Criterion has annnounced a box set of four Basil Drearden films entitled LONDON UNDERGROUND. The box will have VICTIM, THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, ALL NIGHT LONG, and the elusive SAPPHIRE. This has just been announced, so I'd look for the box around January of 2011. It will be in the Eclipse series (Criterion Collection). I've never seen SAPPHIRE, but have looked for it for a long time.
shareHi, jobla!
Eclipse Series 25 with the four titles you mentioned arrives January 25, 2011. MSRP is $59.99, though of course it can be found for less at most places.
Sapphire is my favorite of the four films in the set, most interesting now for its look at the emerging interracial Britain of the late 1950s. I taped this off the air years ago, but it will be great to have a proper DVD release at last. The film is no longer available on DVD even in the UK. It won the BFA award for the best British film of 1959.
The League of Gentlemen and Victim are also excellent. I haven't seen All Night Long, which appears to be the weakest of the lot, but it's still considered pretty good.
Basil Dearden was a very good filmmaker, tackling a wide array of genres in his career, which was unfortunately cut short by his death in a car crash in 1971, at the age of 60. Too bad this set doesn't include another film which won the BFA best picture award, and which would fit in with its theme: his 1950 police drama The Blue Lamp. But he's definitely a filmmaker people should become more familiar with.
January 1, 2011, is the one-hundredth anniversary of Dearden's birth, so having this set come out three weeks later is a fitting way to mark his centenary.
Hello Hobnob. The price is rather high, but I've only seen one of the four films (VICTIM, which is a pretty good drama), so the set might be worth it with whatever discount I can dredge up. LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN shows on TV occasionally, and ALL NIGHT LONG has been on TCM of late (although I've never watched it). I gather that Patrick McGoohan plays a jazz drummer/Iago figure, which is a pretty cool concept. SAPPHIRE has never played in my neck of the woods, so that's the major draw for me.
shareAfter I saw the set on Criterion's website last night (and before I saw your post), I looked it up on several sites, and none had it listed as yet, so it's impossible to tell right now what its best price may be. Criterion itself sells it for $47.96, but most other outlets usually offer their titles for less than the Criterion discount. I figure perhaps between $39.99 and $44.99. The SRP is pretty standard for an Eclipse set.
All Night Long has escaped me, and if it's been on TCM I obviously haven't reacted to the title (I get TCM's monthly guide), probably because I never did see the movie, so it's not on my radar. I've seen the other three, but Sapphire hasn't been run anywhere I know of in probably fifteen years or more, which is surprising. But Basil Dearden's London Underground will be a really good collection.
I've posted about the set's arrival on the sites of the other three films.
"All Night Long" is a terrific, offbeat film, well worth seeing. Of course the entire Eclipse set is worth getting; not a bad film in the bunch, and something to appeal to many different viewers.
McGoohan later directed "Catch My Soul," another version of "Othello," with Richie Havens -- seems as if he had a real affinity with the story! He's great in "All Night Long," just as sneaky & lying & scheming as he can be. And having all those great jazz musicians playing themselves & performing doesn't hurt, either.