Analyzing the commercial failure of a movie 30 years after its release might not do much, if anything, to offset the film’s financial losses. In the case of Luis Puenzo’s failed big-budget 1992 adaptation of Albert Camus’ “The Plague,” perhaps there’s a streamer presentation that might perform a minor financial resuscitation on its P&l for Canal Plus and Gaumont. But given its subject matter, “The Plague” is more valuable as an instructive story illustrating the maxim, “Timing is everything.”
Puenzo’s sober, subdued take on Camus’ trenchant blend of natural catastrophe and political evil might find a more ready audience today, in this time of a pandemic accompanied by strange global political rumblings. In 1992, only a decade after the AIDS pandemic hit, important filmmakers were just beginning to address the tragic dimensions of the outbreak.
Jonathan Demme’s 1993 multi-Oscar winner “Philadelphia,” was also probably a better match for the times.
Puenzo’s sober, subdued take on Camus’ trenchant blend of natural catastrophe and political evil might find a more ready audience today, in this time of a pandemic accompanied by strange global political rumblings. In 1992, only a decade after the AIDS pandemic hit, important filmmakers were just beginning to address the tragic dimensions of the outbreak.
Jonathan Demme’s 1993 multi-Oscar winner “Philadelphia,” was also probably a better match for the times.
- 1/14/2022
- by Steven Gaydos
- Variety Film + TV
Hard-media home video is making a comeback, and Kino Lorber shows its faith in the medium with an extravagant collection of its entire silent holdings of the Fritz Lang library. Mythical heroes, sacrificing heroines, criminal madmen and uncontrolled super-science are his themes; it’s a paranoid’s view of the first half of the 20th Century, expressed with fantastic innovations that literally re-write the rules of cinema.
Fritz Lang The Silent Films
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1919-1929 / B&W / 1:37 Silent Aperture / 1894 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / “The Complete Silent Films of German Cinema’s Supreme Stylist” / Available through Kino Lorber / 149.95
Films: The Spiders, Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, Four Around the Woman, Destiny, Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, Spies, Woman in the Moon, The Plague of Florence.
Directed by Fritz Lang
Kino Lorber has been a happy home for many marvelous discs of silent German classics. Thanks to their ongoing...
Fritz Lang The Silent Films
Blu-ray
Kino Classics
1919-1929 / B&W / 1:37 Silent Aperture / 1894 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / “The Complete Silent Films of German Cinema’s Supreme Stylist” / Available through Kino Lorber / 149.95
Films: The Spiders, Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, Four Around the Woman, Destiny, Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, Spies, Woman in the Moon, The Plague of Florence.
Directed by Fritz Lang
Kino Lorber has been a happy home for many marvelous discs of silent German classics. Thanks to their ongoing...
- 11/21/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Quite the episode of the The Cinephiliacs this week! Peter Labuza talks with Jonathan Rosenbaum about Jacques Rivette's Out 1 and more. Also in today's roundup: Rosenbaum on Kira Muratova, Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell on Otto Rippert’s 1916 serial Homunculus, Dan Callahan on Mitchell Leisen, Nathalie Morris on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! at 70, an excerpt from a new book on Richard Pryor, an interview with Giorgio Moroder—and remembering Saeed Jaffrey. » - David Hudson...
- 11/16/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
Quite the episode of the The Cinephiliacs this week! Peter Labuza talks with Jonathan Rosenbaum about Jacques Rivette's Out 1 and more. Also in today's roundup: Rosenbaum on Kira Muratova, Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell on Otto Rippert’s 1916 serial Homunculus, Dan Callahan on Mitchell Leisen, Nathalie Morris on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going! at 70, an excerpt from a new book on Richard Pryor, an interview with Giorgio Moroder—and remembering Saeed Jaffrey. » - David Hudson...
- 11/16/2015
- Keyframe
The Museum of Modern Art’s festival of film preservation, To Save and Project, "feels like a yearly miracle," writes R. Emmet Sweeney in an overview of this year's edition for Film Comment. Among the highlights: Otto Rippert's Homunculus, Norman Foster's Woman on the Run, Ewald André Dupont's Verieté, Michel Brault's Les Ordres, Helma Sanders-Brahm's Germany, Pale Mother, Mário Peixoto's Limite, William K. Howard's The Trial of Vivienne Ware, Chantal Akerman's I, You, He, She, Ebrahim Golestan's The Brick and the Mirror, Orson Welles's The Deep and Ahmed El Maanouni's Oh the Days!. » - David Hudson...
- 11/5/2015
- Fandor: Keyframe
The Museum of Modern Art’s festival of film preservation, To Save and Project, "feels like a yearly miracle," writes R. Emmet Sweeney in an overview of this year's edition for Film Comment. Among the highlights: Otto Rippert's Homunculus, Norman Foster's Woman on the Run, Ewald André Dupont's Verieté, Michel Brault's Les Ordres, Helma Sanders-Brahm's Germany, Pale Mother, Mário Peixoto's Limite, William K. Howard's The Trial of Vivienne Ware, Chantal Akerman's I, You, He, She, Ebrahim Golestan's The Brick and the Mirror, Orson Welles's The Deep and Ahmed El Maanouni's Oh the Days!. » - David Hudson...
- 11/5/2015
- Keyframe
While researching posters for my Weimar post last month I came across this stunning Hungarian poster which looks as if it should be a poster for a Dreyer film, but is in fact for a lost silent 1917 German horror movie, the 6th part of Otto Rippert’s Homunculus serial.
In the essay “Shadow-Souls and Strange Adventures: Horror and the Supernatural in European Silent Film” [available in the collection The Horror Film], Casper Tybjerg writes: “The six-part serial Homunculus (1916-1917) was one of the biggest and most acclaimed productions of the war years, but only a confusing print of the fourth part and a fragment of the fifth survives. The Danish star Olaf Fonss played the title role as ‘the man without soul,’ an artificial human created by science. Homunculus is brought up thinking that he is a normal man, but finds himself unable to feel love, because he was created without love. When he discovers the truth,...
In the essay “Shadow-Souls and Strange Adventures: Horror and the Supernatural in European Silent Film” [available in the collection The Horror Film], Casper Tybjerg writes: “The six-part serial Homunculus (1916-1917) was one of the biggest and most acclaimed productions of the war years, but only a confusing print of the fourth part and a fragment of the fifth survives. The Danish star Olaf Fonss played the title role as ‘the man without soul,’ an artificial human created by science. Homunculus is brought up thinking that he is a normal man, but finds himself unable to feel love, because he was created without love. When he discovers the truth,...
- 1/15/2011
- MUBI
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