Criterion Corner-DVD/Blu-ray Reviews
Entries from December 2013
The forthcoming Criterion Blu-ray/DVD special edition of Stanley Kramer's 1963 comedy classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World won't be released until January 21 but you can pre-order it now on Amazon and save $10. The set will contain a combined five discs, making this Criterion's most ambitious release to date.
Here is breakdown of what you can expect from the press release:
Stanley Kramer followed
his Oscar-winning Judgment at Nuremberg with this sobering investigation of
American greed. Ah, who are we kidding? It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, about
a group of strangers fighting tooth and nail over buried treasure, is the most
grandly harebrained movie ever made, a pileup of slapstick and borscht-belt-y
one-liners performed by a nonpareil cast, including Milton Berle, Sid Caesar,
Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Spencer Tracy, Jonathan Winters, and a boatload of
other playing-to-the-rafters comedy legends. For sheer scale of silliness,
Kramer's wildly uncharacteristic film is unlike any other, an exhilarating epic
of tomfoolery. DUAL-FORMAT BLU-RAY AND DVD SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES New,
restored 4K digital film transfer of the general release version of the film,
with 5.1 surround Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray New high-definition
digital transfer of a 202-minute extended version of the film, reconstructed
and restored by Robert A. Harris using visual and audio material from the
longer original road-show version-including some scenes that have been returned
to the film here for the first time-with 5.1 surround Master Audio soundtrack
on the Blu-ray New audio commentary featuring It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
aficionados Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo New documentary
on the film's visual and sound effects, featuring rare behind-the-scenes
footage of the crew at work and interviews with visual-effects specialist Craig
Barron and sound designer Ben Talk show from 1974 hosted by director Stanley
Kramer and featuring Mad World actors Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, and Jonathan
Winters Press interview from 1963 featuring Kramer and members of the film's
cast Interviews recorded for the 2000 AFI program 100 Years . . . 100 Laughs,
featuring comedians and actors discussing the influence of the film Two-part
1963 episode of the CBC television program Telescope that follows the film's
press junket and premiere The Last 70mm Film Festival, a program from 2012
featuring cast and crew members from Mad World at the Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences, hosted by Billy Crystal Selection of humorist and voice-over
artist Stan Freberg's original TV and radio advertisements for the film, with a
new introduction by Freberg Original and rerelease trailers, and rerelease
radio spots Two Blu-rays and three DVDs, with all content available in both
formats PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Lou Lumenick
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Murder and
Narcissism
By Raymond Benson
Available
this month from the Criterion Collection is Elio Petri’s 1970 international
hit, Investigation of a Citizen Above
Suspicion, which won the Oscar that year for Best Foreign Language Film. It
stars Gian Maria Volonté, whom most Americans will recognize as the
heavy in two spaghetti westerns, A
Fistful of Dollars and For a Few
Dollars More, but this time clean-shaven and wearing a tailored suit. He is
sharp, handsome, and volatile—the perfect personality to portray a high-ranking
detective in Italy’s (then) corrupt police force.
Highly
politicized, Investigation uses sly
dark humor to make its point—that corruption has become so bad that an official
can commit murder but can still be above the law. Here, Volonté, who enjoys rather kinky sex with his mistress, decides to
kill her to prove he can get away with it under the very noses of his fellow
officers. In short, he is a mad, over-the-top narcissist whose fantasy is to be
coerced into confessing his “innocence.†It is a sly crime thriller with a nudge-nudge,
wink-wink jab in the ribs.
The world in the year 1970 was very
different than it is now. Revolution was everywhere, and it was hip to question
authority and rebel against conformity and complacency. Investigation is one of the many pictures from that era to attack
the “establishmentâ€â€”and manage to be entertaining at the same time. The jury is
out on whether today’s audiences will find relevancy in the picture, but as I
tell my students in Film History, “always judge a film within the context of
when it was released.â€
Highlights
of the movie are definitely Volonté’s
performance, as well as the iconic Ennio Morricone score. In a recent interview
included as an extra on the disk, Morricone explains that his approach to the
music was to use unusual, “grotesque†instrumentation. The recurring, playfully
sardonic main theme perfectly captures the film’s mischievous stance.
The new 4k digital film restoration is
sharp and crystal clear, and the colors punch out in that singular 70s fashion.
An abundance of extras include an archival interview with director Petri, a
90-minute documentary on Petri’s career, an excellent 60-minute documentary
about actor Volonté, the interview with Morricone, and a booklet featuring an
essay by film scholar Evan Calder Williams and excerpts from a book by
co-screenwriter Ugo Pirro.
Recommended for aficionados of Italian
art house cinema, Investigation of a
Citizen Above Suspicion is a cult relic of the early 70s that begs for
closer examination.
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Americana With Bite
By Raymond Benson
Robert
Altman enjoyed a successful and critically-acclaimed run as a director in the
1970s, and for my money, Nashville is
the pinnacle, the quintessential Altman Film. Along with M*A*S*H, and later works like A
Wedding and Short Cuts, Nashville is a large ensemble picture
with numerous characters coincidentally crisscrossing throughout the story, creating
a style and structure that Altman made his own (it’s a safe bet that he was
assuredly influenced by Jean Renoir’s 1939 classic, The Rules of the Game, which also displays a canvas of quirky
characters interacting at a gathering). The “plot,†as it were, concerns the
preparation and execution of a political campaign benefit concert—and the
camera follows twenty-four eccentric souls around as it happens.
The
citizens of Nashville, Tennessee, where the picture was shot on location, were
very upset by Altman’s film. They felt it made fun of them and the country
music industry. On the contrary, Nashville
is not really about the country music business—that only serves as the
conduit for Altman’s real message. This is a movie about America, from not only a pop culture point-of-view, but definitely
a political one. Nashville, the city, becomes a metaphor for the country, and
the music is the paint with which the world is colored.
Originally
released in 1975, Nashville is satire
at its best. Altman-esque black humor oozes through every scene, and each one
feels spontaneous and improvised (most of them were!). The picture is a
smorgasbord of sights and sounds—all fascinating and compelling. Thematically,
there are examinations of relationships, greed, exploitation, fame, ambition,
and disappointment... as well as a sudden and surprising final statement on
violence. With its depiction of the assassination of a pop singer, in hindsight
Nashville eerily forecasts the murder
of John Lennon, which occurred five years later.
As
usual, Altman employs many from his so-called “stock company†of actors—Lily
Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Henry Gibson, Michael Murphy, Shelley Duvall,
Geraldine Chaplin—as well as folks like Ronee Blakely, Jeff Goldblum, Karen
Black, Keenan Wynn, and Ned Beatty. Carradine, Tomlin, and Blakely are
standouts, but for me it’s Gibson who steals the picture. His characterization
of a rhinestone country singer is spot-on and often hilarious. Nashville deservedly earned Best
Picture, Best Director, and two Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominations, and
yet it won only Best Song—Keith Carradine’s “I’m Easy†(many of the actors
wrote their own songs they performed in the movie).
Criterion’s
new 2k digital film restoration looks wonderful on Blu-ray, of course, and the 5.1
surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack elevates to sublimity Altman’s utilization
of overlapping dialogue. You really can decipher
everything that’s said! The new documentary on the making of the film, which
features interviews with Carradine, Blakley, Tomlin, Murphy, Allan Nicholls,
writer Joan Tewkesbury, and A.D. Alan Rudolph, is informative but perhaps a
little rambling after fifty minutes. It was interesting to hear how Carradine
was unhappy with his performance during the shoot and “felt uncomfortableâ€â€”it
was after he saw the completed film that he realized it was his unhappy character that had upset him; Tom was a
guy who didn’t like himself, and the actor felt it internally without understanding
it at the time. There are three archival interviews with Altman, who is always
articulate and entertaining. Also included is some behind-the-scenes footage
and a demo of Carradine performing his songs from the film. Critic Molly
Haskell provides the essay in the thick booklet.
Nashville is a feast for the
eyes and ears. More of an experience than a narrative film, it is one for the
history books.
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