This special gift box set, in celebration of Rialto’s tenth anniversary, features ten films that display the breadth of its collection, including works by Rialto favorites, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, Luis Buñuel, and Jean-Pierre Melville.
On the occasion of the centenary of his birth, the Criterion Collection is proud to present this deluxe box set celebrating Akira Kurosawa’s astonishing career.
Merchant Ivory’s The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, based on the novella by Carson McCullers and the play by Edward Albee, is both a grotesque black comedy and a prime slice of Southern Gothic set in a poverty-stricken rural community dominated by the curious, androgynous Miss Amelia.
Starring Shashi Kapoor and Jennifer Kendal, Bombay Talkie is Merchant Ivory’s affectionate, bemused view of Bollywood—India’s huge dream factory. Cameraman Subrata Mitra’s ravishing photography has never been surpassed in any other of James Ivory’s films.
In Boston in the aftermath of the Civil War, gifted young orator Verena Tarrant has attracted the attention of Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave), who wishes to nurture Verena for the Women’s Movement. But Basil Ransom (Christopher Reeve), a handsome male chauvinist, wants Verena as his wife.
India, 1825: The country is being ravaged by the Thugees, cult members also known as the “Deceivers,” who commit robbery and ritualistic murder. Appalled by their activities, English officer William Savage (Pierce Brosnan) disguises himself and infiltrates their ranks.
This entertaining film, from a delicious early novel by Henry James, takes place in a New England Arcadia that stands for everything beautiful, pure, and good. Into this Eden come a sophisticated European brother and sister who turn up unexpectedly on the doorstep of their staid American cousins.
Blending east with west, and moving effortlessly between the vibrant world of modern-day India and the splendors of the Raj, Heat and Dust concerns Anne, a young woman drawn to India by her desire to unravel the scandal surrounding her great-aunt’s seduction in the 1920s by a handsome Indian prince.
The Householder, the first collaboration between Ismail Merchant, James Ivory, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, is the story of a young, underpaid Delhi schoolteacher (Shashi Kapoor) who marries and then, little by little, gets to know his young wife, Indu (Leela Naidu), during their first year together.
Peggy Ashcroft and Larry Pine play rapacious art collectors who come to the decaying Art Deco palace of a young Maharaja (Victor Banerjee) to examine a legendary collection of Indian miniature paintings.
Based on the Booker Prize–nominated novel by Anita Desai, In Custody, the debut of Ismail Merchant as a director, is a wry, lyrical, comic drama about contemporary Indian culture, society, and domestic life.
Rival theater companies compete to produce their own unique versions of Jane Austen’s childhood play Sir Charles Grandison in this delightful film from Merchant Ivory, featuring a brilliant ensemble cast, a witty screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, and an inventive score by Richard Robbins.
Set against the stifling conformity of pre–World War I English society, Maurice is a story of coming to terms with one’s sexuality and identity in the face of disapproval and misunderstanding. Maurice Hall (James Wilby) and Clive Durham (Hugh Grant) find themselves falling in love at Cambridge.
Based on Holling C. Holling’s beloved, Caldecott-awarded children’s book, William Mason’s stunning film follows the adventures of a tiny, wood-carved canoe as it forges its own path from Lake Superior through the Great Lakes and down to the Atlantic Ocean.
Inspector Ghote of the Bombay police has just been assigned his most perplexing case: a savage attack on a rich industrialist’s private secretary. Based on the award-winning novel by H.R.F. Keating, Merchant Ivory Productions’ The Perfect Murder is an entertaining, exotic detective thriller.
Dazzlingly acted by Alan Bates, Maggie Smith, Anthony Higgins, and Isabelle Adjani, Quartet is the story of a girl who, adrift with her feckless husband amidst the literati of glittering Paris in the 1920s, becomes entrapped by a rich and sybaritic English couple.
Albert Lamorisse’s exquisite The Red Balloon remains one of the most beloved children’s films of all time. In this deceptively simple, nearly wordless tale, a young boy discovers a stray balloon, which seems to have a mind of its own, on the streets of Paris.
Three interlocking stories set in the legendary New York City dance palace Roseland make up this charming film, the third shot by Merchant Ivory Productions in America, and featuring Teresa Wright, Christopher Walken, and Lilia Skala.
The first American film from Merchant Ivory Productions is a fascinating meditation on the rise and fall of civilizations, with a witty screenplay by George Swift Trow and Michael O’Donoghue. Savages is a dark, biting satire that will turn viewer expectations upside-down.