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Description

The original 1926 Beau Geste was awarded Best Picture by Photoplay Magazine and stands today as a classic action adventure film. Re-made multiple times, it has never been exceeded in its power to thrill audiences with its tale of family, adventure, mystery, and brotherly love. Now for the first time, this authorized release is available on a pressed Blu-ray, offering a new commentary and essay by Historian Frank Thompson, along with a new majestic score by Mont Alto Orchestra.

Description

An exotic adventure set among ivory traders and military officers in Colonial East Africa, MAMBA stars Jean Hersholt as a corrupt land-owner who battles a German officer (Ralph Forbes) over the honor of a young woman (Eleanor Boardman). But the romantic triangle is shattered when the indigenous population mounts an epic assault upon its oppressors. Billed as the first feature-length all-talking Technicolor drama, MAMBA was an bold attempt by the low-budget Tiffany Productions to compete with the major studios. For decades it was considered a lost film, until an original print was discovered in Australia. Photochemically preserved and digitally restored, this edition reveals that MAMBA is much more than a curiosity item; it is a film of remarkable artistic ambition, with such diverse influences as Erich von Stroheim’s sexually frank melodramas and the “unchained camera” of the German silent cinema. Special Features: • Audio commentary by filmmaker Brian Trenchard Smith • Interview with Paul Brennan on the rediscovery and restoration of Mamba, excerpted from the documentary Splice Here: A Projected Odyssey, by Rob Murphy • Theatre of Dreams, a documentary short on Murray and Pat Matthews, the Australian film collectors who discovered the sole surviving print of Mamba