Synopsis
Indispensable cinema classics from Janus Films and the Criterion Collection. For the devoted cinephile, these are the must-own fundamentals; for the novice film-lover, this is precisely where to begin. For Volume 1, we present six films from directors Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Roman Polanski, Peter Brook, Jean Cocteau, and Jean Renoir.
Collector's set includes
Beauty and the Beast
Jean Cocteau, 1946
Beauty and the Beast is a landmark feat of cinematic fantasy in which master filmmaker Jean Cocteau conjures spectacular visions of enchantment, desire, and death that have never been equaled.
Grand Illusion
Jean Renoir, 1937
Jean Renoir’s antiwar masterpiece Grand Illusion, hailed as one of the greatest films ever made, stars Jean Gabin and Pierre Fresnay as French soldiers held in a World War I German prison camp.
Knife in the Water
Roman Polanski, 1962
A husband, a wife, a stranger, a knife: Roman Polanski sets them all adrift on a weekend filled with simmering resentments and gut-churning suspense in his seminal psychological thriller, still one of the greatest feature debuts in film history.
Lord of the Flies
Peter Brook, 1963
William Golding’s classic fable, about a swarm of young boys who, without adult supervision, devolve into chaos after crash landing on a remote island during wartime, becomes an unforgettable work of cinematic horror by Peter Brook.
Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa, 1950
The murder of a man and the rape of his wife in a forest grove—seen from four different perspectives. Akira Kurosawa’s meditation on the nature of “truth” transformed narrative cinema as we know it.
Wild Strawberries
Ingmar Bergman, 1957
Professor Isak Borg (Victor Sjöström) is forced to face his past in the film that catapulted Ingmar Bergman to the forefront of world cinema.
Disc Features
- Pristine digital transfer
- Informative liner notes
- New and improved English subtitle translation
