The Element of Crime / Forbrydelsens element (1984) [The Criterion Collection]

Director: Lars von Trier
Writers: Niels Vørsel, William Quarshie (dialogue translation), Stephen Wakelam (dialogue translation)
Stars: Michael Elphick, Esmond Knight, Me Me Lai

Lars von Trier’s Europe Trilogy
With his dazzling first three features, Lars von Trier sought nothing less than to map the soul of Europe—its troubled past, anxious present, and uncertain future. Linked by a fascination with hypnotic states and the mesmeric possibilities of cinema, the films that make up the Europe Trilogy—The Element of Crime, Epidemic, and Europa—filter the continent’s turbulent history, guilt, and traumas through the Danish provocateur’s audacious deconstructions of genres including film noir, melodrama, horror, and science fiction. Above all, they are bravura showcases for von Trier’s hallucinatory visuals, with each shot a tour de force of technical invention and dark imagination.

Lars von Trier’s stunning debut feature is a grungily expressionistic hallucination—a trancelike trawl through fractured memories, a murder mystery, and the psychic limbo of cultural displacement. From his exile in Cairo, a former police investigator (Michael Elphick) undergoes hypnosis in order to relive his memories of Europe and his last case, for which he went to dangerous lengths to enter into the mind of and catch a serial killer targeting children. Bathed in a sulfurous yellow glow pierced only by startling flashes of electric blue and red, The Element of Crime combines hard-boiled noir, dystopian science fiction, and dazzling operatic flourishes to yield a celluloid nightmare of terrifying beauty.

Extras:
- 3K digital restoration, approved by director Lars von Trier, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
- Audio commentaries featuring von Trier, director of photography Tom Elling, editor Tómas Gislason, filmmaker and critic Stig Björkman, and film scholar Peter Schepelern
- Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier, a 1997 documentary by Björkman
- Making-of documentary from 1984
- Programs featuring interviews with Elling, Gislason, Schepelern, assistant director Åke Sandgren, executive producer Per Holst, production manager Per Årman, and crew members Peter Grant, Birger Larsen, and Henrik Fleischer
- Two short student films by von Trier: Nocturne (1980) and Images of Liberation (1982)
- Trailer
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing




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