The Return of Martin Guerre (1982)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: The Return of Martin Guerre, It Always Rains on Sunday, Ambition, Rolling Stones, Bridges to Buenos Aires.
The Return of Martin Guerre (Cohen Film Collective)
Gérard Depardieu stars in this 1982 film based on the 16th-century trial of a man missing for years who returns home to reclaim his life. Suspense builds over whether the man is who he claims to be. Martin Guerre represents ’80s European art house at its height: beautiful composition and cinematography and acute attention to sound support top-drawer acting to bring alive the strange reality of medieval society. The director’s cut is out on Blu-ray.
It Always Rains on Sunday (Kino Lorber)
Postwar London still looked Dickensian in this 1947 film. It Always Rains on Sunday is an emotionally astute story about an escaped prisoner who makes for his former love (long since remarried to an older, stable man). It depicts London’s East End as a place of broken windows and limited opportunities; street life and pub life are dominant. The climax is one of cinema’s great chase scenes as police pursue the convict through a nighttime trainyard.
Ambition (Shout! Factory)
They used to call the violin the devil’s instrument. The authors of this B movie seem to agree. Ambition opens with a death in the conservatory. Did the star violinist snap from competitive pressure and jump from a building? Or was she pushed? Ambition plays on contemporary anxieties over stalkers and plays with psycho-killer tropes as it tosses out red herrings and surprises. The doomed house of students is populated by film buffs trading movie lines.
Rolling Stones, Bridges to Buenos Aires (Eagle Rock Entertainment)
Although billed as “The Bridges to Babylon Tour” in support of their 1997 album of that name, the shows were built around familiar fan-pleasing material. The DVD (plus two CDs) documenting the Stones’ 1998 concert in Argentina shows band members exuding a powerful presence onstage as they execute a set of hits starting with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The surprise: Bob Dylan joins them for a raspy rendition of “Like a Rolling Stone.”
