Goto, L'Île D'Amour

The full audio commentary presented here by writer and filmmaker Daniel Bird is not your usual random barrage of anecdote, opinion and adulation, but a scholarly account of Walerian Borowczyk's filmmaking career (from animated shorts to sexploitation), and the position of Goto L'Île D'Amour within it.

The commentary, which is clearly read out, may sacrifice spontaneity for accuracy, but the result is a wealth of fascinating information about a director and "very high-profile outsider artist" who, though an adopted darling of the French New Wave and a figure of worship for early Terry Gilliam and the brothers Quay, is perhaps not so well know to today's filmgoers. Apart from a close analysis of many of the film's scenes, Bird also points out that Goto was perhaps the only French production to have been shot during the revolutionary Spring of 1968; and that the interiors were shot in the abandoned factory formerly used by Pierre and Marie Curie.

David Bird reappears as off-screen interviewer in The Ghost of Goto, which sees the film's co-scenarist Dominique Duvergé, camera operator Noel Véry and assistant director André Heinrich reunited to reminisce over 21 minutes about their experiences on the production. Duvergé insists that her only contribution to the screenplay was "translation assistance and language checking". Véry discusses Borowczyk's use of specially constructed 'Goto lights' that cast no shadows, and the way he would direct his actors "like little mechanical figures".

The only real disappointment is the gallery which, with its three stills from the triptych of Goto governors and its single sketch of a fly-catching box, barely merits the name 'gallery' (even if it does, fittingly, begin with a G), or indeed a place on this DVD.