Anthony Asquith's Underground on Blu-ray and DVD [read more]
Vintage Britflick
Anthony Asquith's Underground (1928), a subterranean tale of love, jealousy, treachery and murder, evokes the daily life of the average Londoner better than any other film in Britain's silent canon.
Restored by the BFI National Archive and following an acclaimed theatrical release in January, the BFI now brings the film to DVD and Blu-ray for the first time on 17 June 2013 in a Dual Format Edition.
Click above to see a lovely clip, shot at Waterloo Station.
It is presented with a new orchestral score composed by Neil Brand and performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra; along with five short complementary films and an alternative score by musician/sound recordist Chris Watson.
In the late 1920s Asquith, along with Hitchcock, was one of the most audacious young talents in British film and Underground was his own original screenplay. With its scenes of the bustling tube (passenger behaviour is strikingly familiar) and the capital’s parks, double-decker buses, pubs and shabby bedsits, Asquith masterfully balances the light and dark sides of city life, aided by a superb cast of Brian Aherne and Elissa Landi as the nice young lovers and Norah Baring and Cyril McLaglen as their unhappy counterparts.
The extra films include Scenes at Piccadilly Circus and Hyde Park Corner from 1930-32 and Under Night Streets, a documentary from 1958 about the tube’s nightshift workers.
