February 9, 2010

Specialty DVD Supplier Flicker Alley Announces Rene Clair's 1927 triumph The Italian Straw Hat (Un Chapeau de paille d’Italie).

This fin de siècle comedy of manners makes its DVD premiere on Tuesday, April 6th

Los Angeles, CA— Flicker Alley, a specialty supplier of fine silent films and classic cinema programming, in association with The Blackhawk Films Collection proudly announces the release of The Italian Straw Hat.

René Clair’s sparkling comedy of manners is a witty, delicate, inspired satire on propriety and behavior in the bourgeois mind-set. Transposing the action of the perennial stage farce from 1851 to a summer wedding day in 1895 – the birth of cinema – Clair recalls detail, costume and design captured by the first movies. The Italian Straw Hat – Un Chapeau de paille d’Italie – triumphantly survives its 1927 journey from stage to screen; a dozen eccentric characters, superbly acted, try desperately to keep up appearances in the face of disaster, their attitudes, concerns and gestures exquisitely stylized under Clair’s deft orchestration. The sets and costumes, too are a charming combination of the suffocating and the exact.

A bridegroom is riding to his marriage when his horse eats a straw hat hanging on a branch while its owner, a married lady, enjoys a tryst behind the bush with her lover, a fierce hussar. She cannot go home without her hat, so the groom interlaces his wedding with an attempt to find madam a twin chapeau, launching a series of misunderstandings and embarrassments. The Italian Straw Hat has few cinematic equals and inspired Pauline Kael to observe “One of the funniest films ever made… so expertly timed and choreographed that farce becomes ballet.”

This is the only fully complete edition of The Italian Straw Hat ever available to American viewers. The film was mastered in high definition at 19 frames per second from the original 35mm negative used for the English release in 1930. As that version had been subjected to about twenty edits, all the missing pieces were restored from an original French print. Intertitles are in English, with optional subtitles of the original French text.

There is a choice of two new accompaniments, one by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra and the other by pianist Philip Carli, each providing a unique interpretation on this delightful film.

The bonus materials include a short film by René Clair, La Tour (The Eiffel Tower) (1928) and Ferdinand Zecca’s Noce en Goguette (Fun After The Wedding) (1907), typical of the early films that inspired Clair. Lenny Borger and Iris Barry both provide essays in an enclosed booklet. The complete 1851 play Un Chapeau de paille d’ Italie by Eugene Labiche and Marc Michel, here in an English translation of 1916 as The Leghorn Hat, is included as a DVD-ROM extra.

Italian Straw Hat is the eleventh DVD title to be released through the partnership of Film Preservation Associates’ Blackhawk Films Collection and Flicker Alley, following Discovering Cinema, Saved From The Flames, Georges Méliès: First Wizard of Cinema (1896-1913), Abel Gance’s La Roue, Perils of the New Land: Films of the Immigrant Experience (1910-1915), Douglas Fairbanks: A Modern Musketeer, Under Full Sail – Silent Cinema on the High Seas, Bardelys The Magnificent / Monte Cristo, Miss Mend and George Méliès Encore, a 28 film companion piece to our original Melies set.


ABOUT THE BLACKHAWK FILMS COLLECTION
Blackhawk Films was founded in 1927 as a producer of film advertising for merchants and as a distributor of regional newsreels. The company made its mark as a nontheatrical distributor with the advent of 16mm sound film in 1933, establishing several regional offices before WWII. In 1947, Blackhawk expanded into sales of used film and soon thereafter began distributing new 8mm and 16mm prints of Laurel & Hardy comedies from Hal Roach Studios as well as titles from such other suppliers such as Fox Movietone, Killiam Shows, and National Telefilm Associates. David Shepard joined Blackhawk as Vice President (1973-1976) and after founding Film Preservation Associates in 1986, acquired the Blackhawk Films library which now comprises some 5,000 titles.


ABOUT FLICKER ALLEY
Flicker Alley, LLC was founded in 2002 by Jeff Masino. Each Flicker Alley project is the culmination of hundreds of hours of research, digital restoration, and music production. Flicker Alley has partnered with Turner Classic Movies on several historic cable broadcasts including three previously unavailable silent films produced by Howard Hughes, three rarely seen Rudolph Valentino films and new digital editions of J’Accuse and La Roue, by Abel Gance. The Flicker Alley brand has grown to enjoy national and international critical acclaim and is regularly featured in annual "Best Of" lists. Twice, the company has been honored with the prestigious Il Cinema Ritrovato DVD Award: In 2008 for George Melies - First Wizard of Cinema, and again in 2009 for Douglas Fairbanks - A Modern Musketeer. In 2009, the company was a Heritage Award recipient by the National Society of Film Critics.

Flicker Alley titles are available in North America directly through Flicker Alley (www.flickeralley.com) and through online retailers such as Amazon.com (www.amazon.com). Wholesale orders are handled by Emphasis Entertainment Group, Inc. (astrutz@aol.com). For institutional sales please contact Gartenberg Media Enterprises (gartmedia@nyc.rr.com).