News

Like the early works of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Rudolf Thome’s films owe a significant debt to the French New Wave, particularly Jean-Luc Godard’s penchant for irreverent genre deconstruction. In that vein, Thome’s Red Sun is an exercise in keeping things “medium cool,” holding both its erratic narrative and characters’ motivations at a Brechtian distance. The violence, when it comes, is perfunctory and decidedly nondramatic, paving the way for The American Friend, Wim Wenders’s abstract and stylized adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game.

After drifting into Munich, Thomas (Marquard Bohm) heads straight for the Take Five nightclub, where he renews his relationship with his ex-girlfriend, Peggy (Uschi Obermaier). Little does this rambling man realize that, by crashing at her pad, he’s stumbled into a truly bizarre living arrangement. Peggy and her three roommates—statuesque Christine (Diana Körner), redheaded Sylvie (Sylvia Kekulé), and sprightly Isolde (Gaby Go...

Stanley Kubrick’s contribution to great cinema of the 1970s offers his vision of what an epic should be. Transported by images that recall great paintings of the period, and Kubrick’s new approaches to low-light cinematography, we witness a rogue’s progress through troubled times. And even Ryan O’Neal is good!

Barry Lyndon

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 897

1975 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 185 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 17, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Steven Berkoff, Gay Hamilton, Marie Kean, Diana Körner, Murray Melvin, Frank Middlemass, André Morell, Arthur O’Sullivan, Godfrey Quigley, Leonard Rossiter, Philip Stone, Leon Vitali Leon Vitali, Wolf Kahler, Ferdy Mayne, George Sewell, Michael Hordern (narrator).

Cinematography: John Alcott

Editor: Tony Lawson

Production design: Ken Adam

Conductor & Musical Adaptor: Leonard Rosenman

Written by Stanley Kubrick from the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray

Produced and Directed by Stanley Kubrick

The...