Video Dispatches is a regular column covering recent home video releases.
A Blonde in Love (1965) – Second Run
Second Run’s July release is Miloš Forman’s second feature, A Blonde in Love, a satirical tale about young romance among the Czech proletariat in the mid 1960s. Andula (Hana Brejchova), a factory worker in northern Bohemia, is the titular character who falls in love with one of the visiting army brats from Prague and ends up following him back to his home.
Though the plot sounds fairly conventional, Forman’s film is not. Somewhat reminiscent of how I discussed Jacques Tourneur’s The Leopard Man in this column a few weeks back, A Blonde in Love frees itself from structural convention to spend time with completely tangential characters. Forman never leaves Andula completely, but colors in her world by giving us extended time with those in her orbit.
For instance, by spending time with the rude army men during a social event, we get a better understanding of what it means for women like Andula following the state’s attempt to recruit men to her factory town, which is disproportionately female. As Michael Brooke writes in the included essay, “The difficulties of being ‘normal’ teenagers in a system that favors central planning and social engineering over any notion of simply allowing them the freedom to follow their instincts and desires.”
However, after one viewing, I gather that what makes Forman’s film such a lasting piece of cinema, specifically a touchstone of Czech cinema, isn’t so much that it’s targeted satire, but that it’s done so tenderly.
Get A Blonde in Love on Blu-Ray
In Fabric (2018) – Curzon Artificial Eye
In Cinema Scope’s 2018 TIFF coverage, Robert Koehler said In Fabric represents the fine line between the work of an auteur and something that is “merely replaying to fill in the empty spaces in your own work” (referring to something like Paolo Sorrentino’s Loro). As he did with 2012’s Berberian Sound Studio, although to a lesser degree here, Peter Strickland riffs on giallo in a way that is, as Koehler infers, unique while also feeling inescapably inessential to this viewer.
The film follows a mystical red dress and those that own it, who are victim to its terror. Through his sartorial tale, Strickland focuses, like a giallo, on the sensory pleasures of horror. In doing so, he does manage to create something tangible, but similar to my experience with Berberian Sound Studio, I found myself enjoying it from a distanced perspective, as a window shopper.
Maybe more than giallo, I found myself thinking throughout Strickland’s film about John Carpenter. Most obviously, there’s Christine, one of Carpenter’s greatest works, which follows a beautiful red car that kills people. But more generally, there’s something about Strickland’s omniscient lens capturing the ignorant that recalls Carpenter. Unfortunately, In Fabric fails to be nearly as fun as something like Christine.
The Curzon Artificial Eye disc also contains some deleted scenes, which may be of interest for its fans, but I’ll be interested to see how the film is treated once released on home video in the US next year. Very likely it won’t be much different, but I have to imagine the film could yield some interesting production notes.
Get In Fabric on Blu-Ray (note: Region 2 only)
Moonfleet (1955) – Warner Archive
Fritz Lang’s 18th century CinemaScope swashbuckler film about a surrogate father-son duo gave me a little bit of whiplash. Of the half-dozen American films of Lang’s that I’ve seen, they’re routinely urban black-and-white noirs, like The Big Heat or While the City Sleeps, rather than the Eastmancolor framing of the British countryside. In fact, this was Lang’s only film using CinemaScope, which might add to its lack of reputation — not fitting conveniently into definitions of Lang’s work, be it stateside or in Germany.
However, Jonathan Rosenbaum said “its dreamlike sense of wonder is only equaled in Lang’s German pictures.” After his mother’s death, the impressionable John Mohune (Jon Whiteley) is sent to find a Mr. Fox (Stewart Granger), who apprehensively takes the boy under his wing as they search for lost treasure. For the most part, Moonfleet’s adventure tale stays in somewhat of a hangout tone, which, while enjoyable, leads me to believe I’ll take more to it on a second go.
Dave Kehr and Rosenbaum writing for Chicago Reader in 1992 and 2002, respectively, mention the film’s neglected reputation, a particular shame regarding its beautiful CinemaScope presentation. Thankfully, we now have Warner Archive’s new disc, which, though bare-bones, gives the film a positively vibrant presentation.
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