Ripley's Home Video

Ripley's Film

One of the finest DVD houses on the planet with some breathtaking releases. About time they had their own thread...

Looks like they have a Chris Marker 3-film set including Level Five, alas in French with Italian subtitles...

Screen captures from their English-subbed La Terra trema here.
Review of Prima della rivoluzione (Before the Revolution) here.

For Italian speakers I'd recommend:
Roberto Rossellini box set:
Un Pilota ritorna
L'Uomo dalla croce
Desiderio
Mario Camerini/Vittorio De Sica box set:
Darò un milione
Ma non è una cosa seria!
Il Signor Max
I Grandi Magazzini
Gli Uomini, che mascalzoni...
Aldo Fabrizi box set:
Campo de' fiori
Signori, in carrozza!
Cose da pazzi
Hanno rubato un tram
Avanti c'è posto

They also have Rossellini's Giovanna D'Arco al rogo, De Sica's Teresa Venerdì and Resnais's La Guerre est finie (Italian subs only).

I have posted about this some while ago in the Pasolini thread, but as RHV now gets its own thread, I must again recommend their 2-disc set of Pasolini's rare 1964 documentary "Sopralluoghi in Palestina" (where he looked for places to film "Il vangelo", but didn't find anything suitable). A fascinating glance at Israel and Palestina in the early 60s, imbued already with his deep interest in archaic lifestyles and religion that features so prominently in his (slightly) later works. Much more interesting than, say, "Comizi d'amore" or "La rabbia". The second disc has a 120 minute documentary on Pasolini from the late 90s, one of the best and most informative I've ever seen. And that whole set isn't expensive, and has optional english subs throughout.

Pasolini Prossima Nostro

Posted the info at DVDTALK...the just released docu is English-friendly

Ciao,
Pro-B

on a slightly related side note, I've been looking around to see what my best option would be in order to learn the Italian language. would anyone here have any suggestions?

Other than taking a crash language course in Italy?

Worthy of mention is their SE of Bava's Black Sunday, still the definitive DVD edition of that movie to date. And it features the original italian credits.

Currently in Rome and came across (and bought) the following RHV releases:

Il Cristo Proibito, Gelosia & Gli Sbandati.

Haven't heard of any of these before and there's very little info out there about these films (Gli Sbandati has a dvdtalk review) so it'll be very interesting indeed...

Hey Don Lope - How much are these titles going for in Rome these days? Maybe you could be persuaded to pick up an extra copy or two of Gli Sbandati and perhaps Il Cristo Proibito for possible future trades with forum members?

Does anyone know if the following titles have English subs? I emailed RHV, but didn't receive a reply.

Matteo
Geolosia
Quei Due...
La Signora di tutti

According to IBS:

Matteo - Couldn't locate title (director?)
Geolosia - italiano per non udenti - inglese
Quei Due... - italiano per non udenti
La Signora di tutti - italiano per non udenti - inglese

Have you seen Gelosia before or are you buying it based on Germi's reputation? I must warn you that it really is the most hackneyed nonesense...I was shocked...!

Since their fine (and english friendly) release of Visconti's La Terra trema last year, anyone knows what's the story behind Ossessione? Some retailers have listed the DVD (oop though), but on the RHV site there is no indication of a release whatsoever. Did it ever get a release at all?

I don't think so. I think somebody posted a March 2008 release date somewhere on this forum, and I was keeping an eye peeled, but nothing turned up.

Thanks for the info. Too bad about Queu Due. Sorry, ignore "Matteo" - that was a mistakenly typed fragment of another title. Is http://www.dvd.it my best bet for these titles?

Yes, or just as good are Videociak.

I ordered several of these from DVD.It on March 27th, and my order is still listed as "In Attesa". Is this delay normal for them?

rhv is changing distribution from sony to cecchi gori home video so some of their titles will be out of stock till july (and others till october) 2009

What's going on with this label? The link at the top of the page no longer works. They have a Facebook page that hasn't been updated since July, and the Ripley.it site only seems to cover their theatrical distribution of recent movies. Is the classic DVD line now defunct?

they're back even if their site vanished in the last month, they're releasing again some of their best titles (rossellini, wenders, herzog, leone, borowczyk, blasetti) as most of them went out of print on summer, they told me some brand new titles are coming soon, hope their site will be up again, we'll see

One internet retailer has a forthcoming RVH release of Visconti's Ossessione listed on their website. Cecchi Gori is listed as the distributor, but if you look at the cover it has Ripley's logo on it. Let's hope it has English subtitles!

I finally (!) watched their editions of La Terra Trema and La Signora di Tutti and can't believe how good the transfers are!

Isn't the Ophuls a knockout! And such a masterpiece. This is almost HD quality, and its a 3.5 gig file!

To tell the truth, it was your recommendation on another thread that spurred me to buy it.

Yes--I was really taken with the film as a whole, a prime example of melodrama if there ever was one. Already you can see many of Ophuls' signature touches, from the numerous tracking shots to a striking, lengthy superimposition/dissolve.

I had forgotten about the relatively small file size, which demonstrates the value of careful encoding. And I also love the disc's filmlike rendering of contrast and detail. This is an essential purchase.

In 2008 RHV also released its first Blu-ray, A Fistful of Dollars.


Released yesterday.