Product Description

From Peter Greenaway (Nightwatching, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover), one of the most inventive, ambitious and controversial film-makers of our time, comes a sumptuous period drama told in explicit detail, exploring the life of celebrated 16th century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints Hendrik Goltzius. Attempting to seduce the Margrave of Alsace (F. Murray Abraham, Amadeus, Homeland) into paying for a printing press to make and publish his erotic imagery, Goltzius promises the Margrave a spectacular illustration of the Old Testament s biblical stories: erotic takes on figures such as Adam and Eve, Lot and his daughters, Samson & Delilah and John the Baptist & Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company offer to perform dramatisations of these erotic tales for his court... Recently awarded Outstanding Contribution to British Cinema at the 2014 BAFTA s, Peter Greenaway returns to the cinematic arena of The Draughtsman s Contract with GOLTZIUS AND THE PELICAN COMPANY, a film that showcases Greenaway s hallmarks of breath-taking visual framing and a fascination with sex and death. Winner of the award for Best Film Out of Official Competition at Rome Film Festival, GOLTZIUS AND THE PELICAN COMPANY is Peter Greenaway s second biopic on Dutch Masters (following Rembrandt portrait Nightwatching).

Product details

Aspect Ratio ‏ : ‎ Unknown
Is Discontinued By Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ No
MPAA rating ‏ : ‎ Unrated (Not Rated)
Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.1 x 5.42 x 0.58 inches; 2.93 Ounces
Director ‏ : ‎ Peter Greenaway
Media Format ‏ : ‎ PAL
Run time ‏ : ‎ 1 hour and 57 minutes
Release date ‏ : ‎ September 29, 2014
Actors ‏ : ‎ F. Murray Abraham, Halina Reijn, Giulio Berruti, Vincent Riotta, Flavio Parenti
Subtitles: ‏ : ‎ English
Producers ‏ : ‎ Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
Studio ‏ : ‎ Axiom Films
ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00L99T7T6
Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 1

Best Sellers Rank: #344,100 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
- #13,898 in Drama Blu-ray Discs

Customer Reviews:
3.2 40 ratings

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Customer reviews

3.2 out of 5

40 global ratings

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Duane Williams

Four Stars

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2016

Explicitly shocking.

Aweful and horrendous

Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2019

Verified Purchase

lots of full frontals, both male and female. No close up views. All the women have beautiful real breasts, but unfortunately they also are bald. Otherwise the movie itself was unwatchable.

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Rick Du Boisson

Faulty bd - cannot select anything from the top menu ...

Reviewed in the United States on August 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

Faulty bd - cannot select anything from the top menu. Not a region issue - have Oppo bdp-105d player that works flawlessly for all bd/DVD/CDs in PAL or NTSC.

2 people found this helpful

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Tommy Dooley

Arthouse Cinema at its lewdest best - or Biblical porn masquerading as art?

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2015

Below is my review of this intriguing film. As noted by others here this though is an edited version; this is a film that should be seen in full, the Amazon.uk site does have the full version and I have to say this is a film you will not forget in a hurry. My review follows.

Goltzius and his pelican company are a band, or troop, of entertainers who want to set up a printing press to produce enlightening pictures of `art', the sort of art that gets pulses racing. Well they happen upon the kingdom of The Margrave of Alsace. Where Goltzius sets out to seduce him into funding his entrepreneurial activities and make some cash into the bargain.

In order to do this he is required to put on several plays of a `Biblical' nature for the titillation of their imminent (hopefully) financier. The plays all examine the latent sexuality of the stories, and in doing so challenge the hypocrisy of the sixteenth century religious establishment. The plays lead to public debate that starts out as free speech and soon descends into anything but. In the meantime the on stage sexual displays get hotter and lewder to a point where the `legitimate voyeurism' of the audience is replaced with something more akin to mob rule or directorial influence. As the analysis falls away it is replaced by accusation and retribution and the audience become the players in what is ever closer to recreation of sins of the past and nothing to do with public debate and discourse.

Now this is a film from Peter Greenaway (`The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover') who is known for making controversial stuff. This has full frontal nudity throughout with on screen copulation aplenty. The story is mostly developed with a running narrative from Goltzius to camera. There is , at the beginning, a lot of comparisons to art history and portrayals of the characters from the Bible from Adam and Eve to Sodom and Gomorrah. Also most of the shots are overlaid with other scenes that add extra animation but can become distracting.

The camera angles are often split and even bent to give the idea that everything is in `the round'. The idea of moving in circles is a constant feature with even a circular stage - even the chamber music players rotate.

So is it any good? Well it is so arthouse that to not like it marks one as being in bed with the Philistines. But this is two hours of often alienating camera devices and `art' nudity, which will not be to everyone's taste and the language is fairly `earthy' too. It was amusing in places, challenging in others and almost self indulgent in places too. It was far from ordinary and, as far as alternative cinematic experiences go, it was one to be remembered. If you like your cinema a bit cutting edge and not afraid to challenge a few taboos I think you will be a fan, if your tastes are more `vanilla' then might want to give it a miss - either way it is a film I am glad to have experienced.

4 people found this helpful

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Morgan Hayes

A gorgeous release of the film that is sadly cut and edited.

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2015

I like the movie as a whole, kind of a return to form after Nightwatching, but this release is edited. Prior to its release on blu-ray I viewed an electronic copy which a friend had "obtained" and at least two scenes are normally cut short. Given that the running time of the DVD is 11 minute shorter than the listed run time of the theatrical release, I'm sure there are many other cuts here and there throughout the film. The quality of this blu-ray seems high, the picture looks great, but it's simply not the entire film. It provokes the question -- if you're going to release a movie that's almost entirely graphic sex scenes and art history lessons, why edit it? Either release it as it was made or don't release it at all.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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guglielmo

Goltzius & The Pelican Company [Peter...

Reviewed in Italy on December 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

Un film molto artistico trama del fil non semplice ma artisticamente notevole per persone di una certa cultura lo consiglio di aquistare

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Tommy Dooley

Arthouse Cinema at its lewdest best - or Biblical porn masquerading as art?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 1, 2014

Verified Purchase

Goltzius and his pelican company are a band, or troop, of entertainers who want to set up a printing press to produce enlightening pictures of `art', the sort of art that gets pulses racing. Well they happen upon the kingdom of The Margrave of Alsace. Where Goltzius sets out to seduce him into funding his entrepreneurial activities and make some cash into the bargain.

In order to do this he is required to put on several plays of a `Biblical' nature for the titillation of their imminent (hopefully) financier. The plays all examine the latent sexuality of the stories, and in doing so challenge the hypocrisy of the sixteenth century religious establishment. The plays lead to public debate that starts out as free speech and soon descends into anything but. In the meantime the on stage sexual displays get hotter and lewder to a point where the `legitimate voyeurism' of the audience is replaced with something more akin to mob rule or directorial influence. As the analysis falls away it is replaced by accusation and retribution and the audience become the players in what is ever closer to recreation of sins of the past and nothing to do with public debate and discourse.

Now this is a film from Peter Greenaway (`The Cook, the thief, his wife and her lover') who is known for making controversial stuff. This has full frontal nudity throughout with on screen copulation aplenty. The story is mostly developed with a running narrative from Goltzius to camera. There is , at the beginning, a lot of comparisons to art history and portrayals of the characters from the Bible from Adam and Eve to Sodom and Gomorrah. Also most of the shots are overlaid with other scenes that add extra animation but can become distracting.

The camera angles are often split and even bent to give the idea that everything is in `the round'. The idea of moving in circles is a constant feature with even a circular stage - even the chamber music players rotate.

So is it any good? Well it is so arthouse that to not like it marks one as being in bed with the Philistines. But this is two hours of often alienating camera devices and `art' nudity, which will not be to everyone's taste and the language is fairly `earthy' too. It was amusing in places, challenging in others and almost self indulgent in places too. It was far from ordinary and, as far as alternative cinematic experiences go, it was one to be remembered. If you like your cinema a bit cutting edge and not afraid to challenge a few taboos I think you will be a fan, if your tastes are more `vanilla' then might want to give it a miss - either way it is a film I am glad to have experienced.

16 people found this helpful

Kindle Customer

Do not bother with this idiotic piece of nonsense

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2014

Verified Purchase

Do not bother with this idiotic piece of nonsense. It is a mad, mad indulgent fantasy that is not worth watching. My copy is now in the bin.

One person found this helpful

Charles Vasey

Lechers Do The Cutest Things!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

The visual and aural impact of this otherwise sordid tale is exemplary: all of Greenaway's old tricks returning as strong as ever. The story line wherein religious principle is revealed as hollow is a bit of a downer; as if Tinto Brass had decided to redo Rohmer's Six Moral Tales. The lack of any subtlety as the message is hammered home told against the film for me; but many will enjoy seeing hypocrisy discomfited.

One person found this helpful

mancheeros

Peter being Peter - a right carry on!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 27, 2014

Verified Purchase

Goltzius and the Pelican Company (2012) is arguably writer/director Peter Greenaway's most visually arresting and engaging film since The Baby of Macon (1993) and probably the funniest since The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989). Yes, Greenaway's films for all their intellectual baggage (some would say posturing) often have a strong comedic element. Although he is now a resident of Amsterdam, Greenaway's sense of humour remains very British. He's as earthy as Chaucer, as smutty as Shakespeare, as silly as the Carry On films, and as flamboyantly provocative as Ken Russell. There's not much subtlety in Greenaway's humour, which is just as well given the density of detail going on in other aspects of his idiosyncratic film-making. The level of lewdness in Greenaway's work has reached new heights (or depths, depending on your particular tastes) in Goltzius and the amount of nudity is positively ubiquitous; this viewer spotted several sturdy erections (one done up in a red ribbon, no less) which, I guess, is new taboo-breaking ground for Greenaway. It must be all that liberating Amsterdam air he's currently breathing...

I'll skip a description of the plot since others have covered that in some detail. Suffice to say, the acting in Goltzius is a lot more persuasive than in other recent Greenaway projects; an overlong Nightwatching (2007) was particularly underwhelming with a miscast Martin Freeman too lightweight in the central role as Rembrandt. Veteran F. Murray Abraham, however, as the Margrave of Alsace lends Goltzius some weighty gravitas and Ramsey Nasr is delightfully bewitching as the wily narrator. Other members of the mostly Dutch cast also put in some effective performances, veering from comedy to tragedy as and when required. Visually, Goltzius is a triumphant achievement - the multilayering of digital FX is carried out with seamless sophistication and never merely a box of tricks. The Blu-ray picture is stunning.

Chief among the Extras on this disc is an interview with Peter Greenaway, who can talk the hind leg off a donkey, though is seldom less than stimulating and entertaining. It's a rare pleasure to hear a director talk this intelligently about cinema in general (apparently Ridley Scott is Peter's favourite commercial director) and his own work in particular. An inveterate experimenter, Greenaway is concerned to subvert realist modes of representation at every opportunity, and likes nothing more than drawing attention to the artificiality of the cinematic viewing experience, which explains why during Goltzius he frequently draws attention to the building in which the film was shot - a semi-derelict railway shed in Zagreb. Some will find Greenaway's views on Christianity and the Bible ("absolute nonsense") rather uncompromising. "Darwin is my god," he chuckles. With a twinkle in his eye he wonders if the stories of the Bible are an easy target for a filmmaker and then goes on to explain why there is no female pubic hair in Goltzius... Now in his Seventies, Greenaway shows no signs of slowing down. He has already written the script for a forthcoming film (as yet unfilmed) about Hieronymus Bosch (the third part of his "Dutch Trilogy") and has written the libretto for a Philip Glass opera. Long may he continue to dazzle and provoke.

5 people found this helpful

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