Great Directors, Vol. 1

By Cyril Pearl -- Video Business, 11/10/2008

KINO
Street: Dec. 9
Prebook: Nov. 11
> Five good films from five great international filmmakers.

Kino International boxes five of its finest foreign-language catalog titles for this collection. It’s really missing the point to talk about which film is the “best,” particularly when the quintet is comprised of Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (1975), Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il Grido (1957), Claude Chabrol’s Les Bonnes Femmes (1960) and Volker Schlöndorff’s Circle of Deceit (1981). It is worth noting that of the five filmmakers, two are still living. And both Schlöndorff and the 78-year-old Chabrol are still active as ever, both having produced features over the past year that saw theatrical release.

Shelf Talk: All the films in this collection have been issued previously by Kino over the past several years, so the main appeal here is the tempting price point, which makes the box a good holiday gift for your favorite cinephile. And if there are retailers looking to bone up on their foreign near-classics section, then now would be the time to take advantage of this well-priced reissue.

Foreign-language drama, color/B&W, NR (mature themes, some violence, sexual situations), 600 min., DVD $79.95
Extras: featurettes, interviews, more
Directors: Andrei Tarkovsky, Akira Kurosawa, Michelangelo Antonioni, Claude Chabrol, Volker Schlöndorff
First Run: L Int’l., 1957-80, NA