Picnic at Hanging Rock - Criterion Collection
by Peter Weir
List Price:
Our Price: $21.99
You Save: $7.96 (27%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $14.95 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Anne-Louise Lambert, Helen Morse, Kirsty Child, Rachel Roberts, Vivean GrayDirector: Peter Weir
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Russell Boyd
Producer: A. John Graves
Producer: Hal McElroy
Producer: Jim McElroy
Producer: Patricia Lovell
Writer: Cliff Green
Writer: Joan Lindsay
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: Letterbox, 1.66:1
Running Time: 115 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1998-11-03
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Picnic at Hanging Rock - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: It's like a dream
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw this film the first time in the eighties and was impressed.
Having it seen again after many years I love the dreamy quality of the story and its interpretation. As a writer it inspired me very much.
Summary of Picnic at Hanging Rock - Criterion Collection
Twenty years after it swept Australia into the international film spotlight, Peter Weir's stunning 1975 masterpiece remains as ineffable as the unanswerable mystery at its core. A Valentine's Day picnic at an ancient volcanic outcropping turns to disaster for the residents of Mrs. Appleyard's school when a few young girls inexplicably vanish on Hanging Rock. A lyrical, meditative film charged with suppressed longings, Picnic at Hanging Rock is at long last available in a pristine widescreen director's cut with a newly-minted Dolby? digital 5.1 channel soundtrack.Situated somewhere between supernatural horror and lush Victorian melodrama, director Peter Weir's lyrical, enigmatic masterpiece is an imaginative tease. The setting is a proper turn-of-the century Australian boarding school for girls, a suffocating institution built on strict moral codes, repressed sexuality, and a subtle but enforced class structure. As the film opens, girls draped in immaculate white dress prepare for a picnic at the nearby volcanic formation, Hanging Rock, and Weir hangs an air of dark foreboding over the proceeding. "You'll have to love someone else, because I won't be here very long," says one virginal girl, Miranda, to her friend. Her words are prophetic: during the picnic, Miranda, along with two other girls and an uptight schoolmistress, vanish into the rocks. While a search party repeatedly returns to the rock to look for either the girls or the reasons for their disappearance, Weir leaves the mystery unsolved. Like Antonioni's L'Avventura, the vanishing is open to numerous interpretations--both rational and illusory--but Weir drops enough allegorical clues that it feels like a parable. He transforms the landscape and weather into menacing and eerie images; outlines of faces can be seen in the rocks, while the oppressive heat beating down on the picnic doubles as an atmospheric metaphor for the girls' unbearable social and sexual confinement. These images and other plot twists toward the end hint that this mysterious vanishing, on some level, was actually a form of spiritual escape--the only out, other than death, from the film's bleak, tightly structured community. Regardless of how you see it, though, this hypnotic puzzle remains the highlight of the '70s Australian New Wave. The DVD version presents the film in letterbox form. --Dave McCoy
Art House & International DVD Video
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Movies most talked about in Top 50 movies of the 70s part 1
Dirty Harry (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2008-06-03; DVD
Best price: $8.23
Price in other shops:
BadlandsWarner Brothers; Release date: 1999-04-27; DVD
Best price: $12.68
Price in other shops:
The StingUniversal; Release date: 1998-03-31; DVD
Best price: $4.21
Price in other shops:
EraserheadRyko Distribution; Release date: 2006-01-10; DVD
Best price: $17.25
Price in other shops:
The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2002-02-12; DVD
Best price: $26.49
Price in other shops:
National Lampoon's Animal HouseUniversal; Release date: 2008-10-28; DVD
Best price: $12.12
Price in other shops:
Five Easy PiecesSony; Release date: 1999-12-14; DVD
Best price: $6.61
Price in other shops:
The French ConnectionTWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT; Release date: 2005-02-01; DVD
Best price: $4.91
Price in other shops:
All the President's Men (Two-Disc Special Edition)Warner Brothers; Release date: 2006-02-21; DVD
Best price: $9.95
Price in other shops:
The Conformist (Extended Edition)Paramount; Release date: 2006-12-05; DVD
Best price: $7.00
Price in other shops:
Similar DVD Movies
BreathlessGenius; Release date: 2001-11-20; DVD
Best price: $10.68
Price in other shops:
The Vanishing - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2001-09-18; DVD
Best price: $20.29
Price in other shops:
My Brilliant CareerRelease date: 2005-05-31; DVD
Best price: $17.56
Price in other shops:
Days of HeavenParamount; Release date: 1999-03-30; DVD
Best price: $4.44
Price in other shops:
We of the Never NeverTango Entertainment, Inc; Release date: 2006-06-27; DVD
Best price: $18.15
Price in other shops:
The Year of Living DangerouslyWarner Brothers; Release date: 2000-06-06; DVD
Best price: $4.49
Price in other shops:
GallipoliParamount; Release date: 2005-12-13; DVD
Best price: $7.79
Price in other shops:
Rabbit-Proof FenceBRANAGH,KENNETH; Release date: 2003-04-15; DVD
Best price: $4.86
Price in other shops:
Picnic at Hanging Rockby Joan Lindsay
Buccaneer Books; Published: 1986-05; Library Binding; Book
Best price: $19.56
Price in other shops:
The Last Wave - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2001-11-27; DVD
Best price: $18.90
Price in other shops: