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UK science fiction 1985 color 142 min.
Director: Terry Gilliam
CAV: $149.95 - available
           5 discs, catalog # CC1348l
CLV: $49.95 - available
           1 disc, catalog # CC1528L
Writer-director Terry Gilliam operates on a grand scale. His baroque visual feasts, with uncanny design and special effects, capture the organic style of science-fiction visionaries like Jules Verne. But Gilliam's mad joyrides also dig deeply into matters of social responsibility, artifice, and tragedy. By incarnating cinema at its most fantastical, this storyteller proves once and for all the triumph of imagination over reality, and each of his Criterion discs, especially the long-awaited Brazil, has become a part of laserdisc legend.


The world premiere of Terry Gillaim's 142 minute final cut

The Ultimate Special Edition:
Three years in the planning, this ten-side CAV special edition shows Gilliam's retro-futurist fantasy as he fought to have it released. Letterboxed in the proper aspect ratio (1.85:1), the pristine digital transfer with digitally restored optical effects features a complete Gilliam audio commentary on analog track 2. With thousands of still frames and more than seven hours of additional supplements, Criterion's Brazil also features:

The Production Notebook

  • Screenwriters Tom Stoppard and Charles McKeown illuminate the script's development through 3 drafts and 3 treatments.
  • Production designer Norman Garwood displays his designs for Brazil's unique sets.
  • Costume designer James Acheson explores the couture of fashion, fantasy, and fascism.
  • Terry Gilliam's original dream sequences, in storyboards, include hundreds of shots that never made it to the screen.
  • Composer Michael Kamen unveils the sources of his score.
  • A study of the special effects, including raw footage of unfinished effects.
  • The original theatrical trailer, production and publicity stills, and more...


    • What is Brazil?
    Rob Hedden's rare 30-minute witty on-set documentary features Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin, Tom Stoppard, Charles McKeown, Kim Greist, Jonathan Price, and other key members of the cast and crew.

    The Battle of Brazil: A Video History
    Battle of Brazil author Jack Mathews reassembles the players in the famous battle over Brazil's U.S. release in this original 1996 Criterion documentary. Terry Gilliam, producer Arnon Milchan, studio executives Frank Price, Marvin Antonowski, Bob Rehme, and Sidney Sheinberg close the book on one of the noisiest, most unusual, and most instructive controversies in Hollywood history.

    Brazil: The Love Conquers All Version
    With audio annotation by David Morgan, this 94-minute version of Brazil, rearranged in the hope of making the film commercial, stands as a fascinating document of the power of editing to change a picture. This is the shortest and only version of BRAZIL not edited by Terry Gilliam. Everything is different in this 94-minute version of BRAZIL which includes all the cuts and changes Gilliam refused to make, from the alternate opening to the infamous happy ending.


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