Some info on our forthcoming releases, the first in the Arrow Academy range.
Bicycle Thieves
28th March 2011
Heralded as the greatest film ever made on release, winning an Oscar in 1949 and topping the Sight & Sound film poll in 1952, De Sica’s seminal work of Italian neorealism has had an impact on cinema worldwide from release to the present day, with filmmakers such as Satyajit Ray and Ken Loach claiming the film as a direct influence on their own.
Bicycle Thieves tells the story of Antonio, a long unemployed man who finally finds employment putting up cinema posters for which he needs a bicycle. His wife pawns all the family linen to redeem the already pawned bicycle and for Antonio salvation has come, until the bicycle is stolen. Antonio and his son take to the streets in a desperate search.
Bicycle Thieves is as much about the position of Italians in post-War, post-Fascist Italy as the relationship between father and son, told through the labyrinth of the cinematic city with De Sica’s arresting visual poetry. Defining neorealism, a small period of filmmaking that focused on simple, humanist stories,
Bicycle Thieves was one of the most captivating and moving.
Arrow Academy presents Vittorio De Sica’s masterpiece on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary by Robert Gordon, Italian cinema expert and author of Bicycle Thieves (BFI Film Classics)
- ‘Cesare Zavattini’ a feature length documentary by director Carlo Lizzani on the great screenwriter, novelist, critic, long time De Sica collaborator and founder of Italian neorealism
- ‘Timeless Cinema’, a documentary portrait of director, actor and screenwriter Vittorio De Sica
- Original Trailer
- Booklet including brand new writing on the film and a reprint of Cesare Zavattini’s ‘Some Ideas on the Cinema’, illustrated with original Lobby Cards and stills
- Artwork presentation packaging including original posters and a newly commissioned artwork cover
Les diaboliques
18th April 2011
After the success of
The Wages of Fear (Le salaire de la peur) Henri-Georges Clouzot cemented his reputation with his masterpiece,
Les diaboliques.
Based on a novel by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (who also wrote the novel on which Hitchcock’s
Vertigo is based),
Les diaboliques tells the story of a sadistic headmaster (Paul Meurisse) who brutalises his wife and mistress (Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret) and their plot to murder him. Superbly edited with nail-biting suspense, the two women murder the headmaster and dump the body in the swimming pool, but when the pool is drained no corpse is found. An unsettling and beautifully-paced study of betrayal, mistrust and guilt, Les diaboliques is atmospherically shot in black and white, its murky tones hauntingly echo the moral ambiguity of its principals.
An acknowledged influence on Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick among others,
Les diaboliques is presented on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK.
Special Features:
- Brand new High Definition transfer of the film from a new restoration of the original negative
- Audio commentary by Susan Hayward, author of Les diaboliques (Cine-file French Film Guides)
- Filmed interview with Ginette Vincendeau, French cinema scholar, critic and author
- Original Trailer
- Brand new writing on the film by author and critic Brad Stevens and a re-printed interview with Clouzot by Paul Schrader illustrated with stills and rare original set drawings by Léon Barsacq.
- Artwork presentation packaging including original posters and a newly commissioned artwork cover
