Mister Johnson

A decade after he broke through with Breaker Morant, Australian director Bruce Beresford made another acclaimed film about the effects of colonialism on the individual. In a performance that earned him the Berlin Film Festival’s Silver Bear for best actor, Maynard Eziashi plays the title character, a Nigerian villager eager to work as a civil servant for the British authorities, including a sympathetic district officer (Pierce Brosnan), in the hope that it will benefit him in the future. Instead, his ambition leads to his tragic downfall. Mister Johnson, based on the 1939 novel by Joyce Cary, is a graceful, heartfelt drama about the limits of idealism, affectingly acted and handsomely shot.

United States
1990
101 minutes
Color
1.85:1
English
Spine #774

Special Features

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Bruce Beresford, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interviews with Beresford, producer Michael Fitzgerald, and actors Maynard Eziashi and Pierce Brosnan
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Neil Sinyard

New cover by Sean Phillips

Blu‑ray 1 Disc $27.96 SRP: $39.95

DVD 1 Disc $20.96 SRP: $29.95

Digital Options

Watch Now On

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by director Bruce Beresford, with uncompressed stereo soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New interviews with Beresford, producer Michael Fitzgerald, and actors Maynard Eziashi and Pierce Brosnan
Trailer
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
PLUS: An essay by film scholar Neil Sinyard

New cover by Sean Phillips

Cast & Credits

Cast

Maynard Eziashi: Mister Johnson
Pierce Brosnan: Harry Rudbeck
Edward Woodward: Sargy Gollup
Beatie Edney: Celia Rudbeck
Denis Quilley: Bulteen
Bella Enahoro: Bamu
Kwabena Manso: Benjamin
Nick Reding: Tring
Femi Fatoba: Waziri
Chief Hubert Ogunde: Brimah
Sola Adeyemi: Ajali

Credits

Director: Bruce Beresford
Produced by: Michael Fitzgerald
Screenplay: William Boyd
Based upon the novel by: Joyce Cary
Director of photography: Peter James
Coproducer: Penelope Glass
Executive producer: Bill Benenson
Edited by: Humphrey Dixon
Music: Georges Delerue
Costume designer: Rosemary Burrows
Production executive: Eva Monley
Assistant director: Guy Travers
Production design: Herbert Pinter

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Georges Delerue

Composer

Composer Georges Delerue, once named “the Mozart of cinema” by the French newspaper Le Figaro, wrote more than 350 film and television scores, along with pop songs, ballads, and orchestral pieces. In the course of his work with such titans of cinema as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, Mike Nichols, and Oliver Stone, Delerue, a native of Roubaix, France, created some of the most evocative film music of all time. Although he was trained in metallurgy, and began his working life in a metal factory, his lineage was musical (grandfather a choral singer, mother a pianist), and he found himself drawn in that direction, first studying the clarinet and eventually beginning to compose. After doing some scoring for television and short films (including Agnès Varda’s early short L’opéra mouffe, which is available on Criterion’s edition of Cléo from 5 to 7), Delerue was approached by Resnais and Truffaut to write the themes to Hiroshima mon amour and Shoot the Piano Player, two works at the forefront of the French New Wave movement. The scores for which he is now best known followed close on their heels: his energetic, lovely melody for Jules and Jim and his grand, swoony, undulating theme for Contempt—the latter appropriated years later by Martin Scorsese for his 1995 drama Casino. Delerue’s stature grew, thanks to scores for such films as The Two of Us and King of Hearts, and eventually he would not only win an Oscar (for 1979’s A Little Romance) and three Césars in a row (for Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Love on the Run, and The Last Metro) but also be named a Commander of Arts and Letters, one of France’s highest cultural honors. He came to Hollywood in the eighties and wrote music for Platoon, Beaches, and Steel Magnolias, among others. Delerue died in 1992.