"Actor: Pauline Carton"

• Jean Cocteau Collection | DVD | (30/04/2007) from £13.79   |  Saving you £6.20 (44.96%)   |  RRP £19.99

  This stunning Jean Cocteau box set features Le Sang D'Un Poete (aka: The Blood Of The Poet) and Testament D'Orphee (aka: Testament Of Orpheus). Also an artist poet playwright and novelist Jean Cocteau is widely regarded as one of the most pioneering and important avant-garde directors cinema has produced. His debut Le Sang D'Un Poete and swansong La Testament D'Orphee are released here together in a boxset for the first time in the UK; made 30 years apart they bookend his filmic career and are both masterpieces of the avant-garde movement of which he was at the heart. Cocteau released 12 films in his lifetime including the award-winning La Belle Et La Bete (1946) perhaps his most accessible (and therefore well-known) work. Though often described as a poet first and foremost Cocteau's films were also infused with the phantasmorgorical surrealist imagery and rich symbolism characteristic of all his work. Le Sang D'un Poete (1930): In an artist's studio an unfinished statue comes to life. The lips of its androgynous face move pressing a kiss to the artist's hand. At the statue's demand he plunges it into a mirror. Le Testament D'orphee (1960): Jean Cocteau gave the cinema a truly abstract piece of work as his swansong in which the mind of a poet (played by Cocteau himself) takes control of reality twisting and re-moulding it until it bears not the slightest resemblance to reality as we know it in real life.

• LA POISON | Blu Ray | (25/02/2013) from £18.88   |  Saving you £1.11 (5.88%)   |  RRP £19.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: New HD restoration of the film, presented in 1080p on the Blu-ray Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• LA POISON | DVD | (25/02/2013) from £19.99   |  Saving you £-2.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  One of the great late period films by Sacha Guitry - the total auteur who delighted (and scandalised) the French public and inspired the French New Wave as a model for authorship as director-writer-star of screen and stage alike. In every one of his pictures (and almost every one served as a rueful examination of the war between the sexes), Guitry sculpted by way of a rapier wit - one might say by way of the Guitry touch - some of the most sophisticated black comedies ever conceived... and La Poison [Poison] is one of his blackest. Michel Simon plays Paul Braconnier, a man with designs on murdering his wife Blandine (Germaine Reuver) - a woman with similar designs on her husband. When Braconnier visits Paris to consult with a lawyer about the perfect way of killing a spouse - that is, the way in which he can get away with it - an acid comedy unfolds that reaches its peak in a courtroom scene for the ages. From the moment of Guitry's trademark introduction of his principals in the opening credits, and on through the brilliant performance by national treasure Michel Simon (of Renoir's Boudu sauve des eaux and Vigo's L'Atalante, to mention only two high-water marks), here is fitting indication of why Guitry is considered by many the Gallic equal of Ernst Lubitsch. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to introduce Sacha Guitry into the catalogue with La Poison for the first time on video in the UK in a dazzling new Gaumont restoration. Special Features: Newly translated optional subtitles Substantial booklet containing writing on the film, vintage excerpts, and rare archival imagery

• Retour De Flamme Vol.6 | DVD | (26/11/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £24.99

  Retour De Flamme Vol.6

• Blood Of A Poet / Testament Of Orpheus | DVD | (04/04/2005) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99