Mosfilm's brand new restoration of Elem Klimov's war drama
Come and See (1985) has won the Best Restored Film Award at Venice Classics. The restoration was overseen by Karen Shakhnazarov.
Currently, no preliminary plans have been made public for an upcoming North American Blu-ray release of the new restoration.
Synopsis: A crowning achievement of 1980's Soviet cinema, Elem Klimov's
Come and See is perhaps the ultimate WWII film. This savage and lyrical fever dream of death, rage and terror experienced through young eyes is a virtual primer for the subsequent, similarly psychedelic intensity of Terrence Malick's
The Thin Red Line and Spielberg's
Saving Private Ryan. Klimov's elegant, harrowing union of unflinching ferocity and dreamlike clarity moved
Empire of the Sun author J.G. Ballard to declare
Come and See's nimble balance of the sordid with the elegiac makes Peckinpah's Cross of Iron seem like Newsies.
When young Florya willingly joins a group of Partisans fighting the Nazis in Byelorussa, USSR, he little suspects that he is plunging through the looking glass. Separated from his comrades during a paratroop attack and struck deaf by German artillery, Florya - in the company of Glascha, a beguiling peasant girl - wanders a battle-scorched Russian purgatory of prehistoric forests and man-made slaughter. Florya's journey takes him and us through a gallery of exquisitely poetic imagery and brutal human atrocity.
Unlike traditional war films,
Come and See never stoops to convenient heroic catharsis or genre movie narrative symmetry. Images of a beautiful girl's impromptu dance in the rain and an SS unit's spontaneous, self-congratulatory applause at their own butchery haunt with equal power. More than any other war film,
Come and See unites the powerful truths and inescapable dilemmas that lurk behind both the raptures of youth and the horrors of war.
BRAND NEW AND RECENT RESTORATIONS SCREENED AT VENEZIA CLASSICI
Les baliseurs du désert / El-haimoune (Wanderers of the Desert)
by Nacer Khemir (Tunisie, France, 1984, 95', COL.)
Restoration: Cinémathèque royale de Belgique
Batch '81
by Mike De Leon (Philippines, 1982, 108', COL.)
Restoration: Asian Film Archive
Cerný Petr (Black Peter)
by Miloš Forman (Czechoslovakia, 1963, 89', B/W)
Restoration: Národní filmový archiv
Chikamatsu monogatari (A Story from Chikamatsu)
by Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1954, 102', B/W)
Restoration: Kadokawa Corporation, The Film Foundation with the cooperation of The Japan Foundation
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
by Steven Spielberg (USA, 1977, 137', COL.)
Restoration: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Cousin, Cousine
Jean Rouch / France (1985-1987)
Restoration: Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, with the cooperation of Fondation Jean Rouch
Daïnah la métisse
by Jean Grémillon (France, 1932, 48', B/W)
followed by Zéro de conduite – rushes by Jean Vigo (France, 1933, 20', B/W)
Restoration: Gaumont with the support of Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée
Il deserto rosso (Red Desert)
by Michelangelo Antonioni (Italy, 1964, 120', COL.)
Restoration: CSC-Cineteca Nazionale with the cooperation of RTI-Mediaset
Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (Two or Three Things I Know About Her)
by Jean-Luc Godard (France, 1967, 87', COL.)
Restoration: Argos Films with the support of Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée
La donna scimmia (The Ape Woman)
by Marco Ferreri (Italy, France, 1964, 93', B/W)
Restoration: Cineteca di Bologna and TF1 Studio with the cooperation of Surf Film
Idi i smotri (Come and See)
by Elem Klimov (USSR, 1985, 143', COL.)
Restoration: Mosfilm (producer of the restoration, Karen Shakhnazarov)
Into the Night
by John Landis (USA, 1985, 115', COL.)
Restoration: Universal Pictures
Non c'è pace tra gli ulivi (Under the Olive Tree)
by Giuseppe De Santis (Italy, 1950, 107', B/W)
Restoration: CSC-Cineteca Nazionale with the cooperation of CristaldiFilm by Zeudi Araya and Massimo Cristaldi
Novecento (1900)
by Bernardo Bertolucci (Italy, 1976, 317', COL.)
Restoration: 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Istituto Luce - Cinecittà and Cineteca di Bologna, with the cooperation of Alberto Grimaldi and the support of Massimo Sordella
Ochazuke no Aji (Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice)
by Yasujiro Ozu (Japan, 1952, 115', B/W)
Restoration: Shochiku Co., Ltd.
L'oeil du malin(The Third Lover)
by Claude Chabrol (France, 1962, 91', B/W)
Restoration: Studiocanal with the support of Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée
The Old Dark House
by James Whale (USA, 1933, 72', B/W)
Restoration: Cohen Film Collection / Cohen Media Group
The Revolt of Mamie Stover
by Raoul Walsh (USA, 1956, 93', COL.)
Restoration: 20th Century Fox
Rosita (Pre-opening film)
by Ernst Lubitsch
Restoration: The Museum of Modern Art with the support of Louis B. Mayer Foundation, RT
Features, The Film Foundation, and Celeste Bartos Preservation Fund / USA (1923) / 97'
Sansho dayu (Sansho the Bailiff)
by Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1954, 126', B/W)
Restoration: Kadokawa Corporation, The Film Foundation with the cooperation of The Japan Foundation