4xblu received a half-dozen titles in the mail today, three each from Italy and the UK’s Arrow Video. The former consists of Martin Scorsese’s “The Age of Innocence,” Spike Lee’s “Mo’ Better Blues,” and a new addition to the shop’s inventory, “Missing” by Costa-Gavras. The latter is comprised of two new additions, Mario Bava’s “Black Sabbath” and Dario Argento’s “Deep Red,” plus a restock of Richard Linklater’s “Waking Life.”
Born Konstantinos Gavras in a Peloponnesian village, Costa-Gavras left Greece for France because his father’s membership in the Communist Party had kept him from being able to attend college at home or go to film school in the United States. After studying at France’s IDHEC and working under everyone from René Clair to Jacques Demy, Gavras made his directorial debut with a mystery called “The Sleeping Car Murders” in 1965 before rocketing to fame with “Z,” which won a Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1970. It was the first of a string of political thrillers that Gavras has helmed, including “The Confession,” “State of Seige,” and “Missing.”
After working in the French film industry for over two decades, “Missing” was Gavras’s first American film, released by Universal in 1982. Based on the story of an American journalist who vanished while in Chile around the time of the country’s 1973 military coup, the film stars Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek as his father and wife, who have to work together to uncover the truth about what happened despite their personal differences. Though “Missing” was a commercial and critical success, it was not without controversy, as both the film and the book it was based on were shelved after a libel lawsuit was filed by America’s Ambassador to Chile in 1983. The picture was re-released in 2006 after the suit was dismissed.