Upon learning two years ago that the then-new boss was a self-styled film fancier (actually, someone I never identified pointed me out to him, and he first broached the subject of our common interest) I selected a few titles from my then-modest DVD collection—it is far less modest now—and lent these to the NB. In the event I misjudged his tastes, which do not run to the slow and stately. Solaris, (original Soviet version) Wild Strawberries, Days of Heaven and, near-fatally, Last Year at Marienbad proved all too slow for him, with only Truffaut's Day for Night really capturing his imagination. It took the better part of two years, and a couple of highly diffident reminders, to get the bulk of the titles returned, but when months after all but Marienbad had found their way back to me, I finally broached the subject early this year and was dismayed when he professed not to remember ever having been lent the title. He promised to "interrogate" his home collection, and reported back that it was nowhere in evidence. I had given the title up for dead with some regret, because whereas I purchased it at the beginning of 2003 for something under $30, it has since gone out of print, and is now available used through amazon.com beginning at $155. I was accordingly relieved to take a phone call from the boss earlier this week in the course of which he informed me that he'd found the disc in his office desk drawer. "Is this any livelier than Days of Heaven?" he asked. "Honestly, no," I responded. "I found it hypnotic, but the line between 'hypnotic' and 'soporific' is pretty fine, and as I've come to gauge your tastes in these matters I gotta say I don't think you'd dig it." "Take it away, then," said he.

I'm deeply grateful to have it back. I love European art films about ten years either side of 1960, and this one is both chronologically and stylistically at something very like ground zero in this respect.

cordially,