The critics waste no time with their lively discussion of the film. The newly recorded audio commentary by historians Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan.
Archival featurettes ‘8 Minutes’ ‘Disasters’ ‘Seeing the Future’ ‘Behind the Rainbow’.Archival interviews with Jason Robards, Tom Hulce, Rosanna Arquette.Message in a Bottle: ‘Making of’ documentary.Archival audio commentary by Mike Hodges.New audio commentary by film historians Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan.The Blu-Ray like many of Arrow Video’s discs looks like a recently struck 35mm archival print. The film image is perfectly balanced and razor-sharp without losing a healthy sheen of grain. Again, Arrow Video manages to give a little-seen film a transfer that makes it look better than it probably did upon release. The brand-new restoration from the original negative approved by writer-director Mike Hodges is nothing short of astounding. Hodges is able to make every piece work as a whole creating a heady brew. One would think all of this in a single film is too much. Black Rainbow finds the director playing with social commentary, gothic horror, family melodrama, gospel revivals, journalism, corporate greed, and much more. Much like Howard Hawks before him, Hodges never met a genre or genres or subgenres that did not agree with him. The film’s melding of genres and themes feel a part of a whole of Hodges’ unique career as a filmmaker. The moment when Arquette’s Martha finds out the dark secrets her father has been keeping is the best work the actor has ever done. Martha is never a victim though, it feels like it at points, part of the ingenious way the actor plays her is of a woman who slowly begins to take control of a situation that she’s never felt she’s had control over. Arquette’s performance is one of the best of her career as the daughter that has been exploited and abused by her father. Rosanna Arquette is flat out amazing as the troubled medium Martha. Scenes between him and Arquette are masterful as the two face off against one another in an almost biblical-like tragedy. Robards goes big but never arched keeping within the confines of who this conman would be. A drunk on the edge of destruction, just capable enough to continue his abuse and manipulation of his daughter. Here the legendary stage actor who worked with the likes of O’Neil, Simon, Miller (when they were actually writing) devours the role of Walter Travis. Jason Robards was an actor that felt like he got better and better with age.
Here he is a perfect fit for the angling journalist who’s wanting to debunk Martha and Walter as the conmen they are. Tom Hulce is a screen actor who has always been shortchanged, with the exception of Amadeus.
The film works in large part to the trio of actors cast. Will anyone be able to help Martha whose powers appear to be growing and has been targeted by the hitman. As one wants to exploit the other want to kill. Martha truly something more than a con artist draws the attention of a skeptical journalist (Tom Hulce) and a corporation’s hitman/fixer. What at first appears to be a con in the long line of Revival house conmen slowly is revealed not to be that. Martha and Walter Travis (Rosanna Arquette and Jason Robards respectively) are a traveling father-daughter psychic act. Black Rainbow is the type of film ahead of its time even if it was release today.
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