Another trio is ready to take its place in the 4xblu online store. Today’s additions include Miklós Jancsó’s “Electra,” Jim Clark’s “Every Home Should Have One,” and Mike Leigh’s “High Hopes.”
Given his stature as one of the world’s greatest filmmakers, it can be hard to believe that there was a 17 year gap between Mike Leigh’s feature debut, “Bleak Moments,” and his 2nd film, 1988’s “High Hopes.” In the meantime, Leigh rose to prominence as a director of stage and television work, including nine feature-length television plays. Among these were “Abigail’s Party” from 1977, an inspiration for Louis C.K.’s “Horace and Pete” series, 1984’s “Meantime” (which actually received a limited theatrical release in the UK), and a quintet that was featured in the San Francisco Internation Film Festival’s 1986 “Discovering Mike Leigh,” the first retrospective of his work in America.
Leigh’s hiatus from proper theatrical distribution is generally attributed to his unusual approach to filmmaking. Rather than writing a script in advance, Leigh has typically gathered with his actors and, through a series of improvisational sessions that take around 15 weeks, collectively gotten a sense of who the characters are and what the story will be. This costly and uncertain process, combined with the notion that there was limited commercial upside for the work he wanted to make (“Bleak Moments” had not been a box office hit), kept him off the silver screen for the better part of two decades. Any such concerns were laid to rest by the release of “High Hopes,” which proved to be a commercial success.