Wellspring Home Video

Breathless

The movie that heralded the French New Wave movement, this lean and exciting 1959 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman, Weekend) broke new ground not only in its unorthodox use of editing and hand-held photography, but in its unflinching and nonjudgmental portrayal of amoral youth. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play two young lovers on the run from the law after Belmondo kills a cop and steals a car. Soon they are on an odyssey through the streets of Paris searching for some money he is owed so that he and his American girlfriend can escape to Italy. As a chase picture it features some startling photography on the streets of Paris, but as a romance it defies expectations, existing as part tragedy and part Bonnie and Clyde crime movie. The result is a wholly original film experience. Inspiring not only a remake starring Richard Gere but numerous films and television series, Breathless is an essential part of motion picture history. --Robert Lane

Russian Ark: The Masterworks Edition

Russian master Alexander Sokurov has tapped into the very flow of history itself for this flabbergasting film. Thanks to the miracles of digital video, Sokurov (and cinematographer Tilman Buttner) uses a single, unbroken, 90-minute shot to wind his way through the Hermitage in St. Petersburg--the repository of Russian art and the former home to royalty. Gliding through time, we glimpse Catherine II, modern-day museumgoers, and the doomed family of Nicholas II. History collapses on itself, as the opulence of the past and the horrors of the 20th century collide, and each door that opens onto yet another breathtaking gallery is another century to be heard from. The movie climaxes with a grand ball and thousands of extras, prompting thoughts of just how crazy Sokurov had to be to try a technical challenge like this--and how far a distance we've traveled, both physically and spiritually, since the movie began. --Robert Horton

A modern filmmaker magically finds himself transported to the 18th century, where he embarks on a time-traveling journey through 300 years of Russian history in Alexander Sokurov's masterpiece. Filmed in HD with directors commentary

In the Realms of the Unreal - The Mystery of Henry Darger

Henry Darger, an elderly recluse, spent his childhood in Illinois's asylum for feeble-minded children and his adulthood working as a janitor. He lived a quiet, nearly solitary existence, but his imaginary life was exciting, colorful and sexually provocative. When he died in Chicago in 1973, his landlady discovered in his room 300 paintings, some over 10 feet long, and a 15,000-page illustrated novel (The Realms of the Unreal), which told the epic story of the virtuous Vivian Girls leading a child slave revolt against the evil Glandelinians. Featuring Dakota Fanning (Hide and Seek) and Larry Pine (The Royal Tenenbaums) as narrators and imaginative animation of Darger's work, Oscar® winner Jessica Yu (Breathing Lessons) brings to life one of the twentieth century's greatest self-taught artists.

La Notte

Continuing the "alienation trilogy" that began with L'Avventura and ended with L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte is a visually arresting, emotionally numbing exercise in chronic ennui. The film's anesthetizing effect is entirely intentional; Antonioni's central couple (Marcello Mastroianni as a self-absorbed novelist, Jeanne Moreau as his bored and wealthy wife) wallow in their own emotional desolation, constantly drifting--and in Moreau's case, literally drifting--from one disaffected scene to the next. Antonioni's pained study of modern detachment is richly supported by his visuals, often placing his isolated characters in a harsh landscape of empty glamor and even emptier emotions. Driving the point home is Monica Vitti as Marcello's would-be mistress; in their aimless lassitude, neither can muster the necessary passion. It's all too superficial to register with any lasting dramatic impact, but La Notte remains the fascinating work of a master, redefining how movies reflect the many facets of humanity. --Jeff Shannon

Antonioni's study of alienation and moral decay chronicles a day in the life of a middle-class couple whose marriage has been destroyed by mutual indifference and impenetrable loneliness.

Ran (Masterworks Edition)

As critic Roger Ebert observed in his original review of Ran, this epic tragedy might have been attempted by a younger director, but only the Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, who made the film at age 75, could bring the requisite experience and maturity to this stunning interpretation of Shakespeare's King Lear. It's a film for the ages--one of the few genuine screen masterpieces--and arguably serves as an artistic summation of the great director's career. In this version of the Shakespeare tragedy, the king is a 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai as Lord Hidetora) who decides to retire and divide his kingdom evenly among his three sons. When one son defiantly objects out of loyalty to his father and warns of inevitable sibling rivalry, he is banished and the kingdom is awarded to his compliant siblings. The loyal son's fears are valid: a duplicitous power struggle ensues and the aging warlord witnesses a maelstrom of horrifying death and destruction. Although the film is slow to establish its story, it's clear that Kurosawa, who planned and painstakingly designed the production for 10 years before filming began, was charting a meticulous and tightly formalized dramatic strategy. As familial tensions rise and betrayal sends Lord Hidetora into the throes of escalating madness, Ran (the title is the Japanese character for "chaos" or "rebellion") reaches a fever pitch through epic battles and a fortress assault that is simply one of the most amazing sequences on film. --Jeff Shannon

Breaker Morant

Before coming to America to make such acclaimed films as Tender Mercies and Driving Miss Daisy, Australian director Bruce Beresford made a lasting impression with this compelling courtroom drama, considered one the finest films of the Australian new wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Based on a true story about three soldiers in the Boer War who are served up as political scapegoats of the British Empire, the film uses a flashback structure to dramatize the courtroom testimony. It begins when the three Australian soldiers are railroaded for the justified killing of a German missionary and placed on trial for court-martial not as a matter of justice, but to mollify the German government for the sake of political expediency. Burdened with a competent but inexperienced and hopelessly disadvantaged lawyer, the soldiers realize that their fate has been sealed and the outcome of their trial is a fait accompli. Unfolding with urgent precision and a riveting focus on its well-drawn characters, Breaker Morant was the all-time box-office hit in Australia at the time of its release in 1980, and it remains one of the very best historical dramas ever made. --Jeff Shannon

Seducing Dr. Lewis

Seducing Dr. Lewis makes a pleasant addition to the quirky subgenre of what might be called "village comedies"--movies in which the oddball residents of a small village must work together to perpetrate some mild scam or bit of mischief (examples abound, from Waking Ned Devine to Saving Grace to Local Hero). The isolated Canadian community of St.-Marie-La-Mauderne desperately needs a new industry, but the factory they're trying to win requires a resident doctor. When a young doctor from Montreal (David Boutin) gets blackmailed into spending a month in the village, the prickly inhabitants go overboard to woo him--they learn to cook Beef Stroganoff, form a cricket team, and tap his phone. It's all a bit preposterous, but that's part of the charm; this kind of movie thrives on being just a tiny bit over the top. The daffy doings keep one foot on the ground thanks to a combination of skilled character actors (like Raymond Bouchard, who plays the town's struggling mayor) and mysterious girls (like Lucie Laurier, the beautiful postmistress). Fans of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain will find much to enjoy here. --Bret Fetzer

Put the Camera on Me

Strayed

Emmanuelle Béart gives another beautiful performance in this fable-like story of World War II. She plays a widow with two children in tow; escaping from Paris, their car is bombed in the countryside and they stagger into the woods along with a rough, savvy teenage boy (the feral Gaspard Ulliel). Their idyll in an abandoned chateau takes up the remainder of the film, as various tensions simmer within this ad hoc family unit. Director Andre Techine (Wild Reeds, Scene of the Crime) is a master of the small, telling moment and the frailty of people in a natural landscape. He also proves, in the riveting sequence of Germans attacking the line of refugees, that he could probably make a great action film if he cared to. Along with Béart's sensuality, his treatment of hushed interiors and sympathy for the imagination of children creates an intimate arena for these lost souls. --Robert Horton

DVD extras include: 16x9 anamorphic, 5.1 sound, interviews with Andre Techine, Gaspard Ulliel & Gilles Perrault, subtitle control, storyboards, photo gallery. Set in 1940 at the beginning of France's occupation by the Germans, Strayed stars French film icon Emmanuelle Béart (Nathalie, 8 Women) as Odile, a young and beautiful widow fleeing Paris with her two children. When German planes bomb the road filled with refugees, Odile's car is destroyed and the three must escape into the woods. There they encounter Yvan (sexy newcomer Gaspard Ulliel - Brotherhood of the Wolf), a 17 year-old illiterate delinquent whose survival skills and charm soon prove indispensable. They soon take shelter in an abandoned house and become a makeshift family. Odile, at once suspicious of and attracted to the mysterious stranger, soon finds herself at the center of a fascinating set of personal and sexual dynamics. One of the most respected filmmakers in France, André Téchiné (Wild Reeds, Rendez-Vous) once again, builds on his reputation as one of the most sensitive and intelligent filmmakers working today.

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

Rainer Werner Fassbinder adapted his own play for this modern twist on The Women, the great all-female Hollywood classic of sex and social conventions in high society. Margit Carstensen is successful dress designer Petra, Irm Hermann her silent, obedient secretary/servant/Girl Friday Marlene (whom she alternately abuses and ignores), and Hanna Schygulla the callow, shallow young Karin, a seemingly naive blond beauty Petra treats as part protegée, part pet, until the calculating kitten turns on Petra. Michael Ballhaus's prowling camera finds Marlene silently hovering on the borders of Petra's dramas, looking on through doors and windows like an adoring lover from afar. Bouncing between catty melodrama and naked emotional need, it's a quintessentially Fassbinder portrait of doomed love, jealousy, and social taboos. The DVD features commentary by Fassbinder scholar Jane Shattuc, the early 1966 Fassbinder short films The City Tramp and The Little Chaos, the bonus documentary Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and filmographies. --Sean Axmaker