Restored Films | Cagey Films

Personal landmark: my 1000th post

Posted on June 18, 2025June 17, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Ugolin (Rellys)'s guilt turns into romantic obsession in Marcel Pagnol's Manon des Sources (1952)

It’s hard to believe, but this is my 1000th post since I started writing this blog back in October 2010. Not having missed a single week since that first post – and often posting more than once a week – my writing here has been the most sustained activity I’ve ever undertaken. While there’s no doubt an element of ego involved in putting this much personal opinion out into the world, the blog has served something of a self-therapeutic purpose, providing focus and a personal challenge to off-set the tedium of the federal government clerical job I landed after my editing career dried up. Having retired six months ago, I’m finding myself wondering whether the blog has served its purpose and the time has come to look for other creative pursuits.

The destructive power of fragile masculinity: Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Posted on May 21, 2025May 17, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Bill (Stephen Murray) is so tightly focused on his research that he becomes blind to consequences in Terence Fisher's Four Sided Triangle (1953)

In 1953 Hammer Films took the first step on a path which would soon give the company an international reputation as a key purveyor of horror movies. Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle, a modest production which combined science fiction, psychological horror and romantic melodrama in a prosaic English village setting laid the groundwork which would lead two year later to Val Guest’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), and two more years beyond that to Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the movie which changed the course of modern horror cinema. Hammer’s 4K restoration of Four Sided Triangle will hopefully dispel the film’s rather low reputation, with a beautiful new transfer, two commentaries and three interview featurettes which argue for its value as a pioneering contribution to British genre cinema.

Richard Lester’s Musketeers (1973-74): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on May 14, 2025May 13, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

D'Artagnan (Michael York) prepares to duel Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay) and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) in Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers (1973)

After his radical influence on film comedy in the 1960s, with movies like A Hard Day’s Night (1964), The Knack … and How to Get It (1965) and How I Won the War (1967), Richard Lester remade himself as a skilful creator of mainstream entertainments in the 1970s, beginning with The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974). The mix of history, politics and violence is in constant tension with irreverent comedy and slapstick, while the large cast epitomizes the ’70s attraction to big-name ensembles. Criterion’s new two-disk set – available in both 4K UHD and Blu-ray – has been mastered from a gorgeous restoration by StudioCanal, supported by more than three hours of extras which detail the unconventional production.

Claude Berri’s Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (1986): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on April 16, 2025April 14, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Manon (Emmanuelle Béart) watches over those who ruined her family in Claude Berri's Manon des Sources (1986)

Criterion have released an excellent two-disk edition of Claude Berri’s adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s epic tragedy of idealism brought down by greed and petty rivalries in early 20th Century rural Provence. New 4K restorations of Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources (both 1986) are visually ravishing, while the drama is embodied in superb performances from Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand, Daniel Auteuil, Emmanuelle Béart and an excellent supporting cast.

Peak paranoia: two classics on Blu-ray

Posted on April 2, 2025March 31, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) carefully guards his own secrets while exposing others' in Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974)

Two key films from the era of peak paranoia, the late-’60s and early ’70s, are given exemplary disk releases – Theordore J. Flicker’s darkly comic The President’s Analst (1967) on Blu-ray from Imprint and Francis Ford Coppola’s nightmarish The Conversation (1974) on 4K in a dual-format edition from StudioCanal.

Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on March 17, 2025March 16, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mario (Yves Montand) switches allegiance from the ex-pat group to the newcomer M. Jo (Charles Vanel) in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (1953)

Criterion’s new dual-format 4K UHD/Blu-ray release of The Wages of Fear (1953) presents an opportunity to revisit Henri-Georges Clouzot’s classic and examine just why it troubled its U.S. distributor and some critics with its political and sexual implications.

Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on February 19, 2025February 18, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

The androgyny of former rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) fuels the gender fluidity of Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970)

Performance (1970), co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, is one of the key films to emerge from Britain towards the end of the 1960s, a turbulent decade during which the post-war order was challenged by a generation seeking to redefine society; the film’s radical style – with disorienting editing and a rejection of conventional linear narrative – both reflected and embodied the chaos in a story which deconstructed class, sexuality and individual identity in a welter of violence clashing with art and music. More than fifty years later, the film seems fresher and more pertinent than ever.

More folk horror, old and new

Posted on February 12, 2025February 11, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Maura O’Donnell (Mary Ryan) can see beyond the material world in Robert Wynne-Simmons' The Outcasts (1982)

Three recent releases from England explore the survival into the modern world of ancient mystical forces, illustrating different aspects of folk horror. In Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre (2023) a pagan entity brings tragedy to a family; in Robert Wynne-Simmons’ The Outcasts (1982), villagers in 19th Century Ireland believe a farm girl is a witch: and in Peter Sasdy’s The Stone Tape (1972), scripted by Nigel Kneale, a research team believe they’ve found the mechanism behind hauntings.

Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (1973): Criterion Blu-ray review

Posted on January 8, 2025January 7, 2025 by Kenneth George Godwin

Alexandre (Jean-Pierre Léaud) sees yet another woman to pursue in Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore (1973)

Criterion’s new release presents a stunning restoration of Jean Eustache’s intimate epic The Mother and the Whore (1973), a bleak epitaph for the failed promise of social change which climaxed and crashed with the May 1968 uprising in Paris: a few years later, the film’s characters are adrift and trying to rebuild a sense of themselves in a society which has rejected them and their dreams.

Grindhouse rediscovery: Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (1973)

Posted on October 30, 2024November 1, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Working in the darkroom, Mark (Christopher Augustine) seems to be trapped in Hell in Christina Hornisher’s Hollywood 90028 (1973)

Grindhouse Releasing have done a stellar job of resurrecting a little-known low-budget exploitation movie from the early ’70s. Set on the fringes of the film business in Los Angeles, Hollywood 90028 (1973) was the only feature directed by Christina Hornisher who approached the story of a homicidal film cameraman with the cool detachment of a European director and an emphasis on the experience of women being exploited by the industry.

Tag: Restored Films