Pandora’s Box – Director: G.W. Pabst (Criterion)
The film that turned Louise Brooks into an icon of the silent film era and helped establish a wide-reaching Art Deco influence on both sides of the pond, Pandora’s Box is the melodrama to end all melodramas. Released in 1929 to an audience unprepared for its sensationalist charms, Pandora’s Box caused a scandal among the arbiters of “good taste”, a reaction that would subject the film to several bannings and censorship across the European continent.
The story of a young upstart who seduces her way through various businessmen, hustlers, entertainers, and ingénues, G.W. Pabst’s document of the decadent but waning jazz age captured imaginations everywhere. The film bridges the many straying and disparate strands of culture that stretched across eras of chorus lines, revues, and penny gaffs; everyone from Dickens to a vaudevillian jazz ethos is referenced. Add a bizarre twist of murder à la Jack the Ripper and a homoerotic subplot (which had the censors annexing the editing rooms), and Pandora’s Box was ripe for controversy in its day. Today, the film stands as what it always was: an unshapely but always sparkling jewel that radiates true beauty from its magnetic lead, Brooks.
Criterion delivers a royal package here, with a beautiful remaster that captures the lustrous black-and-white of the film to chiaroscuro perfection. The release is packed with several informative features that delve into both the hoopla surrounding the film and Brooks’ self-sustaining mystique throughout the century. The disc’s best feature, however, is the addition of four separate musical scores to choose from. Each score lends the story a distinct tone and atmosphere and further ploughs the depths of the mesmeric enigma that the film has now become. – Imran Khan
Peeping Tom – Director: Michael Powell (Criterion)
Michael Powell, one of the most original and visually audacious talents in British cinema, trashed his career in 1960 with Peeping Tom, a gaudy, clammy serial killer movie examining the nature of cinema and its catering to voyeurism.
Carl Boehm plays the young would-be filmmaker who entices models to his room for “screen tests” that finishes with a sword in his camera’s tripod. Talk about yelling, “Cut!” One victim is played by Moira Shearer, glorious star of Powell’s The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951). Also present is Anna Massey, who would star in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972).
Responding as if receiving a dose of cinematic ipecac, British critics were aghast at this beautifully shot and designed queasiness. One year later, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho was a smash hit, but that was no consolation for Powell, and the critics didn’t care for that one either. In a case parallel to Pandora’s Box, Powell waited decades to see Peeping Tom hailed as a masterpiece by Martin Scorsese and new generations of cinephiles who recognize it as one of Britain’s most important horror films.
Criterion first issued Peeping Tom as a 1994 LaserDisc (remember those?) with commentary by pioneering feminist critic Laura Mulvey. StudioCanal’s new restoration is available from Criterion as a 4K UHD/Blu-ray combo and a single Blu-ray; the Blu-rays can’t technically be in 4K but are scanned from the 4K master in the format’s standard 1080p. The two critical commentaries (including Mulvey’s) and most other extras date from older disc editions. One bonus focuses on this restoration; those richly restored colors are the attraction. – Michael Barrett
The Shape of Night – Director: Noboru Nakamura (Radiance)
Predating the neon-nightlife aestheticism of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) by 36 years, The Shape of Night (1964) is director Noboru Nakamura’s visual essay on the seedy lives of Japan’s down-and-outers. A slow and elegiac glide through the joys and miseries of one woman’s life, The Shape of Night examines the backstreets and homes of 1960s Tokyo and the violent yakuza who rule them.
Yoshie (Miyuki Kuwano) is a young student working nights in a bar when she meets Eiji (Mikijirô Hira) one evening. Wanting to assert her independence from her family and charmed by his insouciance, she agrees to go out with him, thrilled by the new experiences his company affords her. Soon, they become lovers and are living together. It’s all innocent and exciting until one day, Eiji suggests Yoshie accompany a man as an escort to help with some cashflow problems. Before she can truly get a grip on the situation, Yoshie is being tricked out to men nightly, where she is often subjected to beatings and rape. The story’s tender heart, buried beneath the muck of brutality and grief, is kept beating by Yoshie’s unwavering sense of dignity, which grows stronger as she begins to hold her ground against the sadistic Eiji.
Meanwhile, viewers are caught in the strangely romantic spell of Nakamura’s glowing, nocturnal visuals, scenes etched with the hard neon lights of Tokyo’s urban side streets. Even with the all-pervading threat of danger that hangs unpleasantly over the story, The Shape of Night creates an elegant sweep that uses splendid color and light. Kuwano and Hira serve their roles with reserved turns interrupted by moments of apropos melodrama, which come like angry bursts of electricity.
The Shape of Night caused a stir in Japan upon its release, riling up the then-current culture with its themes of fractured home lives and domestic violence. Radiance Films delivers this absorbing and pioneering effort of Japanese cinema a crisp and clean remastering, and some informative extras. – Imran Khan
Street Scene – Director: King Vidor (VCI)
An American pre-Code film from 1931, Street Scene did little to rustle up ticket-buyers at the box office upon its release. It showcases actress Sylvia Sydney in the prime of her youth, framing her lovely porcelain-doll features against the drab tenements of New York’s Lower East Side. Based on Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Street Scene certainly has the stationary feel of a theatrical production, but the lively dialogue gives the film its true motion. The King Vidor-directed film is a little whirlwind of amusing personalities, with the ensemble cast working effortlessly to steal scenes from one another.
At heart, Street Scene is a simple love story about the relationship between Rose (Sydney) and her neighbor Sam (William Collier Jr.), a shy Jewish man who must face the bigotry of his neighbors in his attempts to woo Rose. Swirling amongst these two would-be lovers are the bickering and chatter of the tenement gossip-hounds, led by Emma (a scene-chewing Beulah Bondi) and Rose’s violent-tempered father, Frank (David Landau). The story takes a sudden grim turn by its end, but it’s undeniably fitting for an unpredictable city like the New York depicted here.
An unheralded gem of Hollywood’s golden years, Street Scene offers a romantic nostalgia that has continued to gain traction for the film in the years following its release. VCI Entertainment presents this quiet little marvel in a 4K restoration, giving the once scratchy, dirt-flecked print of yore a lustrously clean sheen. A commentary track and liner notes further expound on the film’s relevance during the pre-Code years of America. – Imran Khan
Tchao Pantin – Director: Claude Berri (Radiance)
A smash hit in France in 1983, Claude Berri’s lugubrious neo-noir features many surprising turnabouts that distinguish it from the usual crime film fare. Racking up an astonishing 12 nominations for the César (France’s equivalent of the Academy Award), Tchao Pantin boasts an earnest and evocative performance by actor Coluche, playing Lambert, a lonely gas station attendant who alleviates his boredom by drinking.
Enter Bensoussan (Richard Anconina), a drug dealer on the run from the police. One night, the two meet when Bensoussan, ducking the cops, walks into Lambert’s station to hide out. A meaningful friendship is developed, but it isn’t long before Bensoussan’s lifestyle catches up with him, and he is killed, leaving the distraught Lambert to go after those responsible for his friend’s murder. The story is given a solid backbone through the remarkable performances of the leads (both Coluche and Anconina would earn Césars for their roles). Tchao Pantin is especially bolstered by its visual flair, courtesy of Bruno Nuytten, one of Europe’s most eminent cinematographers. Giving this moody, atmospheric world a comic-book-colored tint, Nuytten brings to radiant life France’s underworld with just the right inflection of hue and light.
Tchao Pantin is the composition of unlikely elements coming together to create a straightforward (and simply extraordinary) film that sits on the palates of those who savor a cinema of an acquired but agreeable taste. This lovely package by Radiance Films features a crisp and color-lush 4K restoration and some worthwhile extras that offer a deeper look into this ‘80s Francophone relic. – Imran Khan
Twilight – Director: György Fehér (Arbelos)
A little-known and recently discovered film from Hungary, Twilight (initially released in 1990), subverts the mystery genre by refusing to divulge motive or provide any substantial explanations for the crimes committed. It gains considerable traction from its unnerving and moody airs, which translate here as an undulating, fuguelike score. This eerie drone seems to signal lurking dangers that are never seen.
Shot in a fog-enshrouded black-and-white that pitches this murder mystery into the reaches of a metaphysical noir, Twilight tells the story of a child murderer roaming undetected somewhere in a forest region in Hungary. The detective on his trail circles the rural town in search of clues, first in frustration and later in panic as more dead bodies turn up. Meanwhile, witnesses offer inscrutable accounts of the victims, and suspects only help to obfuscate the case.
Director György Fehér has an aesthetic similar to fellow Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr (the two worked together on Tarr’s 1994 epic, Sátántangó) and opts to pace his story at a hypnotic and meditative stroll, allowing the lingering of a static scene to breathe suggestion into a spare narrative. Perplexing, sepulchral, and bitterly gothic, Twilight is the thinking person’s crime film, so heavy with dread that you practically suffocate in its atmosphere. Arbelos Films delivers an ace 4K restoration on Blu-ray (beautifully luminous and textured) with a handsome handful of extras. – Imran Khan
The Underground Railroad – Director: Barry Jenkins (Criterion)
Barry Jenkins’ The Underground Railroad masterfully navigates the horrors and traumas of slavery while still recognizing how the complex relations, affections, and intelligence of various Black communities not only persist but prevail. The series is not simply a reckoning with the United State’s past in ways that states like Florida, Texas, and elsewhere attempt, in our times, to cast aside by marginalizing and censoring Black history with reactionary legislation.
Equally important, The Underground Railroad imagines a new cinematic terrain that challenges the Jim Crow inheritances and white supremacy that still guides much of Hollywood cinema and commercial television, despite some polemical commentators complaining about the entertainment industry’s “liberalism”. The show serves as a model for reclaiming deeply fraught cultural space that might have been forged from reactionary origins but can be wrested from them through ingenuity, experimentation, and sheer will.
They are poetic moments that only cinema can capture. Perhaps most rewarding of the Criterion box set is the inclusion of the teasers Jenkins created for the film and his hour-long experimental film The Gaze. He made the teasers while the series was in post-production but on a temporary hiatus because of the pandemic. Introducing the teasers, Jenkins recalls that the post-production process was too slow “to get that energy into the narrative episodes.” He directed his editor to cut the footage where this energy could be captured. – Chris Robé
The Unknown Chaplin – Directors: Kevin Brownlow and David Gill (Old Gold Media)
Initially aired in the 1980s, this three-episode Charlie Chaplin set was re-released on DVD in 2024 and can now be viewed as a historical artifact. They showcase the performers’ inner workings, which Kevin Brownlow and David Gill beautifully piece together. Indeed, it won the 1983 Emmy for Outstanding Informational Series, a feat that was no doubt influenced by James Mason’s mellifluous narration over the images.
Unknown Chaplin plays like a virtual museum: viewers witness firsthand the performer’s evolution from his beginnings as The Tramp to physical performer extraordinaire. Brownlow and Gill were fortunate to have Lady Chaplin’s approval, as the directors were permitted access to previously unseen footage in her vaults.
Unknown Chaplin includes a documentary entitled “How Unknown Chaplin Was Made”, where Brownlow gives a frank account of his journey through the videos. Elsewhere, viewers can discover “Chaplin Meets Harry Lauder”, a short piece designed to aid wounded First World War soldiers. Historian Frank Scheide gives his opinions on some of the out-takes from the short film The Count (1916), dissecting the era’s methods. Everything about this release is a gift to the discerning viewer, and it can be classed as a manual on making people laugh. – Eoghan Lyng
Viva la Muerte – Director: Fernando Arrabal (Radiance)
Bloody, disturbing, and polarizing, Fernando Arrabal’s Viva la Muerte caused much controversy upon its 1971 release. A surrealist fable that outlines the bloodshed of the Spanish Civil War, the film’s surrealist constituents are further abstracted by the fact that it was shot in eight countries, no less, spanning the Latin American, African, and European continents.
A story about a young man’s search for his imprisoned father, Arrabal’s tangled and Odyssey-like narrative dissects topics like the fall of communism, civil unrest, and familial love with a crude but decisive hand. Visually, the film probes like a cattle prod – shocking the viewer into the moribund reaches of a political and emotional quagmire. Those who are squeamish and sensitive to the treatment of animals, be warned – Viva la Muerte spares no pity or mercy for anyone’s feelings. Despite the brutality onscreen, Viva la Muerte is destined to leave a feverish imprint on the minds of those taken by its circuitous and delirious narrative.
One of Europe’s cinematic cornerstones of the second-wave of Surrealism (continuing in the tradition of Luis Buñuel), Arrabal cements his fingerprint in the logbooks of dangerous cinema, leaving the poisonous, indelible stain of an always restive and uncompromising film. Radiance Films’ transfer gives this gritty, febrile Euro-classic a healthy, lustrous sheen and offers a host of informative extras to summarize the film’s longstanding renown amongst the cinematic intelligentsia. – Imran Khan
Werckmeister Harmonies – Director: Béla Tar (Criterion)
Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky’s Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) is a difficult and challenging work and will reward only the most patient and tolerant viewer of slow, meandering narratives. But Tarr’s primary investment here is an immersive world and stories that are not told with any obvious gesture of dramatic action but delivered through discernable, nearly palpable atmospheres.
Set in some fixed time unaffected by the world outside it, Werckmeister Harmonies takes place in a small, rural Hungarian town. János (Lars Rudolph) contends with an idle life as a newspaper deliverer, living a fractured family life with his pensive and distracted musician uncle and awkwardly engaging with the townsfolk in his day-to-day life. The stir of excitement emerges when a circus comes to town with its star attractions: a massive taxidermized whale and a mysterious performer only known as “the Prince”. When a row erupts between the circus leader and “the Prince”, it precipitates a violent chain of events that has the town rioting, an action foreshadowed by the arrival of János’ aunt Tünde (German star Hanna Schygulla), who is pushing a political agenda to restore value and order in the town.
Werckmeister Harmonies is an odd mélange of stark, still life (augmented by the striking black-and-white cinematography) and disturbing bursts of carnage. The poetic miasma of Tarr’s imagery makes the film an often suffocating, feverish watch, but if you venture deep enough into the story to get caught in its brambles, you are a voluntary and entranced viewer of the unusual, somber, and sometimes frightening world that these hapless characters inhabit. Werckmeister Harmonies marks the pinnacle of Tarr’s cinema, a stifling poetic realism that is impressively rendered to a diamond-clear presentation with Criterion’s remastering of the film. – Imran Khan