New to Rent By Mail for October 21 2025

GODARD CINEMA / TRAILER OF A FILM THAT WILL NEVER EXIST: PHONY WARS (2022/2023)

Jean-Luc Godard is synonymous with cinema. With the release of Breathless in 1960, he established himself overnight as a cinematic rebel and symbol for the era’s progressive and anti-war youth. Sixty-two years and 140 films later, Godard is among the most renowned artists of all time, taught in every film school yet still shrouded in mystery. One of the founders of the French New Wave, political agitator, revolutionary misanthrope, film theorist and critic, the list of his descriptors goes on and on. Godard Cinema offers an opportunity for film lovers to look back at his career and the subjects and themes that obsessed him, while paying tribute to the ineffable essence of the most revered French director of all time. At the time of his death in September 2022, Jean-Luc Godard had been in the midst of planning another feature, an adaptation of Belgian author Charles Plisnier’s 1937 novel Faux Passports. Though it was never produced, Godard put together the intricate and beautiful Trailer Of A Film That Will Never Exist: Phony Wars, which now stands as his final work, a complex collage of history, politics, and cinema constructed of paper and glue, paintings and photographs, sound and silence. He accompanied it with the following text: “Rejecting the billions of alphabetic diktats to liberate the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a necessary and true language by returning to the locations of past film shoots, while keeping track of modern times.” (BLU-RAY and DVD)

JADE (1995)

When prominent businessman Kyle Medford is found murdered and horribly mutilated at his massive estate, Assistant District Attorney David Corelli is brought in to investigate. After discovering that Medford had photos featuring the governor and a high-class prostitute, Corelli begins to uncover a complicated web of blackmail and perversion connecting the business and political elite, and all leading back to illicit encounters they shared with a mysterious call girl known only as “Jade.” The deeper Corelli delves into the twisted details surrounding Murphy’s lifestyle, the closer he comes to unmasking a sophisticated killer who will do anything to hide the truth, including perpetrating additional acts of violence… (BLU-RAY + 4K)

WE STILL KILL THE OLD WAY (1967)

After two men are killed on a hunting trip, a lonely professor (Gian Maria Volonté, The Working Class Goes to Heaven), takes it upon himself to investigate what he believes was not a simple honour killing. As his search intensifies, politics and the Church become implicated in a complex conspiracy orchestrated by a powerful criminal organisation. Elio Petri’s We Still Kill the Old Way, based on the novel by Leonardo Sciascia (The Day of the Owl), is a tense paranoid thriller that features Volonté in one of his finest performances and a superb score by Luis Bacalov (Django). Winner of awards for Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Actor at the Italian Golden Globes, the film is made available on home video for the first time in the UK. (BLU-RAY)

BREATHLESS (1983)

Jesse (Richard Gere, American Gigolo), a restless and cocky common criminal with a penchant for fast cars, rock ‘n roll music and comic books, finds himself obsessed with Monica (Valérie Kaprisky, La Femme Publique), a French exchange student at UCLA. On the run for car theft and the accidental slaying of a highway patrolman, Jesse finds himself on the streets of Los Angeles, passing time in swimming pools, making love with Monica and dodging the law that is closing in on him. A controversial remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s iconic staple of the French New Wave, À bout de souffle (1960), BREATHLESS is a decidedly 80s updating of the tried-and-true merging of romance and crime, giving way to the sex and violence expected from its era. (BLU-RAY + 4K)

BREAKING GLASS (1980)

An exciting "new wave" soundtrack permeates this poignant rags to riches story of a talented and rebellious young singer-songwriter. Hazel O'Connor gives a tour-de-force performance as Kate, the lead singer of the rock group "Breaking Glass." Kate's socialist ideals are juxtaposed to her pragmatic rock manager, Danny (Phil Daniels, Quadrophenia), the streetwise hustler who discovers her and develops her into a star. The film pivots around the struggle for artistic recognition and an energetic singer whose talent and sanity are jeopardized by the music business power structure. O'Connor's vibrant music--she wrote and performs thirteen songs for the film--is extremely captivating even to the ear uninitiated in new wave music.

Made by writer-director Brian Gibson (What's Love Got to Do with It), with producers Davina Belling and Clive Parsons (Scum and Gregory's Girl), on location in London, Breaking Glass is one of the few mainstream films set firmly in the then-nascent punk and new wave milieu. The film captures the excitement, innovation, passion and anger that courses through the music and its surrounding culture. O'Connor's original soundtrack, produced by longtime David Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, spawned five singles and reached number five on the UK Albums Chart. Supporting O'Connor and Daniels are Jonathan Pryce (Brazil) as the band's junkie saxophonist, Mark Wingett (Quadrophenia) on guitar and Jon Finch (Hitchcock's Frenzy) as the powerful music producer who takes Kate to superstardom. Stephen Goldblatt's (Outland) scope cinematography grants the film an appropriately epic quality. (BLU-RAY)