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Welcome to our foreign films page, featuring foreign movies in video and DVD format in languages from a host of countries. Note: unless stated otherwise, all videocassettes are in VHS and NTSC format, and all DVDs are for players that support Region 1 encoding (United States and Canada) and are in NTSC format. Check our DVD Compatibility FAQ for more information about region encoding, television formats, and other specifications. If you can't find what you need, please email us.
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Hiroshima, Mon Amour Alain Resnais A high water mark for the French New Wave. From the beginning, in which the love-making of a French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) is intercut with newsreel footage of Hiroshima's atomic holocaust and its aftermath, to the couple's painful walk through the reconstructed city, Alain Resnais' film recaptures both the pain and the richness of the war. The DVD is a Criterion Collection edition, and includes audio commentary by film historian Peter Crowie, an interview with Alain Resnais, an interview with Emmanuelle Riva, a music and effects track, an essay by critic Kent Jones and more. In French with English subtitles. France, 1959, 91 mins.` DVD $54.95
I Want to Go Home (Je Veux Rentrer a La Maison) Alain Resnais French director Alain Resnais paired with American writer Jules Feiffer (Carnal Knowledge) for this satire of French and Yankee culture. An American cartoonist (Adolph Green) travels to Paris to attend a comic-strip exhibition, but the trip is actually an excuse for him to reconcile with his estranged daughter, a student at the Sorbonne. Experiencing immense culture shock, the American wants to go home until he meets his daughter's professor (Gerard Depardieu). A fan of the cartoonist's work, the professor invites them all to his mother's country house where hilarity results. Also stars Linda Lavin and Laura Benson. In French with English subtitles. France/Italy, 1989, 101 mins. DVD $44.95
La Guerre Est Finie Alain Resnais This great film by Alain Resnais, scripted by Jorge Semprun, stars Yves Montand, Genevieve Bujold, Ingrid Thulin and Michel Piccoli. Resnais shifts between reality and Montand's mental states in an incisive portrait of an aging Spanish revolutionary exile who is imprisoned by his past as he confronts the failure of his ideas. Resnais explores Montand's insecurities through his relationships with two very different women (Thulin and Bujold). French with English subtitles. France, 1966, 120 mins. DVD $44.95
Life Is a Bed of Roses (La Vie Est un Roman) Alain Resnais Alain Resnais pays tribute to three influential French filmmakers--Georges Melies, Marcel L'Herbier, and Eric Rohmer--with this lighthearted film about happiness and the power of the imagination. Set in a chateau that was dedicated to happiness in the 1920s and has since become a progressive school, the film weaves together three stories that shift between the past, present, and the imagined, creating a compelling and entertaining mixture of drama, satire, comedy, fantasy, and music. In French with English subtitles. France, 1983, 110 mins. DVD $44.95
Love Unto Death (L'Amour a Mort) Alain Resnais Acclaimed director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amour) explores themes of love and death in this bleak and anguishing drama. Pierre Arditi and Sabina Azema (both of La Vie Est un Roman) star as Simon and Elizabeth, an affectionate couple that lives happily in love until Simon experiences a sudden and seemingly fatal seizure. When he revives miraculously, Simon grows increasingly obsessed with his brush with death until another seizure ends his life. Resnais dresses his lead actors in symbolic colors and uses musical interludes (by Hans Werner Henze) and other formal devices to press his philosophical themes. The result is an underrated accomplishment from one of cinema's most talented directors. In French with English subtitles. France, 1984, 92 mins. DVD $44.95
Melo Alain Resnais Adapted from a 1929 play by Henry Bernstein, Melo marked the first time that director Alain Resnais had ever handled his own screenplay. The film tells the story of two lifelong friends and violinists, Marcel and Pierre. When Marcel goes on to stardom, Pierre settles into a contented family life unaware that his wife is sleeping with Marcel. Plagued by guilt, Pierre's wife eventually takes deadly measures to end the affair. "An incomparable masterpiece" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader). In French with English subtitles. France, 1986, 112 mins. DVD $44.95
Mon Oncle d'Amerique Alain Resnais Resnais' film puts three middle class characters through some stressful situations, then reveals them to be "subjects" of real-life behavioral scientist Henri Laborit. "His triumph is to create a new kind of fiction: a drama that not only leaves room to think, but opens up fissures that thoughts flood into...Inevitably, it ends in a riddle, and one which proves that surrealism lives" (Tony Rayns, Time Out). With Gerard Depardieu, Nicole Garcia, Roger Pierre and Marie Dubois. French with English subtitles. France, 1980, 126 mins. DVD $37.95
Night and Fog Alain Resnais Francois Truffaut called it the greatest film of all time. It is certainly one of the most powerful. Alain Resnais' searing, unforgettable film on Nazi concentration camps is a devastating record of man's inhumanity to man and perhaps the definitive cinematic statement on the Holocaust. Weaving images of the abandoned camp at Auschwitz with newsreel footage of the atrocities that occurred there, Resnais created a film that plays like a collective, haunted memory. Chris Marker served as an assistant director and editor. The DVD is a Criterion Collection edition, and includes archival audio interview with Alain Resnais, crew biographies, an essay by Philip Lopate and more. In French with English subtitles. France, 1955, 32 mins. DVD $37.95
Not on the Lips Alain Resnais Master director Alain Resnais (Hiroshima Mon Amor, Night and Fog) continues his recent spate of delightful musical comedies with this period piece based on a 1925 Parisian Operetta by Andre Barde. The film boasts lush visuals, a farcical tone, and charming lead performances by Sabine Azema, Isabelle Nanty, Audrey Tautou, and Pierre Arditi. "Light, fluffy, and deliciously decadent, [Not on the Lips] has all the indulgent naughtiness of an overstuffed chocolate eclair" (Jamie Russell, BBC). The DVD is letterboxed, and includes trailer, director interviews, comparison of 1925 version and 2003 version, and filmographies. In French with English subtitles. French, 2003, 116 mins. DVD $44.95
Private Fears in Public Places Alain Resnais Challenging nouvelle vague director Alain Resnais (Last Year at Marienbad) toys with melodramatic form and artifice in this adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn's play about six strangers searching for love in the snowy streets of Paris. "Resnais's mastery shows how avant-garde the movie equivalent of a well-made play can be...resembles a Vincente Minnelli musical with the songs elided" (Village Voice). The stellar cast includes Sabine Azema, Isabelle Carre, Laura Morante, Lambert Wilson, Andre Dussollier, and Pierre Arditi. Resnais won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival. Also known as Coeurs. In French with English subtitles. France, 2006, 121 mins. DVD $44.95
Same Old Song Alain Resnais With Same Old Song, the great French director Alain Resnais made one of the most playful films of his career, but one that is no less striking or thought-provoking than his more overtly serious work. Paying tribute to Dennis Potter (The Singing Detective), this musical comedy has characters lip-synch to recordings of famous French pop songs as they become caught in a web of romantic confusion, "Light and vivacious on the surface, but with a subtle undercurrent of melancholy...The City of Light has never seemed more illusional, as the rise and fall of apartment blocks and whole neighborhoods parallel the amorous entanglements of these characters" (New York Film Festival Program). In French with English subtitles. France, 1997, 120 mins. Videocassette $44.95
Stavisky Alain Resnais With Stavisky, director Alain Resnais crafted an extraordinarily beautiful and sophisticated film that requires intense concentration but yields tremendous rewards. The story is that of a French swindler and conman extraordinaire, whose financial manipulations in the 30s brought on riots that helped to topple a government. With Jean-Paul Belmondo, Anne Duperey, and Charles Boyer. Photographed by Sacha Vierny, with a musical score by Stephen Sondheim. French with English subtitles. France 1974 117 mins. Videocassette $44.95