| WHAT: WHEN: STUDIO: PRICE: | Miss Mend (1926) December 15th Flicker Alley Retail: $39.99, Our: $29.99 |   |
Flicker Alley has announced a December 15th release date for the Soviet Serial Adventure Miss Mend (1926). The 4 1/2 hour, three part film will be a 2-disc set and feature brand new English intertitles.
Complete details and bonus features below. It will retail will be $39.99, but it's available at ClassicFlix.com for only $29.99.
NOTE: It is assumed the feature will be across both discs so this 2-disc set will count as one rental.
PRESS RELEASE
Flicker Alley, a specialty supplier of fine silent films and classic cinema programming, in collaboration with The Blackhawk Films Collection and Turner Classic Movies, proudly present the American video premiere of epic Soviet serial adventure, Miss Mend.
Produced in the Soviet Union in 1926, but inspired by American movie cliffhangers of the day, this three-part, 4 ½ hour film was directed by Fedor Ozep and Boris Barnet (who is also featured in the cast).
Based on the 1923 pulp novel “Mess Mend”, both the film and its source material share an interestingly “Westernized” pedigree; though the novel claims to have been authored and published by an American scribe “Jim Dollar,” the fictional persona is actually a nom-de-plume for a Russian woman, Marietta Shaginian, whose biography for Dollar explains that he was a laborer who fell by sheer chance into tremendous fortune and publishes his fiction at his own expense.
Regarded by the official Soviet press of the time as a prime example of shameless "Western-style" entertainment, Miss Mend was nevertheless hugely popular, becoming one of the most successful Soviet films of the decade. Though you’ll find no tractors, capitalist oppression, or revolution, the film does manage a few jokes at the American characters’ ’ expense.
Co-director Boris Barnet, actor, ex-boxer, and a graduate of the Kuleshov School, directed other notable silent films including The Girl With the Hatbox and The House on Trubnaya Square; his career extended to the mid-1960s with his most notable sound film being Outskirts (1933). Fedor Ozep, also a screenwriter, emigrated from the Soviet Union. In Germany, he directed a wonderful version of Tolstoy's The Living Corpse and The Murder of Dmitri Karamazov, making later films in France, and finishing his long career as a Hollywood director.
Mastered in high definition from superb 35mm elements, with a 'dream cast' of 1920s Soviet film stars, Miss Mend pits a cadre of proletarian sleuths against a villainous gang of selfish capitalists, each side boasting its own collection of zany sidekicks, everything from a streetwise urchin to a Typhoid dog. The film also features beautiful location photography, impressive stunt scenes, horse, car and boat chases, and stylized sets inspired by Fritz Lang's German thrillers.
Miss Mend is accompanied by a newly-recorded large-orchestra score by Robert Israel.
BONUS FEATURES:
- Miss Mend: A Whirlwind Vision of an Imagined America - A brand new, 25-minute documentary exploring the creative forces and cultural influences behind Miss Mend
- Creating The Music of Miss Mend: Go behind the scenes of Robert Israel’s brilliant new score in a new, 15-minute documentary featuring the actual Miss Mend recording sessions
- PLUS: Miss Mend and Soviet Americanism – A new booklet essay by historians Ana Olenina and Maxim Pozdorovkin
No comments:
Post a Comment