Fun City Edition Has Targeted Dec 12 For The Blu-ray Debut Of Director Ted Kotcheff's The Apprenticeship Of Duddy Kravitz

Fun City Editions, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has gone to the film vaults once again for something rare and special.   

 

On Dec. 12 film fans can enjoy the Blu-ray debut of director Ted Kotcheff’s 1974 film adaptation of writer Mordecai Richler’s 1959 novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss.   Fun City Editions will also release a DVD edition on the same date.

 

After gaining recognition for his performance as Curt in American Graffiti, Dreyfuss went north to Canada for his next theatrical production and landed the lead in Richler’s (he adapted his own novel for the screen) tale of a post-war (set in 1948) hustler by the name of Duddy Kravitz (he would also star as “The Wonder Boy” in writer/director John Byrum’s Inserts before hitting it big in Spielberg’s Jaws in 1975).  

 

He’s Jewish, living in Montreal and in an effort to impress his rich uncle Benjy (Joseph Wiseman) he decides the path to fame and riches is built upon a series of get-rich-quick schemes.  His father, Max (Jack Warden) drives a cab and his older brother, Lennie (Alan Rosenthal), is the shinning light.   So what’s a poor boy to do?   Land, that’s it, own property, develop it and make a fortune.   

 

To do this, Duddy will end up getting involved with a seedy element, sell-out his friend, not win the respect of his family — including his grandfather — lose the love of his life, Yvette (played by Micheline Lanctôt — Familia, The True Nature of Bernadette, Blood & Guts) and end up alone — a bittersweet finale at the local diner near his “land.”

 

Along the way, Richard Dreyfuss absolutely shines in a series of adventures and you can easily see that he will soon become a major star … it’s all there in this purely Canadian film production (in many ways a landmark film for that very reason).

 

The bonus feature included with the Blu-ray and DVD release of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Fun City Editions on Dec. 12 is a newly prepared commentary option with Canadian film critic and author Adam Nayman (“The Coen Brothers,” “It Doesn’t Suck: Showgirls,” “America: Films from Elsewhere”).