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Is it a Rossellini War Trilogy set or a multi-director War Trilogy set with Open City included? The email response was vague, and the pending Japanese Horror set seems to indicate that they may do multi-director sets in the future.

Bete_Noire wrote:Is it a Rossellini War Trilogy set or a multi-director War Trilogy set with Open City included? The email response was vague, and the pending Japanese Horror set seems to indicate that they may do multi-director sets in the future.

There isn't any "War Trilogy" that includes Open City and some other directors' films, there's only the "War Trilogy" with Paisa and Germany Year Zero. Very unlikely this would be an Eclipse release in my opinion: it would be like throwing away Breathless in a 'Miscellaneous Films of the Nouvelle Vague' Eclipse set.

Zedz pointed it out, Germany Year Zero, Paisan, and Open City. Not surprise here. What is great is that we should see a bunch of Visconti's from Image Entertainment coming. Rocco, La Terra trema, Ossessione, etc... I think 2009 will be the year of neorealism. Hopefully, they will spill out the catalog titles, Miracle in Milan and Bitter Rice too. I think they really need more representation over Italian cinema in their collection.

Does anyone know who might release Il Generale della Rovere? It's not Rossellini's best by any stretch of the imagination (Paisan is such a perfectly contained yet expansive narrative; sketches that break boundaries), but I've always enjoyed it, and it would be a good addition to their seemingly renewed interested in his work.

EDIT: Also, who's got dibs on Luigi Comencini's "Bread, Love and Dreams?" Supposed to be marvelous. Looks like I'm on a De Sica-as-actor kick...

There are decent materials available. After all, there was that Rossellini retrospective two years ago. I saw Rome: Open City then and remember the print being in good condition.

I imagine we'll get The Last Command as a full special edition, with an Eclipse set of Underworld, The Docks of New York, and maybe Thunderbolt (completing an Early Josef von Sternberg box).

...really stoked about the Rossellini films. I've been dying to see more of his films for ages; and nothing doing, until next year. I'm sure by 2010, someone will be complaining about too much Rossellini.

I wouldn't mind more Italian comedies. There is some great films not on DVD in R1:

Mario Monicelli's For Love and Gold and La Grande guerra
De Sica's Marriage-Italian Style
Dino Risi's The Easy Life, Scent of a Woman and I Mostri
Ettore Scola's Ugly, Dirty and Bad and We All Loved Each Other So Much
Luciano Salce's Fantozzi

and as pointed out above, Luigi Comencini's Bread, Love and Dreams.

There is absolutely no way that the Rossellini war trilogy would be on eclipse. Zedz's Breathless analogy is spot on. It'll be a stacked Criterion. Hopefully they won't pull an Ophuls and release them all separately.

Of course, let's see, I just read news of this release here today ... that means that I'll probably have the box in my hands ... sometime in April 2011.

While we're on this kick, I saw a much too little known film last night at the Film Forum: Luigi Comencini's Everybody Go Home (1960), about a group of deserting soldiers trying to get home amid the chaos following Italy's surrender in 1943. It's one of the most sure-footed seriocomedies I've ever seen, constantly alternating scenes of physical comedy and stark violence without ever seeming tasteless.

Let's throw that in with some of those mentioned above for a post-neorealist Italian Eclipse set.

What A Disgrace wrote:I imagine we'll get The Last Command as a full special edition, with an Eclipse set of Underworld, The Docks of New York, and maybe Thunderbolt (completing an Early Josef von Sternberg box).

Pretty much what I think too.

Speaking of Italians I'd like to know when the Scorsese shorts are hitting us.

I'd love to see an Eclipse set of De Sica's early films, pre-"Children are watching us". They seem to be worthwhile: I saw a lavish six-disc box of them in a store when I was in Italy, which I would have bought immediately if it only had had English subs. So these films are apparently easily available, and CC could simply clone the transfers and put subs on.

Throwing Last Command on CC with extras but leaving something like Docks or Underworld to an extras free box feels sorta random (hey I'm not complaining, but it's not like Command is any more highly regarded or desired than particularly Docks of NY.. it's not something anyone would have expected in advance). Perhaps it has something to do with the existence of outtakes or preexisting supplemental material that would make Command a logical choice.

I will say, visually, Command is the first film that feels like a warm-up for the impending Deitrich cycle of films.

mteller wrote:I'm baffled by the affection for Summer Interlude (unless it's just typical cf.org contrarianism). It's got nice photography, but it runs pretty shallow. The WTF animated moment is really out of place too.

My most-wanted unreleased (in region 1, at least) Bergmans are The Magician, In the Presence of a Clown, Summer With Monika, Brink of Life, Secret of Women and Face to Face. But I'd be really happy to see an Eclipse set of Bergman's televised plays somewhere down the line. I just watched Markisinnan de Sade last night and it's fantastic.

Is there non-region 1 editions of these films?:
In the Presence of a Clown
Brink of Life
Secret of Women
Face to Face
Markisinnan de Sade

I think I don't have them(maybe I have some, I don't know all the titles in english). I'm trying to get everything available from Bergman...

I heard about a polish edition of face to face but I wasn't able to get a link to order it or just have some infos...)

I think "In the presence of a clown" is out in Spain, but only with Spanish subs. "Brink of Life" is out in Norway or Sweden, with English subs. "Secrets of women" is out in Germany as "Sehnsucht der Frauen" (no English subs) and is also in the UK Tartan edition. They called it "Waiting women".
The Polish "Face to Face" has an English dub, but no English subs, IIRC. And "Markisinnan", like most of Bergman's TV films, seems to be completely unavailable.

Tommaso wrote:I think "In the presence of a clown" is out in Spain, but only with Spanish subs. "Brink of Life" is out in Norway or Sweden, with English subs. "Secrets of women" is out in Germany as "Sehnsucht der Frauen" (no English subs) and is also in the UK Tartan edition. They called it "Waiting women".
The Polish "Face to Face" has an English dub, but no English subs, IIRC. And "Markisinnan", like most of Bergman's TV films, seems to be completely unavailable.

Wow thanks for the infos
Is there a site who ship in North America (to order "Brink of life" and other dvds) from Sweden or Norway?

In memory of Tati's birthday, TCM played many of his films last night, including Jour de fete which had Janus logos at the beginning, how long has this been waiting to come out? Has it been since they first released the Hulot films that they have had this on their "to do list"?

psufootball07 wrote:In memory of Tati's birthday, TCM played many of his films last night, including Jour de fete which had Janus logos at the beginning, how long has this been waiting to come out? Has it been since they first released the Hulot films that they have had this on their "to do list"?

It will be out someday. Look how long we had to wait for the originial three to be released.I mean, Playtime took forever. After watching Jour de Fete last night IMO I didn't feel it was as good as the other Tati's in the collection. I did watch M. Hulot's Holiday after JDF and laughed my ass off.

any chance Corbucci's "The Great Silence" (Il Grande silenzio) will surface in the collection? the film is a masterpiece (could use its own thread) and needs an upgrade.

aox wrote:any chance Corbucci's "The Great Silence" (Il Grande silenzio) will surface in the collection? the film is a masterpiece (could use its own thread) and needs an upgrade.

Fantoma released this film sometime back. It is still in print and available for $15.00

HerrSchreck wrote:I will say, visually, Command is the first film that feels like a warm-up for the impending Deitrich cycle of films.

Slightly OT: is that R1 Dietrich two-disc set with Blonde Venus, Morocco, et al. worth buying? I've heard mixed things about the transfers and I'm not too hot on double-sided discs..

I own it and unless you're going to grab the mega box in R2, it's the one to own.

You've been misled on the transfers. They're fabulous.

JonoQ wrote:It's definitely The Last Command and it will have the Alloy Orchestra soundtrack on it. After a screening earlier this week at the New York Film Festival, a guy from Alloy was selling CDs in the lobby. Someone asked if they could buy the Last Command music and the Alloy guy said that it would be available on Criterion in about a year.

Also, Alloy is playing live in Chicago on October 27th with "Underworld" so maybe a box set wouldn't be out of the question? Or at least dual releases?

What do you think the chances are of seeing A Brief History of Time entering the collection? It has never seen a region 1 release to my knowledge and I can only imagine the sort of sweet extras that the disc could have, such as the making of film and maybe some of Morris' lesser seen short films.

DRSchwarz wrote:What do you think the chances are of seeing A Brief History of Time entering the collection?

Under the right circumstances, this release would give a whole new meaning to "region coding"