker Alfredo Guarini.
The box set Late Mizoguchi: Eight Films, 1951-1956 compiles our four earlier releases of eight films by one of the directors who looms largest across cinema history: Kenji Mizoguchi. This box reproduces all the booklets and supplements of the single releases, but consolidates them into a single, low-price package. If you’ve yet to experience Oyû-sama, Ugetsu monogatari, Gion bayashi, Sanshô dayû, Uwasa no onna, Chikamatsu monogatari, Yôkihi, or Akasen chitai — then the time to start freeing up slots on your all-time top ten list is now.
And in close — a heartfelt thank you, on behalf of the entire MoC team, to everyone who helped make 2010 such a success for the Series. We’ve got a slew of great releases (and more than a few surprises) planned for 2011 — a potential blinder of a year. Only the beginning: our forthcoming DVD editions of previously Blu-ray-only titles Profound Desires of the Gods, The Burmese Harp, Make Way for Tomorrow, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, and City Girl — and, as the first releases in a new and to-be-frequently-repeated MoC Series policy, Dual Format editions — containing both a Blu-ray and a DVD version of the respective films — of Michelangelo Antonioni’s La signora senza camelie (aka The Lady Without Camelias) and Le amiche.