Product Description: The summer of 1952 had just slipped into the fall when Sylvia Marie Kristel was born in Utrecht, one of the Netherlands’ most prominent cities. A dreamer and a loner with a near-genius I.Q., Sylvia escaped her often sad childhood with thoughts of dance, music, and especially film. Those vivid dreams would become a reality before Sylvia’s twentieth birthday when Scorpio Films co-founder Pim de la Parra cast her in Frank en Eva (1973) in a role he had written specifically for his young discovery.
Sylvia’s early supporting work in three memorable Dutch films quickly led her to France after being cast as the lead in Just Jaeckin’s Emmanuelle (1974), which solidified her as one of the most essential and groundbreaking stars of the Seventies. Sylvia’s career exploded as Emmanuelle became one of the highest-grossing French films in history. Even though Emmanuelle remains her most famous part, Sylvia appeared in well over a dozen more films before the decade’s end, including the four found in this collection.
Cult Epics proudly presents the SYLVIA KRISTEL 1970S COLLECTION, featuring four of the legendary Dutch icon's most diverse films in new 2K transfers and entirely uncut, for the first time on home video in the United States.
Released in 1975, Alain Robbe-Grillet's surreal, absurdist sado-masochistic drama PLAYING WITH FIRE (LE JEU AVEC LE FEU) features Sylvia in one of her most challenging roles alongside Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anicée Alvina and her EMMANUELLE co-star Christine Boisson.
The set's two Dutch films are co-starring Rutger Hauer, and Sylvia at the peak of her career. Submitted for the 1978 Academy Awards - Best Foreign Film, Wim Verstappen's PASTORALE 1943 is a war drama centered on the Dutch resistance during World War II, and also features the debut of Renée Soutendijk. Painter turned director Paul de Lussanet's romantic psychological drama MYSTERIES, based on the world famous novel by the Norwegian nobel prize winner Knut Hamsun and shot by renowned cinematographer Robby Müller, also stars Rita Tushingham and David Rappaport.
Filmed and released right after Sylvia became one of the world's biggest stars as EMMANUELLE (1974), Sigi Rothemund's 1974 film JULIA is a German sex comedy drama, with Sylvia as a young boy's first love, foreshadowing her later U.S. commercial hit PRIVATE LESSONS.
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Find out more about this DVD/Blu-ray release after the jump.
