Blu-ray, DVD Release: I Knew Her Well

By
Laurence
– December 7, 2015Find Others: Blu-ray, DVD, Movie, New Release, NewsGet More: , , , ,

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Feb. 23, 2015
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion

The prismatic portrait of the days and nights of a party girl in 1960s Rome is a revelation in 1965’s I Knew Her Well.

Stefania Sandrelli avoids the ennui in I Kne Her Well.

Stefania Sandrelli avoids the ennui in I Knew Her Well.

On the surface, the Italian comedy-tinged drama directed by Antonio Pietrangeli plays like an inversion of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita with a woman at its center, following the gorgeous, seemingly liberated Adriana (1900’s Stefania Sandrelli) as she dallies with a wide variety of men, attends parties, goes to modeling gigs, and circulates among the rich and famous.

Despite its often light tone, though, the film is a stealth portrait of a suffocating culture that regularly dehumanizes people, especially women. A serio-comic character study that never strays from its complicated central figure while keeping us at an emotional remove, I Knew Her Well is one of the most overlooked films of the Sixties, by turns hilarious, tragic, and altogether jaw-dropping.

In Italian with English subtitles, Criterion’s Blu-ray and DVD editions of the foreign film include the following features:

  • New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New interview with actor Stefania Sandrelli
  • New interview with film scholar Luca Barattoni about the career of director Antonio Pietrangeli
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • An essay by journalist and author Alexander Stille
Buy or Rent I Knew Her Well
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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.