Artificial Eye 40th Anniversary Collection: Volume 4 Blu Ray – Jean-Pierre Léaud, Stéphane Audran

Collection of four classic foreign films. In ‘The 400 Blows’ (1959), the directorial debut of François Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Léaud stars as Antoine Doinel, an unruly young Parisian whose unhappiness leads him into trouble. Frequently running away from school and home, Antoine spends much of his time playing with his friends on the streets of the city; but events take a more serious turn when an accusation of plagiarism leads him to quit school and the theft of a typewriter lands him in trouble with the police. In ‘Three Colours: Blue’ (1993) Julie (Juliette Binoche) has her world turned upside down when her husband and daughter are killed in a car crash. She sells their home and moves to a Parisian suburb in an attempt to build a new life for herself. But her efforts to start afresh are dragged down by memories from the past and fear of the present. In ‘Sawdust and Tinsel’ (1953) a group of down-on-their-luck circus performers face love, jealousy, humiliation and loss as they travel through the Swedish countryside at the turn of the century. In ‘Babette’s Feast’ (1987), set in 19th-century Denmark, Babette (Stéphane Audran), a chef and refugee from the French Civil War, finds herself in a remote hamlet working for two sisters who preside over its inhabitants. The sisters were brought up under the strict regime of their devout father who preached salvation through self-denial and his influence has persisted even after his death. But Babette’s arrival is set to change the status quo when she cooks a sumptuous meal for the sisters and their friends.

THREE COLOURS BLUE – The first instalment of the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy on Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, the three colours of the French flag. Blue is the most sombre of the three, a movie dominated by feelings of grief. As the film begins, a car accident claims the life of a well-known composer. His wife, played by Juliette Binoche, does not so much put the pieces of her life back together as start an entirely new existence. BABETTES FEAST – Babette’s Feast is a film which depicts so little, yet says so much. Set in a rural Danish community, it centres around the twin sisters of the village pastor and the French women who serves them after fleeing the 1871 revolution. On winning the lottery she plans a feast to mark the centenary of the sisters’ father, bringing a dimension of fine living into the lives of the God-fearing Lutherans and healing festering personal animosities in the process. THE 400 BLOWS – Francois Truffaut’s semi-autobiographical first feature stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, an unruly young Parisian whose unhappiness leads him into trouble. Frequently running away from school and home, Antoine spends much of his time playing with his friends on the steets of the city; but events take a more serious turn when an accusation of plagiarism leads him to quit school and the theft of a typewriter lands him in trouble with the police. SAWDUST AND TINSEL – While traveling in caravan through the country of Sweden, one member of the decadent Alberti Circus tells the owner and ringmaster Albert Johansson a sad story about the clown Frost: seven years ago, his wife Alma was surprised by him bathing naked in a lake with a regiment.