Stranger Than Paradise [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Jim Jarmusch Jim Jarmusch

Overview

Although Jim Jarmusch made his directorial debut with Permanent Vacation (1982), Stranger than Paradise (1984) marked his breakthrough as a major American filmmaker. One of the most deadpan comedies ever committed to film, Stranger than Paradise suggests a Buster Keaton film written by Samuel Beckett and Jack Kerouac and directed by Andy Warhol. Willie (John Lurie) is a small-time gambler whose distant cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) is moving to America from Eastern Europe and informs him that she'll need to stay with him for ten days. Willie isn't happy to have Eva around, but after Willie introduces her to the joys of American cigarettes and TV dinners ("You got your meat, you got your potatoes, you got your vegetables, you got your dessert and you don't have to wash the dishes -- this is how we eat in America!"), Eva steals a frozen meal and a pack of smokes from the corner store, and Willie is both surprised and impressed. His buddy Eddie (Richard Edson) happens by, and they hang out with Eva just long enough to develop a fondness for her before she moves on to Ohio, where she'll live with her Aunt Lottie (Cecillia Stark). Months later, Willie and Eddie score $600 in a poker game and decide to visit Eva in Ohio. However, it's the dead of winter, and they have nothing to do except look at the frozen surface of the lake. The three eventually head down to the tacky paradise of Miami, where Willie and Eddie try their luck with the ponies and Eva decides what to do next. Stranger than Paradise is a film that defines the notion, "It's not what you say, but how you say it." Shot in long, static takes, its style is minimalism itself, but the post-beatnik cool of John Lurie, Richard Edson and Eszter Balint somehow betrays the fact that they care about each other, and a loopy charm and subtle but potent humor seeps through the film's stark black-and-white images. Stranger than Paradise began as a short subject which was made possible by German director Wim Wenders, who gave Jarmusch a supply of film stock left over from one of his projects, and it went on to become one of the most influential movies of the 1980s, casting a wide shadow over the new generation of independent American filmmakers to come.

Product Details

Release Date:	04/09/2019
UPC:	0715515228411
Original Release:	1984
Rating:	R
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W]
Language:	English
Time:	1:29:00
Sales rank:	9,904

Special Features

High-Definition digital restoration, supervised and approved by Director Jim Jarmusch, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio Commentary from 1996 featuring Jarmusch and actor Richad Edson; Permanent Vacation (1980), Jarmusch's seventy-five-minute, color feature debut, presented in a high-definition digital restoration supervised by the Director; Kino '84: Jim Jarmusch, a 1984 German television program featuring interviews with cast and crew members from Stranger Than Paradise and Permanent Vacation; Some Days in January 1984, a behind-the-scenes Super 8 film by Tom Jarmusch; U.S. and Japanese trailers; Plus: A booklet feauturing Jarmusch's 1984 "Some Notes on Stranger Than Paradise," critics Geoff Andrew and J. Hoberman on Stranger Than Paradise, and author critic Luc Sante on Permanent Vacation

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

John Lurie	Willie
Eszter Balint	Eva
Richard Edson	Eddie
Cecilia Stark	Aunt Lottie
Danny Rosen	Billy
Rammellzee	Man with Money
Tom DiCillo	Airline Agent
Richard Boes	Factory Worker
Rockets Redglare	Poker Player
Harvey Perr	Poker Player
Brian J. Burchill	Poker Player
Sara Driver	Girl with Hat
Tom Docillo	Airline Agent
Paul Sloane	Motel Owner
Drew Kunin	Composer

Technical Credits

Sara Driver	Producer
Otto Grokenberger	Executive Producer
Jim Jarmusch	Director

Editorial Reviews

Deadpan humor and a sense of hip aimlessness pervade Stranger Than Paradise, the breakthrough feature of indie auteur Jim Jarmusch. The film's skeletal story follows three proto-slackers -- Willie (John Lurie), his best friend (Richard Edson), and Willie's Hungarian cousin (Eszter Balint) -- on a road trip from New York to Cleveland to Miami. Beautifully filmed in black and white, Stranger Than Paradise uses wide shots, a static camera, and minimal editing to give scenes an almost improvised quality, with plenty of awkward silences alternating with some distinctly non-dramatic dialogue. All three members of the tiny cast give low-key performances that are touching without being overly emotive. The story itself is marvelously episodic, a series of conversation fragments and slice of life moments punctuated with fades and cuts to black. A spare string quartet score by Lounge Lizard Lurie accents the introspective tone of this road movie to nowhere. Jarmusch's signature style -- a mixture of understated humor, formal elegance, and metaphorical richness -- works to perfection here, making Stranger than Paradise an offbeat masterpiece.

Barnes & Noble - Gregory Baird

An exercise in minimalist hipster cool that entertains less because of its nothing-happens plot than its comic, avant-garde style, Stranger Than Paradise (1984) also ranks high on the list of the late twentieth century's most influential and historically important films, representing an early example of the low-budget independent wave that would dominate the cinematic marketplace a decade later. The second film from New York director Jim Jarmusch, Stranger Than Paradise was first produced as a short called The New World with stock that was donated to the filmmaker by Wim Wenders, one of his two mentors (the other was Nicholas Ray). After touring the festival circuit, the short garnered enough attention for Jarmusch to adapt it into a feature, using The New World as the first of clearly delineated thirds. At times playing like a series of pointless vignettes, Stranger Than Paradise has certain generational themes in common with later indie films like Slacker (1991) in its preoccupation with the disaffection, aimlessness and inability to communicate of its central characters. Defying the hard-working immigrant stereotype, the Hungarian-born New Yorker Willie (John Lurie) is a gambler who is selfishly does not want to put up his teenaged cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) when she arrives in America from Budapest on a brief stopover before continuing on to her new home with an aunt in Ohio. Willie grows to admire Eva, however, when she commits petty theft. Together with Willie's pal Eddie (Richard Edson), also a hustler, the three seem more preoccupied with what to avoid (a boring winter in Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie where they go to visit Eva a year later) than with where they're going (once they flee Ohio for sunnier, more exotic Miami, life doesn't really change for them: Eva can't decide what to do there and the two men lose all their hard-earning poker winnings betting at the track). Each character harbors a desire to arrive in a paradise of sorts (for Eva, it is the America that spawned the rebellious Screamin' Jay Hawkins, for Eddie it is where Eva is living in Ohio and for Willie it is Florida). In the circular world of Stranger Than Paradise, however, they each end up frustrated, confused and ultimately, back where they began. Jarmusch's use of long takes and slow fades to black punctuates the humor of his characters' boredom, ennui, and frustration; his trademark usage of parallel tracking shots makes its first appearance here. In 1984, Stranger Than Paradise was named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics and was awarded the prize for new filmmakers, the Camera d'Or, at Cannes.

All Movie Guide - Karl Williams