Body at Brighton Rock (2019)
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, “The Buster Keaton Collection Volume 2: Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator,” Body at Brighton Rock.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché
Alice Guy saw the Lumière brothers demonstrate their motion picture projector (1895). As secretary for Leon Gaumont, soon to found France’s premier film studio, the resourceful woman was well positioned for an extraordinary—and largely forgotten—career in cinema. Be Natural follows the life of the first female filmmaker and, perhaps, the first director to tell stories with the new medium.
Directed by Pamela B. Green, Be Natural reassembles the scattered record of Guy’s career, She wrote, edited, directed and owned one of America’s early studios in Fort Lee, N.J. and—based on the clips seen in the documentary—was masterful at composition and willing to take on any theme from cowboys to feminism. During her U.S. sojourn, she directed the first all African American cast. Bankruptcy and divorce sent her home to France where she was forgotten. However, Alfred Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein were inspired as children by her films.
“The Buster Keaton Collection Volume 2: Sherlock Jr. and The Navigator”
His face as imperturbable as stone, Buster Keaton played the everyman moving unblinkingly into headwinds of absurdity and adversity. Along with his comedic gifts, he was one of silent Hollywood’s great directors. In Sherlock Jr. (1924), he plays a movie projectionist whose fantasy life assumes the form of movies unspooling in his imagination. The best compliment: Many scenes remain laugh-out-loud funny through gestures and words unheard. Sherlock is paired on the Blu-ray with The Navigator (1924).
Body at Brighton Rock
Body at Brighton Rock (2019) starts as a light Millennial comedy: Wendy is an irresponsible park guide with an unserious attitude toward her job. “It’s just a walk in the woods. How hard can that be?” she says. But then the music gets eerie, she loses her way, finds a dead person and—worst of all!—her cellphone dies. Hapless Wendy is trapped in the woods and someone else is out there. Will she survive?
