Criterion Corner-DVD/Blu-ray Reviews
Entries from March 2015
“CRIES AND SISTERSâ€
By Raymond Benson
One
of the late, great Ingmar Bergman’s skills as a filmmaker was to write and
direct memorable roles for women. He was one of the few directors, such as Ford
or Altman or Allen, who repeatedly relied on a “stock company†of actors
throughout his career. While there were many wonderful male actors who worked
for Bergman (Max von Sydow, Erland Josephson, Gunnar Björnstrand),
we generally remember the women—Liv Ullmann, Harriet Andersson, Ingrid Thulin,
Eva Dahlbeck, Bibi Andersson, among many—for baring their souls on screen in
Bergman’s challenging, difficult works that always elevated the art of film to
breathtaking levels.
Cries and Whispers is an excellent
example of the power of the female actor. It’s essentially a four-woman chamber
piece, taking place in the late 1800s in Sweden, about three sisters and a
servant, their relationships to each other, to their pasts, and to their stance
on mortality. It stars (in alphabetical order) Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan,
Ingrid Thulin, and Liv Ullmann, and it is arguably Bergman’s most well-known
picture in the U.S. It premiered in late 1972 but its general release was in 1973,
thus qualifying it for the ’73 Oscars. It’s Bergman’s only film to be nominated
for Best Picture (as opposed to Foreign Language Film), competing against the
likes of The Sting (which won), The Exorcist, American Graffiti, and A
Touch of Class (how did that one
get in there?). Bergman was nominated for Director and his Original Screenplay.
Despite all that, one could argue that the real star of the film is Sven
Nykvist, whose cinematography did win
the Oscar that year, and deservedly so.
As
one of Bergman’s few films in color, one must recognize the difficulty Nykvist
had in photographing rooms that were entirely red—red walls, red carpeting, red
furniture, red bedspreads—with touches of white in the drapes, clothing, fine
china, and sheets. Contrasting these intense shades with the flesh tones of
human beings and making it all work, especially in the early 70s, is nothing
short of remarkable. Thankfully, The Criterion Collection has seen fit to
upgrade their original DVD release to Blu-ray, and the results are absolutely
gorgeous. The new 2K digital restoration is superb.
On
the surface, the story seems simple—Agnes (Andersson) is dying of cancer. Her
two sisters, Karin and Maria (Thulin and Ullmann), are holding vigil and
waiting for the inevitable to happen, but it is the servant, Anna (Sylwan, who
made her extraordinary film debut with the picture) who does all the
caretaking. The four performances are gut-wrenching. Ullmann actually plays a
dual role as the sisters’ mother in flashbacks, and there are men on the
periphery as well, including Bergman regulars Erland Josephson and Anders Ek.
In
the movie’s 91 minutes, Bergman explores these women’s fears, loves,
prejudices, and faiths through flashbacks, dreams, and conflict with each other
and themselves. Never in Bergman’s work was the influence of playwright August
Strindberg more palpable, but there is a great deal of Anton Chekhov at play
here as well. This is serious, complex, soul-searching—and soul-shattering—stuff.
Sounds
rather grueling, doesn’t it? Well, it is, but that doesn’t make it any less
entertaining. The director’s use of the color red is fascinating—film scholars
have interpreted it to represent the “inside of the womb,†or perhaps the
“color of the soul.†For me it’s the interior of the heart, and it’s a
simultaneously warm and cold one. For, ultimately, what the movie is about is
the pain that we can cause our loved ones, the very people for whom we are
supposed to provide solace.
The
extras include a wonderful new and revealing interview with Harriet Andersson
conducted by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie. There’s a 2001 introduction to the
film by Bergman. “On Solace,†by the terrific video essayist ::kogonada, dissects
the three acts of the film. There are thirty minutes of behind-the-scenes
footage narrated by Cowie, the theatrical trailer, and the port-over from the
original DVD release, Ingmar Bergman:
Reflections on Life, Death, and Love with Erland Josephson, a fifty-two
minute dialogue between the director and actor. The booklet contains an essay
by film scholar Emma Wilson.
If
you’re debating whether or not to upgrade from Criterion’s original release,
the answer is a resounding YES. If you’ve never seen Cries and Whispers, then you’re missing an essential piece of
cinematic brilliance.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
THE EYE OF ERROL
MORRIS
By Raymond Benson
Very
few documentary filmmakers are able to break into the American mainstream (and
abroad) and become both a critical and commercial success. The majority of
documentaries made do not get seen in your average metroplex, but a lucky
bucketful—Michael Moore’s films, for example—get wide releases.
This
happened to Errol Morris in 1988 with the release of his excellent docu-drama, The Thin Blue Line. Critically acclaimed
(but excluded from Oscar consideration because it contains recreated sequences),
Morris’ tale of Randall Dale Adams, a convict sitting in a Texas penitentiary who
may have been convicted, imprisoned, and sentenced to death for a crime he
didn’t commit, struck a chord with the audience. It also became a cult hit and
served as Morris’ gateway to becoming one of the best-known and respected documentarians
of our day. After all, the film indirectly resulted in Adams’ exoneration and
release. (Morris eventually did win the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2003 with
The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the
Life of Robert S. McNamara.)
This
month The Criterion Collection delivers a one-two punch from Errol Morris—The Thin Blue Line on one disc, and,
packaged separately, a double-feature of Morris’ first two acclaimed
documentaries—Gates of Heaven and Vernon, Florida. The two releases
provide the viewer with a look at the evolution of a filmmaker over a ten-year,
three-film period.
At
the time, The Thin Blue Line explored
new ground in documentary approach, presenting a crime story in a style akin to
television’s America’s Most Wanted,
which, coincidentally, debuted the same year. It was “reality cinema,â€
containing POV interviews with suspects, lawmen, attorneys, and witnesses, and
footage of the “crime†staged and recreated by actors—all standard stuff of
reality crime shows on TV today. It was new then.
It’s
interesting to note that Morris didn’t set out to make a documentary about
Randall Dale Adams. His original intent was to cover the psychiatrist known as
“Dr. Death,†a man in Texas who testified at every capital sentencing as to the
defendant’s likelihood of committing more crimes if he was not put to death.
But in the course of researching his subject in Dallas, Morris came across
Adams’ case and turned his attention to that.
The
picture is as riveting and suspenseful as any fiction crime drama. The spoken evidence
Morris presents is compelling, but it’s the visual testimony—the Rashomon-style different points of view
of the crime reenactments—that supplies the picture with its engrossing neo-noir sensibility. Of particular note
is Philip Glass’ haunting score, which perfectly captures the melancholy and
paranoia of the world of crime and punishment.
Criterion’s
new high-definition digital restoration, supervised by Morris and producer Mark
Lipson, has a 2.0 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, and both are
fabulous. Extras include a new interview with Morris, an interview with
filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer on the picture, and a Today Show excerpt from 1989 covering Adams’ release from prison.
The booklet contains an essay by film scholar Charles Musser.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
Gates of Heaven put Morris on the
map with this idiosyncratic look at the development of a pet cemetery in
California. Featuring interviews with the personages involved, as well as a
now-iconic clip of an old lady getting her dog to sing with her, Gates reveals the filmmaker’s quirkiness
and his ability to capture the truly weird on film. Vernon, Florida was actually Morris’ first endeavor, but he’d left it
unfinished. He went on to make Gates and
then returned to complete the short. It’s about some truly eccentric
individuals who live in a small whistle-stop town in the boondocks. Originally,
Morris had planned to cover an insurance scam that was prevalent in the
town—people were cutting off limbs and submitting accident claims, earning the community
the name “Nub City.†Morris gave up that idea when he was beat up by some of
the people he was interviewing!
Criterion’s disc features new 2K digital
restorations of both films, supervised by Morris. Extras include two new
interviews with the director about each picture, footage of director Werner
Herzog talking about Gates at the
1980 Telluride Film Festival, and the gem of the entire collection—the short
film Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, a
1980 short, directed by Les Blank, that documents Herzog cooking and devouring
his shoe in public—he had bet Morris that if the young documentarian would
simply get out there and make his first feature (Gates), then Herzog would “eat his shoe.†While it’s great to have
the two documentaries on Blu-ray, I’m not so sure the two films deserved a
separate release of their own (they could have easily been extras on the Thin Blue Line disc).
But
talk about the eye of a filmmaker! Errol Morris works with one eye at full
strength and his other at a diminished capacity as a result of a childhood medical
condition, but that doesn’t keep the director from possessing a wonderful sense
of mise-en-scéne. He manages to depict the odd, the ironic, and the
profound all in one take. Check out both releases.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
“BORDER TOWN NOIRâ€
By Raymond Benson
Most
film noir pictures take place in
urban centers—New York City, Los Angeles—where the big city is as much a
character as the unhappy humans in these often bleak and brutal, sometimes
brilliant, Hollywood crime films that spanned the early forties to the late
fifties. Film noir peaked in the latter half of the forties, with an
abundance of the classic titles released between 1946-1948.
One
of the more unique things about Ride the
Pink Horse is that the urban setting is gone. Instead, the action is set in
a border town in New Mexico, where there is indeed danger, to be sure, but
there’s also a little less pessimism among the inhabitants—unlike in the urban noirs in which everyone’s a cynic.
Interestingly, one might say that the “border town noir†could be a sub-set of
the broader category, for Ride the Pink
Horse isn’t the only crime movie of the period set away from the big city.
Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil is
another good example.
Ride the Pink Horse, based on a novel
by Dorothy B. Hughes, became actor Robert Montgomery’s second noir in which he both starred and
directed. His first directorial effort was Lady in the Lake (also 1947),
in which the actor played detective Phillip Marlowe. Here, Montgomery plays
Gagin, an ex-GI, with a take-no-guff attitude but also with a subtle sense of
cluelessness—he is definitely a fish out of water in “San Pablo.†His mission
there is to locate a crook named Hugo (Fred Clark) to avenge the murder of
Gagin’s best friend. What he thought might be a simple task turns out to be a
lot more complicated, for the FBI is in town in the form of amiable Retz (Art
Smith), and the Feds want Hugo, too. On his first night in town, Gagin falls
in with Pancho (Thomas Gomez), a Mexican who runs a cheap merry-go-round for
the kids, and Pila (Wanda Hendrix), a young woman who speaks little, but seems
to know a heck of a lot about the goings-on in town. As it turns out, Gagin
isn’t really the tough guy he pretended to be at the beginning. He really is in over his head, and he needs the
help of his newfound Mexican friends to simply survive.
The
merry-go-round could be some kind of metaphor for the film’s message—possibly
that we can go round and round and still wind up where we started. On the other
hand, the ride might suggest that it is a source of innocence, something to
which our hero can’t return. Even if you ride the pink horse; you get the same
truth on a horse of any other color.
The
setting’s flavor is pleasingly captured in the stark black and white
cinematography by Russell Metty, especially during the “Fiesta†sequences. One
striking sequence takes place with the camera on the merry-go-round—as it goes
around we see two thugs giving Pancho a beating at the side of the ride; with
every revolution our glimpse of the violence is increasingly upsetting. The
production design by Bernard Herzbrun and Robert Boyle, is very impressive,
seeing that, ironically, the picture was filmed on the Universal lot in
Hollywood and not in New Mexico.
The
story, adapted by Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer, is engaging enough, although Ride the Pink Horse doesn’t seem to
reach the climax that is promised by the opening half-hour. Nevertheless, the
performances are very good, especially that of Gomez, who, with this picture,
became the first Hispanic actor to be nominated for an Oscar—Best Supporting
Actor (1947).
Criterion’s
new 2K digital restoration looks sharp and clean. An audio commentary by film noir historians Alain Silver and
James Ursini accompanies the film. The only two extras are a new interview about
the film with Imogen Sara Smith, author of In
Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City; and a radio adaptation starring
Montgomery, Hendrix, and Gomez. The booklet contains an essay by filmmaker and
writer Michael Almereyda.
Ride the Pink Horse
is
for film noir enthusiasts looking to
get out of the city and travel somewhere a little different.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
“CAUTION: WRECKED LIFE AHEADâ€
By Raymond Benson
There
have been a lot of movies about adultery and the ultimate havoc it can cause. More
recent titles would include the likes of Fatal
Attraction or Unfaithful. Some of
them have a happy ending, others not; however, there is always a moral to these
tales: Don’t do it unless you want to wreck your life.
Still
riding the crest of the French New Wave, François Truffaut followed his huge
1962 success, the delightful Jules and
Jim, with his fourth feature, the unexpectedly somber drama, The Soft Skin. In fact, it shares
elements with the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock. Truffaut presents us with the cautionary
story of a successful and respected publisher and writer (Jean Desailly) who
meets and begins an affair with a flight attendant (Françoise Dorléac). The man
is also married with a young daughter. The development of the tale emphasizes
the danger involved in embarking on such an act. How do you keep it a secret
when you’re well known? How do you manage to live the double life and deceive your
wife? Truffaut directs the piece as if it were indeed a crime drama. The
suspense comes in watching Desailly dig a hole so deep that he can’t get out of
it. And then the violent ending—well, let’s just say it’s a shocker.
During
the period between Jules and Jim and
the making of The Soft Skin, Truffaut
had collaborated with Hitchcock on the landmark interview book Hitchcock/Truffaut, so it’s not
surprising that the French director was influenced by the master of suspense. A
video essay extra on the disc by filmmaker and critic Kent Jones examines these
traits and the many ways filmmakers can be influenced in general ways by other
artists. The Soft Skin could very
well work with a Bernard Herrmann score, but instead Georges Delerue delivers an
appropriately melancholic and tragic soundtrack that fits beautifully with the
events unfolding before us.
Desailly
is very good as a man blinded by lust but bound by social convention. Dorléac,
who was the elder sister of Catherine Deneuve, is, of course, gorgeous, and
Truffaut’s cinematographer Raoul Coutard allows the camera to lovingly dwell on
her. Ironically, Truffaut left his own wife after the completion of The Soft Skin and began dating Dorléac. Dorléac
was an actress on the same professional trajectory as her sister when her life
was cut short in a disastrous automobile accident in France in 1967. One can
only imagine how Dorléac’s career might have blossomed and how she would have
aged along with Deneuve. Like her sister, Dorléac would have been a timeless
beauty.
The Soft Skin may not be one of
Truffaut’s masterworks, but it is one of his more solid efforts that was perhaps
not sufficiently appreciated at the time of its release. It is, in fact, a
sincere, atmospheric, and wistfully sad drama about the many ways that love can
cause terrible pain. The picture’s warning to would-be adulterers is quite
clear—don’t do it.
Criterion’s
new high-definition digital restoration beautifully shows off Coutard’s sharp
black and white imagery. Interestingly, a few New Wave traits—freeze frames and
jump cuts—still linger in Truffaut’s work in ’64.
Other
extras include the excellent 1999 documentary Monsieur Truffaut Meets Mr. Hitchcock, about the historic
interviews conducted for Truffaut’s book; an interview with Truffaut from 1965
about the film; and an audio commentary by screenwriter Jean-Louis Richard and
Truffaut scholar Serge Toubiana.
The Soft Skin reveals a
different side of Truffaut than you may be accustomed to. Check it out.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
A STUDY IN SCARLET
By Raymond Benson
Red
is the dominant force in Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t
Look Now, a magnificently rendered drama about psychic premonition, death,
and grief. Some would say it’s a horror film, and indeed it is truly creepy and
atmospheric in the way most good ghost stories are presented.
Those
familiar with Roeg’s work will recognize his signature arty editing and
striking eye for composition. He began his career in cinema as a
cinematographer (he worked on Lawrence of
Arabia, The Masque of the Red Death,
Fahrenheit 451, Casino Royale (’67), Far from
the Madding Crowd, among many others) before venturing into directing.
After co-directing Performance (1970)
and helming Walkabout (1971) solo, he
delivered what could very well be his masterpiece in Don’t Look Now.
Starring
Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple that loses a child in
a drowning accident at the beginning of the story, Roeg’s picture examines how
their grief is at first somewhat overcome by their own strong love for each
other, but is then exploited by seemingly predestined tragedy. The setting of Venice
is picturesque and beautiful, but at the same time dark and foreboding in its
labyrinth of canals, narrow streets and alleys, and decaying architecture. When
the couple begins to see a “child†wearing the same red slicker that their
daughter was wearing when she drowned, things become very strange—especially
after they meet a blind psychic woman who tells Christie that her daughter is
still with them.
The
editing screams of 1970s art house fare, but it still works. Of note is that sex scene, often called the most
erotic sex scene in cinema history and one that has been plagued by rumors that
Sutherland and Christie really “did it†in front of the camera (the rumors are
NOT true). The editing cuts back and forth from the nude couple in bed to them getting dressed to go out, which is
striking in its uniqueness and originality. Actually, it’s not a sex scene, but
rather a real love scene—for I can’t
think of another picture in which the love between a married man and woman is
displayed so honestly. Kudos to both actors for the trust they obviously had in
each other.
Pino
Donaggio’s score adds a haunting poignancy to the proceedings, and
cinematographer Anthony Richmond paints the imagery with a deft eye for
color...and there’s that ever-sinister RED that keeps popping up with a
multitude of meanings. Roeg’s direction is much more than an exercise in style,
and the truthful performances by Christie and Sutherland elevate the film to
greatness.
Criterion’s
new 4K digital restoration (approved by Roeg himself, now in his eighties) is
first class. Extras include a new documentary featuring interviews with
Christie, Sutherland, Richmond, and co-screenwriter Allan Scott; interviews
with Steven Soderbergh and Danny Boyle on Roeg’s work; a Q&A with Roeg from
2003; a new conversation between editor Graeme Clifford and film historian
Bobbie O’Steen; a 2002 documentary on the making of the film; and a 2006
interview with composer Donaggio.
Don’t Look Now is arguably not
only one of the finest British films of the 70s—it’s one of the greatest
British films ever. Don’t Miss It.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
CRITERION BONUS REVIEW:
“A DAY IN THE
COUNTRY†(1936—but released 1946; Directed by Jean Renoir)
The Criterion Collection has released A Day in the Country, Jean Renoir’s short film (40 minutes) that was shot in 1936, abandoned as unfinished, and then edited and released by its producer ten years later without Renoir’s involvement. Based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, the picture is a light tale about a Parisian family that decides to spend an afternoon in the country—only to have the wife and daughter wooed by two randy countrymen.
Renoir fans will certainly want to check this out, but in my opinion, when compared to Renoir’s great works such as Grand Illusion or The Rules of the Game, this is fluff. More interesting are the extras, which include a90-minute compilation of outtakes from the film and footage that shows Renoir at work. This is exceptional stuff and worth the price of admission.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON
|
|