Blu-ray, DVD Release: The Naked Island

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: May 17, 2016
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Director Kaneto Shindo’s 1960 The Naked Island, a documentary-like, dialogue-free portrayal of daily struggle, remains a work of stunning visual beauty and invention.

The Naked Island (1960)

The Naked Island (1960)

The international breakthrough for one of Japan’s most innovative filmmakers—who went on to make such other marvelous movies as Onibaba and KuronekoThe Naked Island follows a family whose home is on a tiny, remote island off the coast of Japan. They must row a great distance to another shore, collect water from a well in buckets, and row back to their island—a nearly backbreaking task essential for the survival of these people and their land.

Featuring a memorable modernist score by Hikaru Hayashi, Criterion’s DVD and Blu-ray editions of The Naked Island include the following:

  • New, high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Video introduction by director Kaneto Shindo, recorded for a 2011 retrospective of his work
  • Audio commentary recorded in 2000, featuring Shindo and composer Hikaru Hayashi
  • New appreciation of the film by actor Benicio Del Toro
  • New interview with film scholar Akira Mizuta Lippit
  • Trailer
  • New English subtitle translation
  • An essay by film scholar Haden Guest

 

Buy or Rent The Naked Island
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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.