154 Time Without Pity

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Dr Amicus
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154 Time Without Pity

#1 Post by Dr Amicus » Wed Aug 07, 2019 4:51 am

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TIME WITHOUT PITY
(Joseph Losey, 1957)
Release date: 28 October 2019
Limited Blu-ray Edition (World Blu-ray premiere)


Following his blacklisting in the McCarthy HUAC hearings, director Joseph Losey (Eva, The Damned, Secret Ceremony) moved to the England in the 1950s. The gritty British suspense thriller, Time Without Pity was the first film he made in the UK under his own name.

In a BAFTA-nominated performance, the great Michael Redgrave (Goodbye Gemini, Connecting Rooms, Dead of Night) stars as an anguished father whose son is convicted of murder and languishing on death row. In a desperate race-against-time, he attempts to prove his son’s innocence whilst bringing the real murderer to justice.

With photography by Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man), and a superb supporting cast including Ann Todd (Taste of Fear), Leo McKern (X the Unknown), and Peter Cushing (Corruption, The Beast Must Die), Time Without Pity is brilliantly accomplished slice of Brit-noir, and a potent cry against capital punishment.

INDICATOR LIMITED BLU-RAY EDITION BOX SET SPECIAL FEATURES:

• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
The Guardian Interview with Joseph Losey (1973): the celebrated filmmaker in conversation with film critic Dilys Powell at London’s National Film Theatre
• Selected scenes commentary with film historian Neil Sinyard
Introduction by Gavrik Losey (2019): a new interview with the filmmaker and son of director Joseph Losey
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• New English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Robert Murphy, archival interviews with cast and crew members, an overview of contemporary critical responses, archival articles, and film credits and more
• World premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited Edition of 3,000 copies
• All extras subject to change

#PHILTD154
BBFC cert: PG
REGION FREE
EAN: 5037899084021

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domino harvey
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Re: Indications of Incoming Indicator Entertainments

#2 Post by domino harvey » Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:05 pm

Incredible news. Michael Redgrave gives a tremendous performance and the ingenuity of the protagonist's alcoholism acting to undermine his own desperate attempts to beat the clock provides such great forward momentum and a new twist on the typical noir fatalism

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swo17
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Re: ??? Time Without Pity

#3 Post by swo17 » Wed Aug 07, 2019 2:08 pm

Haven't seen this yet but I did think Redgrave was fantastic in the version of 1984 that came out just before this

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Dr Amicus
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#4 Post by Dr Amicus » Thu Aug 08, 2019 8:54 am

This is the highlight for me of this month's announcements - my Losey viewing has been patchy but generally rewarding and the cast and extras make this an easy purchase. I do like the choices of films for the actors - Beast Must Die for Cushing? Really? - especially X The Unknown for McKern as that was originally going to be directed by Losey until Dean Jagger complained about being directed by a Communist!

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domino harvey
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#5 Post by domino harvey » Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:08 am

It's interesting that the summary doesn't even mention the alcoholism of Redgrave's character-- this doesn't really function as a plot twist, it is the plot, and indeed calling the film a tract against capital punishment seems a bit of a stretch. But this is the best film I've seen at showing the inescapable pull of addiction. Redgrave's character is not one AA meeting away from turning things around, and him shouldering the weight of saving his son's life here is kind of like if Casey Affleck's character in Manchester by the Sea were placed into an action movie as the hero. Redgrave struggles and tries to pull himself together with terrific physicality and the film gets frightful mileage out of the biggest obstacle to his success being his own compulsive behavior. It's an exhilarating entertainment, and the countdown aspect becomes all the more suspenseful because there is significant doubt that Redgrave will succeed and yet the viewer finds themselves compulsively invested in rooting him on and waving our hands in unbearable frustration when he invariably backslides or fucks up-- not because the demands of an idiotic screenplay necessitate these relapses and false steps, but because his failings are true to the realistic nature of the character as shown and we truly do want him to somehow pull it all off in the end.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:26 am

domino harvey wrote:
Thu Aug 08, 2019 11:08 am
It's interesting that the summary doesn't even mention the alcoholism of Redgrave's character-- this doesn't really function as a plot twist, it is the plot, and indeed calling the film a tract against capital punishment seems a bit of a stretch. But this is the best film I've seen at showing the inescapable pull of addiction. Redgrave's character is not one AA meeting away from turning things around, and him shouldering the weight of saving his son's life here is kind of like if Casey Affleck's character in Manchester by the Sea were placed into an action movie as the hero. Redgrave struggles and tries to pull himself together with terrific physicality and the film gets frightful mileage out of the biggest obstacle to his success being his own compulsive behavior. It's an exhilarating entertainment, and the countdown aspect becomes all the more suspenseful because there is significant doubt that Redgrave will succeed and yet the viewer finds themselves compulsively invested in rooting him on and waving our hands in unbearable frustration when he invariably backslides or fucks up-- not because the demands of an idiotic screenplay necessitate these relapses and false steps, but because his failings are true to the realistic nature of the character as shown and we truly do want him to somehow pull it all off in the end.
This may not be the best film I've seen about the inescapable pull of addiction, but it presents a very poignant, and way ahead of its time, take on the research that's come about only in the last few years about the finite willpower in people and how relapse becomes more likely as we become increasingly depleted by stressors in early sobriety. We also know that support, especially from other people, is key to maintaining a balance of this willpower, support that Redgrave does not have, even from the man he's trying to save. domino is right that this variable makes the entire film feel like higher stakes because we feel the weight on Redgrave's character, and as time counts down, the stress increases and the compulsions of addiction intensify. It's a marvelous film on its own but when you add the willpower, addiction, and lack of support together you get a lethal cocktail of more chips than usual stacked against the protagonist, who's barely hanging on by a thread, if at all, to use the ounce he's got left to achieve his goal. Redgrave is perfectly cast and portrays "desperate" with more authenticity than most who often mistake this for simply "weak" when it's far more complicated a state of being than adjectives can properly convey, but with every behavioral tool at his disposal, Redgrave nails it.

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MichaelB
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#7 Post by MichaelB » Mon Sep 16, 2019 10:22 am

Full specs confirmed:

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MichaelB
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#8 Post by MichaelB » Wed Oct 16, 2019 2:54 am


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tenia
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#9 Post by tenia » Fri Oct 25, 2019 2:36 am

Just watched this one and I'm very impressed by the quality of the remaster. It doesn't look at all like your typical "HD remaster" (ie pre-existing master) but rather like a very recent 2K restoration (possibly from a 4K scan).

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HJackson
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#10 Post by HJackson » Tue Oct 29, 2019 6:25 am

Loved this and think it will finally convince me to do a proper thorough watch of Losey’s late work and seek out what I have left from his noir period. Re the anti-capital punishment theme:
SpoilerShow
The ending I think totally undermines the idea that this is a coherent cry against capital punishment, even if that was the intention, since Graham’s great heroic act is to frame Stanford for a second murder to implicate him in the murder he did commit, an act that would surely have led to his execution.

Interestingly this film was released in London on March 21 1957, the exact same day that the Homicide Act gained Royal Assent. That act would have reduced Stanford’s original crime to a non-capital offence while the murder the hero frames him for at the film’s climax would be a capital offence - both because it was committed with a firearm and was a second murder committed on a separate occasion.

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MichaelB
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#11 Post by MichaelB » Mon Nov 11, 2019 4:06 pm


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Drucker
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#12 Post by Drucker » Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:43 pm

Count me in as another fan of this film. The first reel or so is incredibly disorienting but it's effective and gripping. Once we discover
SpoilerShow
the father is an alcoholic
this technique and the first sequence or so are rendered even more effective. Losey does an incredible job of putting us in the father's shoes as he tries to make sense of exactly what has happened.
SpoilerShow
Would love to know if anyone else had a POV on the use of mirrors, especially in the first half of the film? The first scene in the car with Peter Cushing, the first time the father visits his son in jail and is talking to him, and several other sequences prominently feature mirrors. It seems like the meaning shifts over time. At first it seems to be a technique to highlight that the father is blaming himself. Perhaps a 'How can you live with yourself" given his failures as a father. But at the end, the meaning shifts, to highlight that he is the solution that can save his son
.

I found this, my first Losey, a very effective film that really did a great job maintaining its momentum throughout.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#13 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Dec 29, 2019 1:18 am

Drucker wrote:
Sat Dec 28, 2019 11:43 pm
SpoilerShow
Would love to know if anyone else had a POV on the use of mirrors, especially in the first half of the film? The first scene in the car with Peter Cushing, the first time the father visits his son in jail and is talking to him, and several other sequences prominently feature mirrors. It seems like the meaning shifts over time. At first it seems to be a technique to highlight that the father is blaming himself. Perhaps a 'How can you live with yourself" given his failures as a father. But at the end, the meaning shifts, to highlight that he is the solution that can save his son
SpoilerShow
I’d have to see it again to recall the contexts of the mirrors, but your reading of the iconography drives home Redgrave’s own path of acceptance through the film. His own shame and baggage of failure in early sobriety is following him like a shadow throughout the early parts of the narrative as he barely moves up the steep hill he’s created for himself with any will power in tact to keep him from a drink, let alone save his son. As he sheds the weight of his past, fears of what his son thinks of him, embarrassment, and even the idea of future-oriented thinking in holding onto his sobriety, he narrows that focus down to one goal and becomes self-actualized towards a single existential aim to mark his success. It would make sense if the mirror insinuated this confidence in the self towards one solution since it marks his growth (and complete transformation, really) from a man weak from fear to one who is strong by the acceptance of fatalism in the relinquishment of the ego. His reflection no longer signifies his own death but the potential to save another, selfishness into selflessness, self-pity into the absence of pity. I’ll definitely look for these during my next watch, but your observation would seem to serve the noirish elements and character development perfectly.

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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#14 Post by M Sanderson » Wed Jan 01, 2020 4:28 pm

Excellent transfer of a gripping, and quite punishing, film.

Need to watch again.

Losey made some truly bizarre films, recent Blu ray upgrades have reminded me, not only this but The Damned, Criminal & Secret Ceremony.

Will be interesting to pair this up with Studio Canal’s recent spruced up Go-Between release, another film featuring a tormented Redgrave.

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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#15 Post by NABOB OF NOWHERE » Thu Jan 02, 2020 4:51 am

Re mirrors. Losey certainly utilised mirrors in almost all his films to a notoriously fetishistic degree and welcomed multiple readings of his films as long as they weren't too "pretentious". I think Drucker's logic and TWB's testimony is eminently legitimate but if we are to take Losey at his word he wasn't one for planning shots necessarily according to a psychological schematic no matter how satisfying that may be for us. He attributed his mirror shots as a device in concrete terms, mainly to be able to gain another view of or angle on the subject and not merely relying on a head-on shot.Something which could be put down to coy avoidance of the issue but then again Losey was far from being a coy individual.
There is an interesting article by Catherine Grant re the use of mirrors and reflections in Modesty Blaise, an Op-art rampage if ever there was one .Here again Losey takes a pragmatic stance in wanting to ' mirror' the dazzling insecurity of multiplicity in the Op-art and Pop-art movements.
She also mentions in a quote from Deleuze
"On one or two key occasions, these effects produce what Gilles Deleuze in his theory of the ‘crystal-image’ has called a fleeting ‘point of indiscernibility […] precisely constituted by […] the coalescence of the actual image and the virtual image, the image with two sides, actual and virtual at the same time".
This can of course also lead to a type of deception or indeed self-deception which is evident in Mr Klein for example, the enveloping neurosis of identity being similarly 'reflected'. So in short the theories are there if you want them and no-one's gonna shoot you down as being misguided.

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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#16 Post by ethel » Tue Oct 06, 2020 8:43 am

The transfer, the extras, and the splendid anthology of writing in the booklet make this a stellar edition.

One question: Paul Daneman has the last line of the film, tying up the action. It is very noticeable that the dialogue that is heard in no way matches his lip movements. Anyone with lip reading skills able to uncover the original words?

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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#17 Post by ethel » Fri Nov 13, 2020 6:30 am

Also, the Indicator edition is absolutely complete. The previous HVE edition (in 4:3 format) had a surprising two minute cut when Redgrave's tortured alcoholic father sees a newspaper poster saying his convicted son is to have "NO REPRIEVE". The HVE version then has a hard cut to the father back in the pub, drinking heavily. In the uncut version, the father walks straight in to the newspaper office where he's treated with icy disdain by the cynical, dart-throwing editor.

This editor character is played by George Devine, then the entrepreneurial artistic director of London's Royal Court Theatre, where the previous year, John Osborne's LOOK BACK IN ANGER had been staged, directed by Tony Richardson. Not just a groundbreaking producer, Devine was an occasional actor (e.g. in Richardson's TOM JONES).

Whatever the reason for the excision in the old dvd edition, it's a chillingly effective little scene which is back where it belongs in the splendid Indicator edition.

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Re: 154 Time Without Pity

#18 Post by MichaelB » Fri Nov 13, 2020 6:47 am

I first became aware of this difference when creating the subtitles for the Indicator edition, because I had to transcribe the newspaper-office scene by ear after encountering an unexpected gap. And, like you, I have no idea why it was omitted: it's too short to suggest cutting purely to get the running time down.

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