Poland/Czechoslovakia, 1960 - 1968
Length / Features: 75 / 81 / 80 minutes
Length / Special features: 62 minutes
2.0 Dual Mono LPCM (48k/16-bit/24 bit)
Black and white
Original aspect ratios: 1.33:1 /
1:37:1 / 1.66:1
Language: Polish, Czech
Subtitles: English
Blu-Ray: BD50 x 3 / 1080p
Region ABC (Region Free)
Blu-Ray RRP: £39.99
Release Date: 18 December 2023
Second Run BD072
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Second Run presents essential early works by Polish director and iconoclast Jerzy Skolimowski, one of international cinema’s most prolific and celebrated filmmakers. This limited edition 3-disc Blu-ray box set contains a selection of 1960s feature films - Walkover (1965), Barrier (1966) and Dialogue 20 40 60 (1968) - presented from stunning new 2K restorations, plus early short films - The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol, 1960); Little Hamlet (Hamleś, 1960); Erotyk (1961); Your Money or Your Life (Pieniądze albo życie, 1961) - newly remastered in HD, and released for the first time ever on Blu-ray.
Walkover (Walkower)
Skolimowski's semi-autobiographical second feature follows a disillusioned boxer on the eve of his 30th birthday as he questions what his next move should be. Shot in a series of superbly choreographed long-takes, the film is inspired as much by jazz composition and Skolimowski's own poetry as any cinematic precursor. Audacious and kinetic, Walkover is a landmark of 1960s cinema. Its sheer bravura, dark humour and visual invention remain as potent as ever.
Barrier (Bariera)
Considered by many to be Skolimowski's masterpiece, this intoxicating, inventive tour de force follows an alienated medical student as he attempts to make sense of the modern world, constantly confronting the barrier between generations. Ferociously youthful, the film bursts with startling imagery, perfectly complemented by Krzysztof Komeda's innovative jazz score. Romantic, exuberant and often surreal, Barrier is one of the most remarkable films of the new Polish cinema of the 1960s.
Dialogue 20 40 60 (Dialóg 20-40-60)
In this bold, experimental feature, Skolimowski and Czechoslovak directors Peter Solan (Before Tonight Is Over) and Zbyněk Brynych (The Fifth Horseman is Fear) create three separate stories in which couples from different generations deliver the same dialogue. The identical lines take on unexpected new meanings in their differing contexts, raising questions about life, love and marriage.
• Walkover (Walkower) and Barrier (Bariera) presented from new 2K restorations supervised by Jerzy Skolimowski, produced by Wytwórnia Filmów Dokumentalnych i Fabularnych (WFDiF), Poland.
• Dialogue 20 40 60 (Dialóg 20-40-60) presented from a new 2K restoration by the Slovak Film Institute.
• Exclusive, newly-filmed introductions to Walkover and Barrier by critic, curator and scholar Michał Oleszczyk.
• New and expansive audio commentaries on Walkover and Barrier by producer and film historian Michael Brooke.
• Jerzy Skolimowski's rarely seen early short films, newly remastered in HD:
- The Menacing Eye (Oko wykol, 1960) (silent)
- Little Hamlet (Hamleś, 1960)
- Erotyk (1961)
- Your Money or Your Life (Pieniądze albo życie, 1961)
• Individual booklets with new writing on each film by filmmaker, author and Polish cinema specialist David Thompson.
• New and improved English subtitle translations.
• UK and World premieres on Blu-ray.
• Region-free Blu-rays (A/B/C).
“Skolimowski has produced a body of work located on the margins between the surreal and the absurd... His is a cinema of irony ambiguously played out [...] located between reality and fantasy where the real shades into metaphor.”
Great Directors: Skolimowski, Senses of Cinema
“A one-man Polish New Wave” BFI
WALKOVER
1966 Cahiers du cinema / #2 in Best Films of 1966
“To see Walkover is to open one’s eyes wider”
Jerzy Skolimowski
“Walkover is indeed one of the masterworks of the brash, youthful, and defiant cinematic modernism of the mid-sixties,
a film of a Polish New Wave that shares the insolence, the rejection of authority, and the energies of revolt that also mark the French New Wave”
Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“Walkover remains his most defiantly original work... it shares a seminal place with [...] films that ‘opened our eyes wider’ in a state of sublime surprise” Senses of Cinema
BARRIER
1966 Bergamo International Film Festival / Winner: Grand Prix – Best Film
“Like a Godard film, the elements are simple, naïve. But Skolimowski weaves an eye-opening chain of images...
It’s a visionary film” Sight and Sound
“One of his best, an extraordinary fusion of fantasy and documentary… a bleakly disenchanted look at the Polish
here-and-now” Time Out
DIALOGUE 20 40 60
“An extraordinary experiment in world cinema… an insight in the relationships of men and women of different age groups, an analysis of love and marriage of those who are at the beginning, in the middle or going towards the end of their life” Letterboxd
