Blu-ray, DVD Release: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

By
Laurence
– March 23, 2015Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 30, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion

A girl on the verge of womanhood finds herself in a sensual fantasyland of vampires, witchcraft, and other threats in Jaromil Jireš’ eerie and mystical 1970 movie adventure fantasy Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which appears to have been inspired by such fairy-tales such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red-Riding Hood.

Valerie1Ravishingly shot, enchantingly scored, and spilling over with surreal fancies, Valerie serves up an endlessly looping, nonlinear fairy tale, set in a quasi-medieval landscape.

An enticing phantasmagoria from the inimitable Jireš (The Joke), the film is among the most beautiful oddities of the Czechoslovak New Wave.

Presented in Czech with English subtitles, Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions of the film contain the following features:

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
    • Three early shorts by director Jaromil Jireš: Uncle(1959), Footprints(1960), and The Hall of Lost Steps (1960)
    • New interview with Czechoslovak film scholar Peter Hames
    • Interviews from 2006 with actors Jaroslava Schallerová and Jan Klusák
    • Alternate 2007 psych-folk soundtrack to the film by the Valerie Project, and a new video piece on the music’s origins
    • New English subtitle translation
    • An essay by critic Jana Prikryl
Buy or Rent Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.