Independent British distributors Eureka Entertainment have revealed that they are planning to add five titles to their Masters of Cinema series between June and July: Kaneto Shindo's
The Naked Island (1960) and
Kuroneko (1968), F.W. Murnau's
Tabu (1931), D.W. Griffith's
The Birth of a Nation (1915), and Jacques Rivette's
Le Pont du Nord (1981).
The Naked Island
Filmed on the virtually deserted Setonaikai archipelago in south-west Japan, The Naked Island was made — in the words of its director — "as a 'cinematic poem' to try and capture the life of human beings struggling like ants against the forces of nature". Kaneto Shindo, director of Onibaba (MoC #13) and Kuroneko (MoC #14), made the film with his own production company, Kindaï Eiga Kyokai, who were facing financial ruin at the time. Using one-tenth of the average budget, Shindo took one last impassioned risk to make this film. With his small crew, they relocated to an inn on the island of Mihari where, for two months in early 1960, they would make what they considered to be their last film.
The Naked Island tells the story of a small family unit and their subsistence as the only inhabitants of an arid, sun-baked island. Daily chores, captured as a series of cyclical events, result in a hypnotising, moving, and beautiful film harkening back to the silent era. With hardly any dialogue, Shindo combines the stark 'Scope cinematography of Kiyoshi Kuroda with the memorable score of his constant collaborator Hikaru Hayashi, to make a unique cinematic document.
Shindo, who had worked with both Kenji Mizoguchi and Kon Ichikawa, shot to international fame with the astounding Children of Hiroshima (1952). Eight years later, the BAFTA-nominated The Naked Island won the Grand Prix at Moscow International Film Festival (where Luchino Visconti was a jury member). It is now considered to be one of Shindo's major works, and its success saved his film company from bankruptcy. The experience of making The Naked Island led Shindo to appreciate 'collective film production', and has been his preferred method of making films ever since. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to release The Naked Island for the first time on home video in the UK.
Special Features:
- Full-length audio commentary by director Kaneto Shindo and composer Hikaru Hayashi
- Video introduction by Alex Cox
- Optional English subtitles
- Production stills gallery
- 24-page booklet with a new essay by Acquarello, and a reprint of Joan Mellen's interview with Shindo from Voices from the Japanese Cinema
Kuroneko
Kaneto Shindo's Kuroneko — released to great acclaim in 1968 — is a sparse, atmospheric horror story, ascribing to the director's philosophy of using beauty and purity to evoke emotion. Eccentric and more overtly supernatural than its breakthrough companion piece,
Onibaba (1964), Kuroneko revisits similar themes to reveal a haunting meditation on duty, conformity, and love.
In this magnificently eerie and romantic film — loosely based on the Japanese folktale The Cat's Return — a mother and daughter-in-law (Nobuko Otowa & Kiwako Taichi) are raped and murdered by pillagers, but return from the dead as vampiric cat spirits intent on revenge. As the ghosts lure soldiers into the bamboo groves, a fearless samurai, Gintoki (Kichiemon Nakamura), is sent to stop their reign of terror.
Kuroneko remains a standout film of the kaidan eiga genre of period ghost stories often based on old legends or kabuki plays. Marking Shindo's first use of wire work as Yone and Shige battle against samurai blades, the film is subtly complimented by Kiyomi Kuroda's award-winning chiaroscuro cinematography, Hikaru Hayashi's vibrant score, and riveting performances from many of the greatest actors of Japan's Golden Age of film.
Special Features:
- Newly restored high-definition transfer
- Optional English subtitles (new translation)
- Production stills gallery using Toho promotional material
- 24-page booklet with a new essay by Doug Cummings, and a reprint of a vintage interview with Shindo by Joan Mellen
Tabu
In 1929 on the island of Bora Bora, which is still untouched by the hand of civilization, young lovers Matahi and Reri frolic in a waterfall. The islanders then run to greet Tabu, an envoy from the Chief of Fanuma, who has come to name Reri the successor to the island's sacred virgin. When the heartbroken Reri is brought before Tabu, he decrees, "Man must not touch her or cast upon her the eye of desire...from this time forth she is tabu. To break this tabu means death."
Special Features:
- New transfer of the Murnau-Stiftung / Luciano Berriatúa 75th anniversary restoration of the pre-Paramount, longer Murnau-approved version of the film, with uncensored scenes and titlecards, appearing in its original 1.19:1 aspect ratio for the first time
- Full-length commentary track by R. Dixon Smith and Brad Stevens
- 15-minute German documentary about Tabu by Luciano Berriatúa
- Newly presented outtakes from the original shoot of the film
- Treibjagd in der Südsee (1940) - an archival short film
- 56-page Booklet with articles by Scott Eyman, Richard Griffiths, and David Flaherty; an interview with the film's cinematographer, Floyd Crosby; and the original story treatments written by Murnau and Flaherty for Tabu and its aborted predecessor Turia.
Le Pont du Nord
The culmination of New Wave master Jacques Rivette's legendary middle period (which ranged from L'Amour fou through Out 1, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Duelle, Noroît, and Merry-Go-Round), Le Pont du Nord envisions Paris as a sprawling game-board marked off with tucked-away conspiracies, where imagination and paranoia intermingle; where the hinted-at stakes are sanity, life, and death.
Regular Rivette actress Bulle Ogier stars as Marie, a claustrophobic ex-con who, shortly after wandering into Paris, encounters the wild and potentially troubled young woman Baptiste (Pascale Ogier, Bulle's actual 22-year-old daughter). Baptiste, a knife-wielding, self-proclaimed kung-fu expert with a drive to slash the eyes from faces in adverts (including, in one instance, those on a placard for Akira Kurosawa's Kagemusha), accompanies Marie on her quest to solve the mystery behind the contents of her former lover's (Pierre Clémenti's) suitcase: an amalgam of clippings, patterns, and maps of Paris that points to a vastly unsettling labyrinth replete with signs and intimations whose menacing endgame remains all too unclear.
Gorgeously shot by the master cinematographer William Lubtchansky, Le Pont du Nord is a free-wheeling, powerful experience whose hypnotic rhythm and ominous undercurrents resolve into a frightening and exhilarating portrait of post-revolutionary, early-'80s Paris - and in turn form a prime example of Rivette's uncanny, occult cinema. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Jacques Rivette's rare and essential feature Le Pont du Nord on Blu-ray for the first time anywhere in the world.
Special Features:
- Gorgeous new 1080p presentation of the film in its original 1.37:1 aspect ratio
- Optional English subtitles
- A lengthy booklet with writing about the film by Arthur Mas, Andy Rector, Serge Daney, and Caroline Champetier; writing from the original press-book by Jacques Rivette, and Jean Narboni; rare archival imagery; and more!
The Birth of a Nation
Both celebrated as a landmark achievement in the development of film form and reviled for its racist characterisations and affirmation of the Ku Klux Klan, D W Griffith's epic account of the American Civil War and its aftermath is still one of the most controversial films ever made. It tells the story of two families, the Stonemans from the North and the Camerons from the South, and the way in which they are both caught up in the turmoil which befalls a sleepy Deep South town when Northern Abolitionists threaten to outlaw the slave trade which has existed there for years. Things go from bad to worse when Ben Cameron's little sister dies at the hands of Gus, a black farmhand, and Ben dons a Ku Klux Klan mask both to avenge her death and to come to the rescue of his beloved girlfriend (Lillian Gish), who has been kidnapped by a corrupt mixed-race governor.
Special Features:
- Music by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra in 2.0 stereo and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
- Short archival introductions to the film by D. W. Griffith and Walter Huston
- Newly rediscovered original intermission sequence and 1930 re-release title sequence
- Seven Civil War shorts directed by Griffith:
- In the Border States (1910)
- The House with Closed Shutters (1910)
- The Fugitive (1910)
- His Trust (1910)
- His Trust Fulfilled (1910)
- Swords and Hearts (1911)
- The Battle (1911)
- A lengthy booklet with writing about the film, rare archival imagery, and more.