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Oldrich Lipsky's comedy classic is coming in March.

• Happy End (Šťastný konec, 1967) presented from a new 4K restoration by the Czech National Film Archive.
• A Projection Booth audio commentary with Mike White, Kat Ellinger and Ben Buckingham.
• Cerise Howard on ‘Happy End’: a new video essay by the film critic and Program Director of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival
• Booklet featuring a new essay by Jonathan Owen.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• World premiere release on Blu-ray.
• Region free Blu-ray (A/B/C)

I was wondering when we'd get the next announcement!

cover:

Spoiler

We are living in a Lipsky Renaissance and I for one couldn’t be happier. My thoughts on Happy End are generally positive and as my first Lipsky it holds a special place in my heart so I am happy to revisit it. Based off my recollection I feel like Lipsky’s biggest accomplishment is that it’s a film that so cleverly works it with it’s gimmick that any other strategy would had just weakened the film. Lipsky’s cinematic play is at has arguably best and almost feels like this is a film from an alternate universe with how utterly unique it gets in it’s plot structure. And this in large part is aided by this dry deadpan narration over the film which gives the film a sophisticated wit when paired with the almost childlike imagination in the visuals. I just hope someone does Gentlemen I Killed Einstein now.

It’s cool to see Cerise Howard contributing a special feature to this disc. Possibly the single most dedicated proponent of Czech and Slovak cinema in the Antipodes.

Full details now at our website

"An uproariously funny film. Short, sharp and inventive, it’s an absolute treat. [...] I can’t recommend HAPPY END enough. It’s weird, wonderful and an absolute riot. Anyone with a taste for the unusual and absurd should pick this up as soon as possible."

Blueprint: Review

I expected to have problems with this film but was surprised with how easy it was to fall into its reverse narrative. After watching the film I decided to watch it in reverse order (by going to the fire scene and pressing rewind). This way the film narrative becomes clearer even without the dialogue.

"In its playful games with narrative and film form, its excursions down surprisingly profound philosophical alleys and abidingly macabre tone... HAPPY END perfectly matches the tenor of its times while still feeling bracingly fresh today. The fact that it's frequently laugh-out-loud funny doesn't hurt. [...] this looks immaculate, the sepia-tinted monochrome cinematography true to the original release."

Michael Brooke reviews Oldřich Lipský's HAPPY END in the latest Sight and Sound magazine

"A unique cinematic artifact... HAPPY END is a one-off... a sly and incisive experimental excursion and interrogation of cinematic processes, HAPPY END is an idiosyncratic cinematic treasure [...] brilliant in its in its offbeat conception, plotting, filming, and performances. Best of all it is a hilarious black comedy"

James B Evans wonderful, expansive review in the current Cineaste Magazine.

I really enjoyed this. It took me a little while to acclimate to what it's doing in terms of the forward moving narration misinterpreting the events occurring, which can sometimes mix strangely with dialogue moving backwards along with the action, but that's just one of the film's many strengths. There's a variety of strong gags at play here, some just in those moments of awkwardly-phrased reverse wordplay, but they're so layered. The contrast of jokes come from the actual story, the context of the story reversed, the unreliable narration, and then its own context of self-reflexivity where the film must be a starting point, so we're to imagine the main character as both a baby discovering his own life and the man in the film who's already lived a life the other direction.

Spoiler

I loved the running joke of our antihero 'narrator' developing more resentment and psychopathic tendencies as the film progresses into places where his corporeal '(ostensible) self' was in better spirits and standing

Despite the Russian-doll nature of its all-angles cleverness, the complexities deliver a smooth product of surface-level bits. I was often reminded of Kind Hearts and Coronets' deadpan black comedy while watching