TONI [MASTERS OF CINEMA]

[4274]

Stock Status: Out of Stock

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Director: Jean Renoir

Label: Eureka!

Genre: Art House

Country: France

Year: 1934

Financed by Marcel Pagnol's production company, Jean Renoir's Toni is a landmark in French filmmaking. Based on a police dossier concerning a provincial crime of passion, it was lensed by Claude Renoir on location (unusually for the time) in the small town of Les Martigues where the actual events occurred. The use of directly-recorded sound, authentic patois, lack of make-up, a large ensemble cast of local citizens in supporting roles, and Renoir's steadfast desire to avoid melodrama lead to Toni often being labeled "the first 'neorealist' film". Renoir himself disagreed. Although Toni is acknowledged as a masterly forerunner of neo-realist preoccupations and techniques he wrote: "I do not think that is quite correct. The Italian films are magnificent dramatic productions, whereas in Toni I was at pains to avoid the dramatic."

Toni's story centers on an Italian immigrant, Antonio Canova (Charles Blavette), a labourer at a local quarry who has become entangled in relationships with his landlady (Jenny Helia) and with the young, hot-blooded Spaniard, Josefa (Celia Montalvan). As Josefa's life disintegrates through rape and a necessitous marriage to the brutish foreman Albert (Max Dalban), Toni is caught up in a series of marriages gone sour and the psychological fragility of those he cares for.

Despite the exquisite location backgrounds — the vineyards, rocky hilltops and verdant pathways surrounding the little village — Renoir makes no attempt to impose, through picturesqueness, the placid power of this Provencal backwater. Toni's direct style and theme (Luchino Visconti was assistant director) attained classic status with the critics and directors of the French New Wave. Renoir's vision of realism approaches a purity sometimes found in documentary, whilst retaining the literary power and emotion of Balzac, Flaubert and Zola. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Toni for the first time on DVD in the West.

DVD FEATURES

Original Fullframe Version

French audio

English subtitles

Full length audio commentary by Kent Jones and Phillip Lopate

Video introduction by NFT programmer Geoff Andrew

Promotional material gallery

28-page booklet with a reprint of Tom Milne's 1980 review and numerous archive reprints

Part of the Masters of Cinema Collection.

OUT OF STOCK - WE ARE NO LONGER CARRYING THIS DVD

TONI [MASTERS OF CINEMA]

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Product 70 of 1492 in category Art House

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TONI [MASTERS OF CINEMA][4274]Stock Status: Out of Stock

$0.00

TONI [MASTERS OF CINEMA]

[4274]

Stock Status: Out of Stock