467 The Liberation of L.B. Jones

[MichaelB]

THE LIBERATION OF L.B. JONES
(William Wyler, 1970, 103 mins)
Release date: 18 August 2025
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK premiere)

Pre-order here.

Legendary director William Wyler (The Collector, Ben-Hur) concluded his filmmaking career with The Liberation of L.B. Jones, a searing indictment of institutional racism starring Lee J Cobb (The Dark Past), Anthony Zerbe (The Omega Man), and Roscoe Lee Browne (Cisco Pike).

When Black funeral director L B Jones (Browne) finds that his pregnant wife Emma (Lola Falana) is having an affair with white policeman Worth (Zerbe), he demands a divorce. Worth and his racist colleagues exact brutal revenge upon Jones, and conspire to cover up their actions with the assistance of the local District Attorney (Cobb)

With supporting performances from Barbara Hershey (Hannah and Her Sisters) and Yaphet Kotto (Blue Collar), and with a screenplay by Jesse Hill Ford (adapting his own novel) and Stirling Silliphant (Murphy’s War), The Liberation of L.B. Jones is a shocking tale of intolerance and injustice.

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
• Audio commentary with journalist and author Bryan Reesman and film critic and filmmaker Mike Sargent (2025)
• Neil Sinyard on ‘The Liberation of L.B. Jones’ (2025): the film historian and writer of A Wonderful Heart: The Films of William Wyler delves into the making of, and reception to, the film
• Isolated music & effects track
• Image gallery: promotional and publicity material
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Fintan McDonagh, archival interviews with writer Jesse Hill Ford and actor Roscoe Lee Brown, archival production report, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies for the UK
• All features subject to change

#PHILE467B
BBFC cert: 15
REGION B
EAN: 5060697924121

[colinr0380]

Excellent news! Serendipitously this film just came up in the recent interview with Karina Longworth in Sight & Sound ("The Last Picture Show" in the May 2025 issue) to tie in with her You Must Remember This podcast and BFI season looking at the late work of 14 major Hollywood directors in the studio era:

Can you make a distinction between your 14 directors of those who were in sync with their era and those who were still men of the studio era?

I think it's more like: who really tried to be with the times? Otto Preminger did, to extremely mixed results. Who else? William Wyler stayed relevant until the end, perhaps shockingly so. His second-to-last movie was the biggest hit of its year, Funny Girl [1968], establishing Barbara Streisand as a star. And then he goes straight from that with the same studio to making the most aggressively anti-white-supremacy movie of any film of its time made by a white man. That's not dropping acid to be cool with the kids, but it's understanding what moment you're in and trying to speak to it, both in a commercial sense with Funny Girl, and then in a moral sense with The Liberation of L.B. Jones [1970].

[beamish14]

Longworth is programming films that she discusses on this season of her podcast at the American Cinematheque, and L. B. Jones is among them (along with Kiss Me, Stupid, which I would love to hear her record a commentary for)

[MichaelB]

Final specs:

[domino harvey]

DVDBeaver (How long has Gary been using AI to write his reviews?)

[ikms]

Longworth is programming films that she discusses on this season of her podcast at the American Cinematheque, and L. B. Jones is among them (along with Kiss Me, Stupid, which I would love to hear her record a commentary for)

In natural voice or podcast affect? (which got severe enough at some point I unsubscribed)

Watched the disc last night and was mightily impressed. I can't even imagine living through the death throes of the production code where within a decade films like Liberation were getting made by a major studio. This film would cause more controversy today - violent opposition even - and has lost none of its relevance. Great interviews, booklet, and commentary as well. With that in mind the transfer is a mess, some shots (and sequences within shots) look like they had to be sourced from dire elements, but given the historical importance of the work the whole thing is crying out for an honest to goodness remaster. Is Sony bold enough to rework it for a future Columbia classics set?