BD 274-276 Andrzej Żuławski: Three Films

[therewillbeblus]

OrbitDVD got stock of the set today (Thurs Oct 12)

Still available as I type this…

https://www.orbitdvd.com/products/andrz ... n-region-b

Marked up considerably, but better than nothing

[swo17]

It's $10 more than I paid to pre-order it from Orbit

[Maltic]

They'll probably eventually put out separate releases without a book, like they just did for the Joseph Kuo set

Or keep it it in one box, as with the Keaton sets and Project A I and II?

In any case, yeah, I don't know that they ever failed to release a standard edition once an LE had sold out.

[Luke M]

OrbitDVD got stock of the set today (Thurs Oct 12)

Still available as I type this…

https://www.orbitdvd.com/products/andrz ... n-region-b

Thanks for this post. My copy arrived today and now Orbit is sold out.

[Finch]

Amazon says On the Silver Globe is getting its own release in February, with The Third Part of the Night and The Devil being the second standalone release. Would be funny if they revamped the covers as they did with the Police Story reissues and used the Polish posters.

[TMDaines]

Looks like literally only miss out on the box if you go for the standalone releases. Possibly all the written material will be split across the two releases.

[AidanKing]

Interesting that the reissue has a 15 certificate while the original release was supposedly classified at 18. There won't be anything cut on the reissue of course: it probably means that Eureka were understandably expecting an 18 certificate from the BBFC and were surprised when the films were actually given 15 certificates.

[MichaelB]

The original release is sitting in front of me, and also has a 15 on the box.

What almost certainly happened is that they stuck an 18 on the artwork that they initially unveiled (based on what you rightly say was an entirely reasonable assumption) and then modified it when the BBFC's verdict came in.

[Mr Sausage]

Having now watched two of Zulawski's French films, The Most Important Thing: Love and Mad Love, I have the suspicion France just wasn't the right place for Zulawski artistically. I mean, it was the only place he could work and make art films, but, artistically, something's missing. I think it's that Zulawski works better in an apocalyptic mode, and France doesn't have an apocalyptic tradition, at least not like eastern Europe or even Germany. Hence these films about petty thieves, decadence, and l'amour fou. Movies like The Devil or On the Silver Globe ascend to visionary heights; they're mad, but they're grasping at something beyond, pushing towards abstractions. Even The Third Part of the Night, which is less grasping, takes place in a world coming apart at the seams. But Mad Love? It's mad for sure, but it's all in a recognizable social reality into which, however crazed the behaviour, nothing visionary or metaphysical will intrude. It's a burlesque of the gangster action film. And The Most Important Thing: Love is reigned in, Zulawski's attempt to make a specifically French film. Perhaps in the end, tho' the French find love all encompassing, for Zulawski it's not a visionary space. The end of love, for sure: Possession is about the death of a relationship as a private apocalypse that seems eventually to become public. Mad Love approaches this--it does seem that love has driven everyone to unrestrained anarchy, a desire to burn down everything--but because it's all within the familiar context of gangsters and organized crime, with young actors who act even younger, it has trouble reaching that same metaphysical quality. It's less apocalyptic than fatalistic like many French crime dramas. Like Zulawski is heightening more prosaic material rather than existing at the extremes of life and death.

Even at his wildest, Zulawski seems unable to overcome French refinement and taste. Zulawski seems to thrive in an atmosphere more solid, rough, earthy. Not as much in chateaus or Parisian apartments, with their drawing rooms and small kitchens. Even the acting in these two French movies is less expressive, less like the interpretive dance the three early Polish films and Possession aspire to. But, again, these are only two films. Maybe his other French films will give the lie to everything I've said. The above is just my attempt to account for why I felt less engaged with them when Possession and the three early Polish films captured me so intensely.

[MichaelB]

It's pretty clear that Żuławski would have preferred to stay in Poland - despite his second feature The Devil being banned outright (and ultimately for sixteen years) and his third feature The Most Important Thing: Love being a gargantuan blockbuster in France (albeit, interestingly, not elsewhere; it didn't even open in the UK), he initially opted not to carry on making films in France and return to Poland, and it was only when On the Silver Globe was humiliatingly cancelled before production had ended that he realised that there was no future for him there, at least under the Communist government.

But he kept getting drawn back to Polish and/or Slavic subjects, be they Boris Godunov, the life of Chopin (The Blue Note) or a novel by Witold Gombrowicz (Cosmos, plus of course the all-Polish Szamanka, so it's safe to assume that that's where his heart always lay.

[criterionsnob]

MOC are rereleasing On the Silver Globe as a standalone, with a much nicer cover.

[DeprongMori]

MOC are rereleasing On the Silver Globe as a standalone, with a much nicer cover.

Do we know whether the standalone On the Silver Globe includes a booklet?

(It seems that it does come with a booklet.)

[beamish14]

MOC are rereleasing On the Silver Globe as a standalone, with a much nicer cover.

I have this Polish one-sheeted framed in my office. I had intended to ask Zulawski to sign it when he came to the Los Angeles stop for his North American retrospective, but he never made it to the States

[Telstar]

Finally got around to watching the MOC edition of The Third Part of the Night and was shocked to find it looking so desaturated I often felt like I was watching On the Silver Globe. Has there been any sort of controversy over the color grading?

[MichaelB]

Original cinematographer Witold Sobociński oversaw the restoration, and if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me.

It's also worth adding that the restorations of The Third Part of the Night and On the Silver Globe were carried out by different companies and different people, the only common thread being that the original cinematographers were involved in both cases (Andrzej Jaroszewicz supervising Silver Globe).

Incidentally, I saw your post in the other place, where you compared it to your old DVD... but on what grounds are you assuming that that's an accurate presentation, given the notoriously poor quality of analogue SD masters in Poland before the trend for director/cinematographer-approved restorations really got going in the 2010s?

[Telstar]

I suppose it's not so much a case of my feeling the old DVD's presentation is more "accurate" as it is my having lived with it so long that I'm just not all that comfortable with the extremely cool, pale color scheme of the newer MOC release. Maybe I'll get used to it, maybe not, but in any event I was curious about the reasoning behind the shift and other folks' reactions to it. Your explanation that Sobociński oversaw the restoration at least helps clear up some of my issues.