Black Moon

Louis Malle meets Lewis Carroll in this bizarre and bewitching trip down the rabbit hole. After skirting the horrors of a mysterious war being waged in the countryside, beautiful young Lily (Cathryn Harrison) takes refuge in a remote farmhouse, where she becomes embroiled in the surreal domestic life of an extremely unconventional family. Evocatively shot by cinematographer Sven Nykvist, Black Moon is a Freudian tale of adolescent sexuality set in a postapocalyptic world of shifting identities and talking animals. It is one of Malle’s most experimental films and a cinematic daydream like no other.

France
1975
100 minutes
Color
1.66:1
English
Spine #571

Special Features

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Archival video interview with director Louis Malle
Gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
Alternate French-dubbed soundtrack
Original theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

New cover by Yann Legendre

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $31.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 1 Disc $23.96 SRP: $29.95

Special Features

New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
Archival video interview with director Louis Malle
Gallery of behind-the-scenes photos
Alternate French-dubbed soundtrack
Original theatrical trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Ginette Vincendeau

New cover by Yann Legendre

Cast & Credits

Cast

Cathryn Harrison: Lily
Thérèse Ghiese: The old lady
Alexandra Stewart: The sister
Joe Dallesandro: The brother

Credits

Director: Louis Malle
Producer: Nouvelles Éditions de Films
Producer: Bioskop Munich
Written by: Louis Malle
Additional dialogue by: Joyce Buñuel
Production manager: Paul Maigret
Director of photography: Sven Nykvist
Editing: Suzanne Baron
Production design: Roland Thenot
Art direction: Ghislain Uhry
Assistant director: Fernand Moszkowicz
Sound: Nara Kollery
Sound effects by: Luc Perini
Musical supervisor: Diego Masson
Music: Richard Wagner

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Explore

Sven Nykvist

Cinematographer

Few cinematographers have been as influential as Ingmar Bergman’s close collaborator Sven Nykvist, who helped create such visual tours de force as The Silence, Cries and Whispers, and Fanny and Alexander. A painter whose medium was natural light, a capturer of souls, Nykvist made every human portrait an X-ray, and every interior—whether austerely white or lavishly chromatic—an expressive canvas. Nykvist first worked with Bergman in 1953, when he was one of three cinematographers assigned to the director’s gloomy, twilit circus tale Sawdust and Tinsel. But their union truly began with The Virgin Spring—that savage medieval folk tale ushered in the new era of unsparing, gorgeously shot psychological portraits and open-air location photography that would take Bergman from the devastating God’s Silence trilogy to the richly life-affirming Fanny and Alexander. His work with Bergman made Nykvist an in-demand industry figure, and he would go on to shoot movies in Hollywood and beyond, for directors like Bob Rafelson, Bob Fosse, Philip Kaufman, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Woody Allen. Nykvist died in 2006.