Naked (1993) - The Criterion Collection

Synopsis

Mike Leigh’s brilliant and controversial Naked stars David Thewlis as Johnny, a charming, eloquent, and relentlessly vicious drifter on the lam in London. Rejecting all those who would care for him, the volcanic Johnny hurls himself into a nocturnal odyssey through the city, colliding with a succession of the desperate and the dispossessed, and scorching everyone in his path. With a virtuoso script and raw performances from Thewlis and costars Katrin Cartlidge and Lesley Sharpe, Leigh’s panorama of England’s crumbling underbelly is a showcase of black comedy and doomsday prophecy, and was the winner of the best director and actor prizes at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

Cast

Johnny	David Thewlis
Louise	Lesley Sharpe
Sophie	Katrin Cartlidge
Jeremy	Greg Cruttwell
Sandra	Claire Skinner
Brian	Peter Wight
Archie	Ewen Bremner
Maggie	Susan Vidler
Woman in the window	Deborah MacLaren
Café girl	Gina McKee
Masseuse	Carolina Giammetta
Giselle	Elizabeth Berrington

Credits

Director	Mike Leigh
Screenplay	Mike Leigh
Cinematography	Dick Pope
Producer	Simon Channing-Williams
Editing	Jon Gregory
Costumes	Lindy Hemming
Music	Andrew Dickson
Production Design	Alison Chitty
Art director	Eve Stewart
Casting	Susie Parriss and Paddy Stern

Disc Features

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:

New, restored high-definition digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Mike Leigh
Audio commentary by director Mike Leigh and actors David Thewlis and Katrin Cartlidge
Exclusive new video interview with director Neil LaBute
The Art Zone: “The Conversation,” a BBC program featuring author Will Self interviewing Leigh
The Short and Curlies, a short comedy from 1982 directed by Leigh and starring Thewlis
Original theatrical trailer
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: New essays by film critics Derek Malcolm and Amy Taubin

From the Current

Wong, Doyle, and Leigh Visit Leonard Lopate

Oct 16, 2008

While in New York for the premiere of Ashes of Time Redux, Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-wai and his long-time cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, sat down with Leonard Lopate for the radio host’s daily show. In the course of discussing the restored and re-edited theatrical release of their...

Naked: Desperate Days

by Derek Malcolm Sep 19, 2005

Naked is the angriest, most bitterly critical attack on the false values of society that Mike Leigh, Britain’s constant chronicler of the tragic comedy of desperate lives, has ever made. Its audacity is that the attack is mounted through a central character of whom few would approve. Johnny...

Naked

by Ian Buruma Jul 4, 1994

Mike Leigh was born in the north of England in 1943. He was trained in the theater at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and in film at the London Film School. When he arrived in London in the early 1960s, he was excited by Cassavetes’ movies, and by Peter Brook’s work at the Royal Shakespeare...