171 Endless Night

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MichaelB
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171 Endless Night

#1 Post by MichaelB » Thu Dec 05, 2019 6:35 am

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(Sidney Gilliat, 1972)
Release date: 17 February 2020
Limited Edition Blu-ray (UK Blu-ray premiere)


Preorder here

The final feature by Sidney Gilliat, Endless Night capped a career that encompassed screenplays for Alfred Hitchcock and Carol Reed, the anarchic St. Trinian’scomedies, and his own directorial gems such as mystery-thriller Green for Danger.

Adapting Agatha Christie’s celebrated novel of the same name, the film reunites the co-stars of cult classic Twisted Nerve, Hywel Bennett (The Virgin Soldiers) and Hayley Mills (Take a Girl Like You), and boasts an impressive supporting cast including Britt Ekland (The Wicker Man), Per Oscarsson (A Dandy in Aspic) and George Sanders (All About Eve).

INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New 4K restoration
• Original mono audio
• The BEHP Interview with Sidney Gilliat (1990): an archival audio recording, made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring the renowned writer and director in conversation with Roy Fowler and Taffy Haines
• The John Player Lecture with Bernard Herrmann (1972): the celebrated composer in conversation at London’s National Film Theatre
• New interview with actor Hayley Mills (2020)
• Bernard in Britain (2020): appreciation of Bernard Herrmann’s ‘British period’ by author and historian Neil Sinyard
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• Theatrical trailer
• New English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive 36-page booklet with a new essay by Anne Billson, Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat on Endless Night, an archival interview with Gilliat, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited edition of 3,000 copies
• All extras subject to change

#PHILTD171
BBFC cert: 15
REGION B
EAN: 5060697920215

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 171 Endless Night

#2 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:12 am

This had all the potential to be another eccentric narrative that went head first into the strange like Secret Ceremony but, aside from some pretty exceptional visuals, the film only dances in this territory and stays relatively safe. The leads are weak actors and weak characters which limits investment though this would be forgiven in exchange for wilder horror or thriller offerings comfortable in the murky waters of the surreal. It seems to want to uproot itself to this space but is afraid or anchored by the Christie mystery or both and refuses to try. I did a double take at George Sanders popping up, which is always fun, but unfortunately otherwise the cast can’t support the Christie material, and the filmmakers don’t trust her story enough to make a choice to take chances in any direction. Instead we get a lot of style (including nausea inducing angular shifting that emulates the experience of being on a boat with motion sickness) but nothing consistent and it distracts from the content, though the content is also diluted to where we want more style. It’s a film of half-measures, a shame because there are times it comes close to what it promises before retreating back to a drab dry script with a technical trick or two self-consciously thrown in. The ending of the book actually works because of how the narrative is presented but in the film the inventiveness of form diffuses the effects of the reveal, confusing the audience via drawn-out manipulation passed the climax as a last resort since there was so little build from omitting information that would have detailed the setup. I’m being pretty harsh, and like I said there are aspects to admire here but as a cohesive piece it just doesn’t work. I tend to give these films a lot of rope too because this era of experimentation with imbuing stacked eclecticism into thriller genres is very appealing to me, flaws and all, but this was a misfire.

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Re: 171 Endless Night

#3 Post by MichaelB » Fri Jan 03, 2020 12:02 pm

Full specs announced:

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Re: 171 Endless Night

#4 Post by MichaelB » Wed Jan 29, 2020 1:08 pm


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MichaelB
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Re: 171 Endless Night

#5 Post by MichaelB » Sat Feb 01, 2020 3:21 pm


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therewillbeblus
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Re: 171 Endless Night

#6 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Dec 29, 2022 2:22 am

Revisited this and liked it a lot more. I still agree with my thoughts above, but with significantly decreased expectations, I was able to see it for what it is: an exercise in style that takes us into a fever dream of suppression. So when we do finally get an unearned twist of throwaway WTF-ness, its assumption that we've been manipulated and don't know our characters at all is fair play because the entire mise en scene and editing style has been built around how they don't know (and don't really want to know) themselves, obfuscating not only their psyches and histories, but present objective reality itself. It's a film of delusionally-skewed subjectivity playing as distanced truth, an anti-Agatha Christie adaptation, for the audience deception surrounding the whodunit text is superfluous next to the pathos of character self-deception. What can be seen as one of the most disappointing endings in any movie ever at face value is also a meta-reflection for the protagonist. His actual identity is pathetically disappointing, as is the disruption of his preferred narrative, and the same goes for his wife, who so desperately wants to believe that her beau is a modest prince deserving of the luxuries she can gift him. How tragic, on multiple levels, that both are so very wrong

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