New Releases for July 16 2024

PERFECT DAYS (2023) (CRITERION) 

A perfect song that hits at just the right moment, the play of sunlight through leaves, a fleeting moment of human connection in a vast metropolis: the wonders of everyday life come into breath­taking focus in this profoundly moving film by Wim Wenders. In a radiant, Cannes-award-winning performance of few words but extraordinary expressiveness, Koji Yakusho plays a public-toilet cleaner in Tokyo whose rich inner world is gradually revealed through his small exchanges with those around him and with the city itself. Channeling his idol Yasujiro Ozu, Wenders crafts a serenely minimalist ode to the miracle that is the here and now. (DVD, BLU-RAY + 4KULTRAHD)

AGAINST THE STORM: HERBERT KLINE IN A DARKENED EUROPE (1939-1942) 

Flicker Alley is proud to present a pair of new restorations of decisive and timely documentaries by filmmaker Herbert Kline from the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Crisis: A Film of "The Nazi Way" and Lights Out in Europe, both previously unavailable, now beautifully restored by MoMA, will be available in a brand-new Blu-ray Disc edition, with generous underwriting and funding from Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. The National Center for Jewish Film served as fiscal sponsor.

Herbert Kline made his breakthrough documentary Crisis: A Film of "The Nazi Way" as the storm clouds of impending war gathered over Europe in 1938. Narrated by illustrious American stage, film, and television actor, Leif Erickson, the film, which captures with evocative camerawork and ominous clarity the lead-up to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, was shot at great personal risk to Kline and his crew members. Kline, a Jew born in Chicago and raised in Iowa, was in his late 20s when he began filming in the Sudeten region bordering Germany, and took on the hair-raising task of not only passing as a Nazi sympathizer in order to complete the project, but also smuggling the footage out of the Prague airport past Gestapo guards. The result is one of the first anti-Hitler documentaries ever made, and a fascinating historical and cinematic document.In 1940, one year after filming the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Hitler's forces, 

Herbert Kline and his team traveled to Warsaw and England to pursue and document the feared Nazi invasion of Poland. Narrated by Academy Award winning actor, Frederic March, the surviving recordings of these life threatening events would serve as evidence of the outbreak of the Second World War, bringing about one of the first completed and distributed documentaries on one of the most destructive international conflicts in history; Lights Out in Europe. (BLU-RAY)

LAST STOP IN YUMA COUNTY (2023) 

While awaiting the next fuel truck at a middle-of-nowhere Arizona rest stop, a traveling young knife salesman is thrust into a high-stakes hostage situation by the arrival of two similarly stranded bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained, ill-begotten fortune. (BLU-RAY)

FRENCH REVELATIONS: FANFARE D'AMOUR/MAUVAISE GRAINE (1933/1935)

Fanfare d'amour follows Jean Rameau (Fernand Gravey) and Pierre Dupont (Julien Carette), two out-of-work musicians in search of stable employment who eventually set their sights on the female-led Tulips orchestra when they learn of two openings in the group. Jean and Pierre disguise themselves as women to audition, ultimately landing the job and joining the group as they travel, rehearse, and perform together, facing unexpected twists and turns along the way. A direct inspiration for Billy Wilder's 1959 American sensation, Some Like It Hot, Fanfare d'amour is a cinematic treat of romantic comedy, musical numbers, and a first-rate cast. The film was restored in 4K from the original 35mm nitrate fine grain and a vintage 35mm print.

Mauvaise Graine centers around Henri Pasquier (Pierre Mingand), a rich playboy who enjoys careening around Paris in his shiny Buick. When his father forces him to sell the car, Henri suffers a class-related existential crisis, and falls in with a local car theft gang in an attempt to get his Buick back. In doing so he not only learns about the underbelly of working for a living, but also falls for the sweetly seductive Jeannette (screen legend Danielle Darrieux, here only 17 years old). Billy Wilder made his directorial debut with Mauvaise Graine during a brief stay in Paris, sandwiched between his escaping the rise of Nazism in 1933 Berlin and heading to the United States via Mexico. The film is remarkable for it's use of on-location exteriors, from the streets of Paris to the port of Marseille, and Wilder's creative use of mounting cameras to cars creates a visceral aesthetic that foreshadowed French New Wave films like Breathless by about 25 years. (BLU-RAY)

SIMON, PAUL: IN RESTLESS DREAMS: THE MUSIC OF PAUL SIMON (2024)

In Restless Dreams is the definitive musical biography of Paul Simon, one of the greatest songwriters and performers in the history of rock 'n roll. Granted unprecedented access to the making of his latest album, Seven Psalms, the filmmakers also reveal never-before-seen footage of Simon's extraordinary career, from the formation and breakup of Simon & Garfunkel to the phenomenal global success of Simon's solo album Graceland. (BLU-RAY)