Jeff Heinrich

At long last, the three feature films that made the name of director István Szabó outside his native Hungary in the 1980s — and earned him an Oscar — come together restored in 4K in a lovely Blu-ray boxset, one that's region-free, too, courtesy of British boutique distributor Second Run. The three movies — Mephisto (1981), Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988) — are German-language period dramas starring Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer (Out of Africa), written by Péter Dobai (Sátántangó) and shot by cinematographer Lajos Koltai (Malèna). Winner of the Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Mephisto is based on the Klaus Mann novel about a German stage actor named Hendrik Höfgen (modeled on the real-life Gustaf Gründgens) who sheds his Bolshevik sympathies and sells his soul in a Faustian bargain with the Nazi party. Nominated for an Oscar and winner of the Jury Prize at Cannes and the BAFTA for best foreign-language film, Colonel Redl chronicles the rise and fall of Alfred Redl, a fictional chief of the secret police in pre-World War One Austro-Hungary whose ruthless efficiency hides a personal secret: he's gay. Hanussen returns to the Nazi period with the true story of Hermann (Herschel Chaim) Steinschneider, aka Erik Jan Hanussen, a self-promoting Moravian Jew whose powers of clairvoyancy help him predict the Reichstag fire of 1933, only to see him assassinated by the Brownshirts a month later. On disc, this isn't the first time Mephisto and Colonel Redl have made it to Blu-ray (in the U.S., Kino Classics did it in 2020), but the new boxset marks the first time all three films have been issued as a single English-language package. Unlike Kino's Mephisto, there's no audio commentary on the Second Run release, nor is there on either of the other films, but the new edition does replicate one extra: an affectionate 2020 look at József Romvári, the three films' production designer, in which Romvári's granddaughter, the American filmmaker Sophy Romvari, interviews Szabó over the phone and ends with some sweet footage of her as a girl on her granddad's knee. There's a big bonus to this edition, too: four of Szabó's early short films; newly remastered in high-def, there's the anti-war 'Variations on a Theme' (1961), the "all-about-the-girl" love story 'You' (1963), 'Concert' (1963), a silent comedy with sound effects about a public piano on the banks of Budapest's Danube, and 'City Map Budapest' (1977), a love letter to Hungary's capital. There's also an interview in Hungarian with the director and a 3-minute promo reel of his oeuvre (with clips of his German-language films dubbed in Hungarian), and several trailers. Accompanying each disc is a booklet, and in them you'll find new writing by Hungarian-film experts John Cunningham, Peter Hames and Catherine Portuges, and by investigative journalist Stephen Lemons. If you remember seeing Mephisto and Colonel Redl on their release in cinemas four decades ago, as I do, screening them again now will bring renewed pleasures; despite their extended length (146 minutes for Mephisto, 151 minutes for Colonel Redl), the movies fly by a fast clip, they're that good. And if, like me, you're experiencing Hanussen for the first time, well, revel in the new.

Crowd-funding in the 1970s? Yes, it did happen ... in India. Half a million dairy farmers there put up two rupees each to finance Shyam Benegal's 1976 independent film Manthan, a 135-minute feature that developed out of India's 'White Revolution,' a massive government program to produce milk for the masses. Dramatizing issues of gender, class and caste inequalities in the western coastal state of Gujarat, the movie was a milestone in India's Parallel Cinema movement, telling the tale of how the setting up of a milk cooperative transforms a rural village's economy and way of life. Cleaned up in 4K by India's Film Heritage Foundation (FHF), a new print of Manthan premiered last year at Cannes and now comes to Blu-ray via the British distributor Second Run, whose founder and owner is Mumbai-born Mehelli Modi, son of Indian film legend Sohrab Modi. Besides new English subtitles for the Hindi dialogue, the all-region BD has two extras: 'Manthan Reborn,' a look at the history and restoration of the film, including an interview with the late director, and 'Manthan at Cannes 2024,' in which FHF founder Shivendra Singh Dungarpur and actor Naseeruddin Shah are interviewed by broadcaster Anupama Chopra. A 24-page booklet rounds out the package.

Danish filmmaker Bille August (Smilla's Sense of Snow, Night Train to Lisbon) broke through internationally in 1987 with his father-and-son picture Pelle the Conqueror, a rural drama set in the mid-19th century that starred Max von Sydow and Pelle Hvenegaard and that won the Academy Award and Golden Globe for best foreign-language film as well as the Palme d'or at Cannes. Before that, August co-wrote and directed a pair of coming-of-age dramas, Zappa (1983) and Twist and Shout (1984), that explored a very different variety of childhood — the awkward teenage years — in a more modern setting, 1960s Copenhagen. In Zappa, two boys invite a third to join their little gang, and things turn dark when their enthusiasms turn to bullying, burglary and violence. In Twist and Shout, one of the boys (again played by Adam Tønsbrerg), plays drums in a Beatles cover band and forms an awkward bond with a shy friend (Lars Simonsen) struggling to cope with a stern father and mentally ill mother. If you're a fan of August's compatriot, the filmmaker Nils Malmros (Tree of Knowledge), who too explores the cruel realities of early adolescence, you'll enjoy these two pictures. In a solid upgrade from the 2004 double-DVD set released by Home Vision Entertainment, they now come paired on Blu-ray by Altered Innocence, a small LGBTQ-themed U.S. distributor. Extras include a new half-hour interview with August, an 11-minute appreciation of the director's work, and half a dozen trailers. English (and Spanish) subtitles are optional.

Autumn 2025 on Blu-ray

12.2025

10.2025