“HEARTS AND MINDS†(1974; directed by
Peter Davis)
(The
Criterion Collection)
‘LEST WE FORGET
By Raymond Benson
The
Academy Award for Best Documentary of 1974 went to the controversial and
incendiary Hearts and Minds, the
first big movie about the Vietnam War that attempted to prove to the world that
America made a huge mistake. A lot of people didn’t like that being said.
Produced
by Bert Schneider (of BBS Productions fame—Easy
Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show, many others) and
director Peter Davis, the documentary is most definitely one-sided in its
arguments. The entire film is shaped and edited to present the most anti-war
statement possible, as well as put a bad light on the men in power that made
the decisions to go to war in the first place.
You
can imagine that in 1974 this was not an easy pill to swallow. Never mind that
the picture is brilliantly made—the footage is unbelievably powerful and
sometimes very difficult to watch. Remember those photos of the little
Vietnamese girl running naked down the road, a victim of a Napalm attack? Well,
in the movie, you see film footage in
color of that very scene as it happened. The same is true of the famous
photo depicting the execution by gunshot of a Vietcong prisoner in the street
by a Saigon police chief. In Hearts and
Minds, we don’t see the still photo, we see the actual killing, again in
color. These are among the many horrific imagery contained in the picture, much
of it stock footage. However, most of the running time is taken up by
interviews with guys like General William Westmoreland, Clark Clifford
(Secretary of Defense 1968-1969), Walt Rostow (aide to Kennedy and Johnson),
Daniel Elsberg (former aide to Defense Department), and many other talking
heads. Most of them come off as windbags spouting stuff we now know is simply
not true (General Westmoreland: “The Oriental doesn’t put the same high price
on life as does a Westerner.â€).
The
film is obviously divisive as to which side of the aisle you reside—liberal or
conservative. I’m sure even today there are plenty of conservatives who still
believe we were right to go to Vietnam. While this column is meant to be a
review of the documentary, I think I can safely say that history has proven
that the liberals were right all along. Looking back at this picture now, it
simply reconfirms what we should have learned
from the mistakes made.
The
Criterion Collection has re-issued Hearts
and Minds in a dual format—Blu-ray and DVD (three disCs)—in a
high-definition digital restoration supervised by director Davis and
cinematographer Richard Pearce. The audio commentary is by Davis. Added to this
new release are over two hours of unused footage, including interviews of
people not seen in the film (e.g. David Brinkley). Overkill? Perhaps, but for
war history buffs who want to dig into the depths of this admittedly biased but
fascinating condemnation of a black mark in our time, then don’t miss Hearts and Minds.
Released
in the summer of 1964, A Hard Day’s Night,
starring The Beatles and directed by Richard Lester, is arguably the second
most influential British film of that decade (the first being Goldfinger, coincidentally released the
same year.). Why? For one thing, it brought The Beatles to a worldwide audience
that was just getting to know them through their music. Secondly, it spawned
imitations and knock-offs (The Monkees, anyone?) and is arguably the genesis of
music videos—where would MTV have been without it? Thirdly, the film itself was
innovative, fresh, and surprisingly funny (those long-haired boys from
Liverpool could actually act!).
One
of the best things about the Criterion Collection’s new deluxe box set of the
film (dual Blu-ray and DVD, three discs) is the short extra, On the Road to “A Hard Day’s Night,†an
interview with author Mark Lewisohn, that documents how The Beatles did not magically appear on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964,
already brilliant, already at the top of their game. In fact, as every serious
Beatles fan knows, their story began in 1958 when John Lennon met Paul
McCartney in Liverpool at the ages of seventeen and fifteen, respectively, and
they started playing music together and writing songs (George joined not long
after at age fourteen!). The first four years embodied a lot of work gaining
experience, honing their skills, and creating an act that would change not only
music itself, but pop culture. The Hamburg days, the early shows with Pete
Best, the gigs for peanuts, the obtaining of managers (first Allan Williams, then
Brian Epstein), auditioning for producer George Martin, being rejected by a
major record label, and then finally landing a contract with one—these were all
things none of us in America were aware of when we watched the four lads
perform on Ed Sullivan. What we saw
was a tight, talented band, and it seemed as if they’d come from nowhere.
(Apologies to UK readers, who of course knew how great the band was all through
1963.)
Anyway—on
to A Hard Day’s Night. Kudos to
United Artists executive David Picker, who greenlit a three-picture deal with
producer Walter Shenson (Picker was also responsible for green-lighting Dr. No, a little picture featuring a
character named James Bond). Picker had the foresight to make the deal with The
Beatles in 1963, well before the
band’s appearance on U.S. television. Apparently his instincts were good. If he
hadn’t done it then, someone else would have much later, and I dare say the
results would not have been as good.
It
was no accident that American director Richard Lester was hired to helm the
movie, either. He was living in the UK and had directed British television,
especially those crazy guys known as the Goons (Spike Milligan, Peter Sellers,
Harry Secombe), who were forerunners of that type of English humor we Americans
found odd but grew to love, especially by the time Monty Python came around.
The Beatles were fans of the Goons, so they figured Lester was their guy. It
was a perfect match. Lester not only brought out that odd British humor, but he
also combined the elements of the British New Wave in cinema (the “kitchen-sink
dramas†of the “angry young menâ€) and the French New Wave (radical editing,
improvisation, hand-held camerawork, low budget), and created something very
new.
And
then there’s the music. Did you know that the song, “A Hard Day’s Night,†was
written overnight, on demand by
producer Shenson, because they needed something that matched the title? Not
only was it a good song, it was a massive hit
song! Imagine that... “Hey boys, could you write a number with the title in
it?†“Sure, Walter, we’ll have it for
you in the morning.†Bang. Oh. My. God. And that’s not to mention all
the other great tunes in the film. (For my money, the UK version of A Hard Day’s Night, the album, is one of The Beatles’ five best
records.)
As
this is a Criterion release, you can expect nothing but an outstanding transfer
of the film itself—4K digital restoration, approved by Lester, with three audio
options—monaural soundtrack, a stereo 5.1 surround mix, and a DTS-HD master audio
on the Blu-ray. Wow. There’s also an audio commentary by some of the cast and
crew.
The
extras are wonderful—some we’ve seen before, but others are new. A nice piece
on Lester, Picturewise, is narrated
by Rita Tushingham and features Lester’s early work (and there’s the obligatory
inclusion of Lester’s The Running Jumping
& Standing Still Film). In Their
Own Voices is a new piece mixing 1964 interviews with The Beatles with
behind-the-scenes footage and photos. A longer 1994 documentary, “You Can’t Do That: The Making of ‘A Hard
Day’s Night’†by producer Shenson, also includes an outtake performance by
the band. Things They Said Today is a
2002 documentary about the film featuring interviews with Lester, Martin,
screenwriter Alun Owen, and cinematographer Gilbert Taylor. And there’s more,
much more.
Can’t
buy me love? Forget it! The Beatles, Walter Shenson, Richard Lester, David
Picker, and everyone else involved with the film certainly bought enough love
for us... and we’re still basking in it.
The
Criterion Collection’s A Hard Day’s Night
is a must-buy.
Director
Douglas Sirk was known primarily for his “adult†melodramas of the 1950s that
usually dealt with bucking the small-town America social mores of the times. All That Heaven Allows is a prime
example. In lush, bold Technicolor (the superb cinematography is by Russell Metty),
Sirk tells the story of a May-September romance between an “older†widow and a
younger man (in actuality, star Jane Wyman was only 38 when the film was made,
and her paramour in the picture, Rock Hudson, was 30; obviously the intention
was that Wyman’s character is even older, say, in her 40s, since she has
college-age children). The couple must face gossip, scorn, and ultimate
rejection from Wyman’s society friends and even her grown children. The message
of acceptance and tolerance hits one over the head like a hammer, to be sure,
but, granted, at the time the subject matter was most likely indeed scandalous
to most Americans. Now it’s a big “so what.†That said, the point of the
story—that women need to be responsible for their own happiness and not cater
to what other people think—is still relevant today. A mother’s children will
eventually grow up and leave the nest; why should she remain in an unhappy
situation just to please them when they’re not even there?
Ah,
but yes, Rock Hudson. Looking back at his performance in this and his other
hits of the 50s and 60s and knowing what we know about him today, one cannot
help but view the actor in a different light. And, for me, anyway, I saw right
through Hudson’s performance. I couldn’t believe that a) Wyman fell for the
guy, and b) that Hudson was really attracted to her. In 1955, the audience for
whom the picture was aimed (female, I imagine) may have bought the romance;
today, it’s superficial and frankly unbelievable. If there had been a bit more
spark between the actors and some clues that there were aspects about each
other that they found appealing (other than Hudson’s Adonis good looks), it
might play better. As it is, All That
Heaven Allows is now a curious relic of a time when America had more bugs
up its ass than a mother spider.
The
Criterion Collection presents the picture in the classiest way possible—a 2K
digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray—and it
looks marvelous. Of particular interest is the extra, Rock Hudson’s Home Movies, in which we are treated to clips from
his films that he edited himself; they compile the moments in which the subtext
implies the truth about his sexual orientation. A Profile of Douglas Sirk, a 1979 BBC documentary, features rare interview
footage and is an interesting portrait of the filmmaker. There is more, of
course, in the dual Blu-ray/DVD format package, including an essay on Sirk in
the accompanying booklet, written by none other than filmmaker Rainer Werner
Fassbinder, whose work was inspired by the director’s pictures.
Two
new releases from The Criterion Collection spotlight low-budget filmmaking in
the 1950s—American and European—and couldn’t be more stylistically and
thematically diverse. And yet, there is a personal stamp on the pictures that
is very similar. Both films also tackle social problems with brutal frankness
and feature anti-heroes as protagonists.
Riot in Cell Block
11 was
produced by longtime Hollywood independent producer Walter Wanger (he was also responsible
for two earlier Criterion releases, Stagecoach
and Foreign Correspondent) as a
hard-hitting, gritty, realistic picture depicting the inequities and
maltreatment prisoners receive in American prisons. Wanger had a personal
reason to make a film like that. He had barely missed spending some time in
one. He’d caught his wife with another man, so Wanger shot the guy, seriously wounding him. A temporary insanity defense got him only four months at an “honor farm,†which
was hardly the same as the federal penitentiary, but he was nonetheless
inspired to tell the world how things really were. Enter Don Siegel, a macho, unconventional
craftsman who would later make such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. Since the picture was going to be made in Folsom State Prison and featuring real inmates as extras, Wanger needed
something of a tough guy to helm the thing. Siegel was his man.
Released
in 1954 and starring a bunch of B-movie character actors as leads (Neville
Brand, Emile Meyer, Leo Gordon, and others), Riot concerns a group of irate inmates that take over their block
and hold guards as hostages. Their demands are humane ones, and yet the
governor and the movie’s “bad guy,†the commissioner, are against giving the
cons anything and will use deadly force to stop the riot—even if it means
sacrificing the hostages. Meyer, as the prison warden, delivers a surprisingly
sympathetic performance as he sides with the convicts but still attempts to do
his job (Meyer would later appear in a small role as a priest in Stanley
Kubrick’s Paths of Glory). Brand and
Gordon (who apparently really was a scary guy on the set) run the show—and
there’s no shortage of beatings, arson, vandalism, and attempted murder (the
film was banned in the U.K. on its initial release). Interestingly, the
audience ends up rooting for the inmates, who normally should be the villains.
What’s
particularly striking is Siegel’s use of location. As in a documentary, the use
of the Folsom gives audiences a view of what it’s really like on the inside (at
the time). It’s the real thing. Siegel manages to illustrate the claustrophobic
desperation of the environment with great skill. But what’s even more profound
is that the depiction of the prison population in 1954 is very different from what
we envision the inhabitants of a prison might be today. For one thing, the
whites outnumber the blacks in Riot.
Was that realistic in 1954? It must have been, since all the extras in the
picture were indeed inmates. The place also doesn’t seem as frightening as the
gang-ridden institutions of the present. Nevertheless, Riot is honest and hard-hitting, another entry in a long line of
“social problem films†that proliferated after World War II (The Lost Weekend, Gentleman’s Agreement, All
the King’s Men, The Snake Pit,
etc.).
Criterion’s
new 2K digital restoration looks terrific. Since earlier home video versions in
the U.S. were either on VHS or bootleg DVDs, the new dual format release is a
welcome one. Film scholar Matthew H. Bernstein provides audio commentary. The
extras are a bit disappointing, though. Two audio pieces feature Siegel’s son,
Kristoffer Tabori, reading passages from his father’s autobiography and Stuart
Kaminsky’s book on the director. These are fine if one doesn’t mind being read
to for a half-hour. The other extra is all-audio as well—an excerpt from a 1953
NBC radio documentary series called The
Challenge of Our Prisons. The usual thick booklet contains an essay by
critic Chris Fujiwara, a 1954 article by Wanger, and a 1974 tribute to Siegel
by Sam Peckinpah.
Francois
Truffaut’s first feature film, The 400
Blows, released in 1959, was one of the opening salvos of the French New
Wave. Drawing on his own childhood experiences, Truffaut introduces us to his
alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, played beautifully by fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre
Leaud, who would star as the same character in four more films, spanning two
decades—hence, we see Antoine grow up and enter adulthood before our eyes (see
Criterion’s box set The Adventures of
Antoine Doinel for the complete series).
The
debut Doinel chapter is the most serious of the saga—the rest are, by and
large, comedies. The 400 Blows paints
a grim portrait of a young boy who is misunderstood by his parents and
teachers, and is hence labeled a problem teen. Truffaut was particularly good
at working with children and he would continue to do so throughout his career.
The story follows Antoine’s troublesome day-to-day life until he is unfairly
expelled from school and sent to a juvenile facility. It sounds dreary, but
Truffaut manages to keep the film riveting from start to finish, and the final
freeze frame is one of cinema’s most iconic images.
This
seminal art film is a must-have in any serious collector’s library. With
Godard’s Breathless (reviewed here
previously), The 400 Blows exhibits
quintessential traits of the New Wave—low budget financing, hand-held cameras,
improvised action, and radical editing. It took neo-realism and made it arty.
Its legacy is without question, for it remains Truffaut’s most financially
successful picture in his native country.
Criterion
has released the title a few times. The first one went out of print and became
an expensive collector’s item on eBay until the company retrieved the rights
again and re-issued a DVD of the film alone, as well as the box set of the
complete Doinel pictures. Then there was the bargain-priced “Art House
Essentials†edition. Now, a dual Blu-ray and DVD, the contents of which match
the previous release, with the same supplements (two audio commentaries,
audition footage of the actors, newsreel footage from Cannes, and two vintage
Truffaut interviews). The only difference is the magnificent restored
high-definition digital film transfer. The
400 Blows never looked so good. What is disappointing, though, is that the
second Doinel film, a thirty-minute short entitled Antoine and Colette, was not included as a supplement. It’s on the 400 Blows DVD disc that’s in the Doinel
box set. Why couldn’t it have been a Blu-ray special feature? Or is an Antoine
Doinel Blu-ray box set in the works?
Much
has already been written about Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 head-scratcher, Persona—it’s been analyzed, dissected,
reconstructed, and debated, and it still remains a cinematic enigma, and a
brilliant one at that. Of all of the Swedish master’s challenging works, Persona is undoubtedly the most complex,
audacious, radical, and experimental film Bergman ever made. It’s also been
widely parodied and imitated. Its influence on other filmmakers, and on pop
culture itself, cannot be taken lightly.
Persona, which means
“mask†in Latin, is all about artifice. Bergman makes no pretentions that what
the audience is viewing is make-believe—it is an invented drama about
personalities hiding behind “masks,†if you will, performed for a camera that
translates the images onto celluloid. In fact, Bergman begins Persona with an extraordinary prologue
consisting of the arc lights igniting inside a projector and the film starting
to move through the sprockets. An extra on this new Criterion Collection
release is Bergman scholar Peter Cowie’s analysis and visual essay on this
first several minutes of the picture—and
it is enlightening for those of us who have studied and pondered over the
meanings behind the seemingly haphazard images (including an erect penis!) that
assault the viewer at the start of the film. It’s interesting to note that
Bergman’s original working title on his script was Cinematography.
Once
the story starts proper, we find ourselves in the sphere of two women. One, a
nurse (Bibi Andersson), is taking care of an actress (Liv Ullmann) who has lost
her ability—or will—to speak. They are alone on an island off the coast of
Sweden (it was actually filmed on Fårö, where many of Bergman’s pictures from the period were
made, and where the director lived and died), and go through a series of
emotional soul-searching moments together. That’s putting it simplistically. By
the end of the short film (83 minutes), the two women have exchanged selves. Or
traded masks. Or become one. Or maybe the characters were two sides of the same
person all along. Or... something. In other words, Persona is totally open to interpretation, and it demands multiple
viewings to fully appreciate. It helps that the film is immensely entertaining.
You can’t keep your eyes off these two incredible actresses who are giving
their all to us.
While Andersson had worked with Bergman
many times prior to Persona, this was
the first picture featuring Ullmann, who would also become a regular member of
the director’s “stock company†as well as his lover. Another extra in the
package is a feature-length documentary, Liv
& Ingmar, directed by Dheeraj Akolkar, which examines the remarkable
forty year relationship between the two. It’s certainly one of those great
cinematic behind-the-scenes love stories, like Burton and Taylor or Tracy and
Hepburn. Ullmann is breathtakingly beautiful in Persona, and, since her character is silent, her acting is
displayed entirely in the expressions on her face. On the other hand, the film
is a tour de force for the also-gorgeous Andersson, who talks non-stop. It’s
certainly the best thing Andersson ever did, and her performance was worthy of
Academy Award consideration (she did win other awards for the film around the
world).
What everyone takes away from Persona, though, is the magnificent
black and white cinematography by Sven Nykvist. His manipulation of light and
shadow is nothing short of magical. And the close-ups!
The tale is all in the up-close and personal examination of these women’s
faces. We’ve all seen the iconic stills of Andersson and Ullmann together, looking
directly at the audience... or the even more startling image of their two faces
merged. There have been many tight director-cinematographer relationships over
the years, but the partnership between Bergman and Nykvist was one of the most
profound.
And thank goodness for The Criterion
Collection’s new 2K digital restoration! The Blu-ray looks far better than the
MGM/UA edition that was released several years ago. Along with the
above-mentioned extras, the package includes a dual Blu-ray/DVD format; new
interviews with Liv Ullmann and filmmaker Paul Schrader; archival interviews
with Bergman, Ullmann, and Andersson; on-set footage with audio commentary by
Bergman historian Birgitta Steene; and the usual slick booklet jam-packed with
more photos, essays, and interviews.
Can you unravel the mystery that is Persona? Consider it a challenge, as
well as an opportunity to experience a cinematic wonder.
Cinema Retro is pleased to announce the premiere of a new column: Criterion Corner, which will highlight reviews and interviews pertaining to new Criterion video releases. For our debut column, we are honored to have Raymond Benson's exclusive interview with Suzanne Lloyd, granddaughter of legendary comedy star Harold Lloyd.
By Raymond Benson
On
the advent of The Criterion Collection’s upcoming release of Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman on Blu-ray and DVD, it’s
high time that the silent film star gain some recognition from at least two
generations that missed out on seeing this master comedian in action. Last
year’s release of Safety Last! certainly
got the ball rolling, and with Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, working as
the trustee to his film library and head of Harold Lloyd Entertainment, Inc.,
the goal is to bring the pictures of the “third genius†(after Chaplin and
Keaton) to a wider audience, especially in America.
Despite
the fact that Harold Lloyd was a superstar during the silent era, I had never seen
a Harold Lloyd film when I was growing up. Except for some hardcore film
historians and enthusiasts, very few people had a chance to become familiar
with Lloyd’s work over the last seventy-odd years, mainly because Lloyd had
refused to sell his pictures to television. Not only was the offer not high
enough, but he felt that the medium wasn’t right for his movies. If timing and
pace were critical in his comedies, as well as the carefully-planned camera
set-ups, why should he allow television to hack them up with unapproved edits,
insert commercials, and perhaps “cheapen†his work?
Suzanne
admits he made a mistake. “He lost so many generations who don’t know him,†she
says from her office in Los Angeles. “Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, Keaton, W. C.
Fields—they were all on television, and that’s who the baby boomers got to
know. In the 1970s, HBO and Time-Life did some of his films for TV in Europe,
but he missed that boat in America.†In the 1980s, however, Suzanne set about
having her grandfather’s films restored. By the New Millennium, she had made a
deal with Turner Classic Movies, and they now have approximately fifty titles
(shorts and features) that are shown regularly. It’s
ironic, because Harold Lloyd made tons of
more films than his counterparts. Nearly two-hundred of them! And while
Chaplin’s individual features were more profitable, Lloyd was overall more
commercially successful because he was so prolific. Lloyd made twelve features
in the 1920s, while Chaplin made only four.
Born
on April 20, 1893 in Burchard, Nebraska, Lloyd wanted to be an actor from an
early age. After moving to Hollywood in 1912, he quickly rose from bit player
to leading man, especially after teaming up with producer Hal Roach. Between
1915 and 1917, Lloyd’s onscreen characters, such as “Lonesome Luke,†were
admittedly knockoffs of Chaplin and others. That changed in 1917, when Lloyd
put on a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. The “Glass†character, as he called it,
became Lloyd’s signature role that he would play for the rest of his career.
The
Glass character, often named “Harold†in the pictures, was an Everyman with
whom audiences of the 1910s and 20s could easily identify. Optimistic,
ambitious, and kind-hearted, and perhaps a little naive, Harold was the Boy
Next Door. And every one of his pictures involved the Boy chasing the Girl Next
Door. It was a template for what later became known as romantic comedy.
“That’s
his legacy,†Suzanne asserts. “He is quite simply the grandfather of the genre.
In his movies he always falls in love with the girl, and then the stories are
all about the chase, trying to impress her, almost losing her, and then finally
getting her in the end. I do believe that our modern romantic comedies owe a
great debt to Harold.â€
One
of the reasons Lloyd was so likable onscreen was that the actor was truly that guy. “He wasn’t someone who ran
around telling jokes, although he would tell jokes; rather he was a lot like
the character—inquisitive, wanting to be first, winning the game, getting
around obstacles, and getting the girl,†Suzanne says. She laughs and
remembers, “He hated losing at a card game, though! He was not a good loser. He
always had to win at any type of game, and he was a great bowler, a champion
handball player, and a good golfer.He
loved the sport of winning, and that
tied into his Glass character as well. He was all about enjoying life and
trying to make it better. He was ‘the glass is half full and not half empty’
kind of man. And this is even more remarkable after what he went through in
1919.â€
That
year, while posing for publicity shots to promote his current work-in-progress,
the short From Hand to Mouth, a
supposedly fake “bomb†(the big black ball-shaped kind that resembles a cartoon
prop) that he was holding in his right hand actually exploded. It took off his
thumb, index finger, and a third of his palm. Lloyd was blinded and his face
was burned. His sight eventually returned and his face healed, but for an actor
who relied on “thrill comedyâ€â€”action stunts, climbing, falling, and the
like—his hand’s disability could have been a career-killer. Instead, after
eight months out of commission, Lloyd bolstered himself up and kept going.
“They fashioned a special glove for him to wear,†Suzanne says. “It looked like
he had all five fingers, and there was an old-fashioned wooden clothes pin
contraption with a strap up his arm. With that, he could make his hand look
whole, and he always wore it in every picture he made afterwards. Luckily, he
was ahead of the game with his releases. He had some in the can, so his studio
staggered the releases while he recovered. News articles said that he had been
hurt, but no one knew how bad it really was.â€
Nevertheless,
the 1920s were good to Lloyd. His films, such as Grandma’s Boy, Safety Last!,
Why Worry?, Girl Shy, The Freshman, The Kid Brother, and Speedy, to name a few, were extremely
popular. And unlike many silent film stars, Lloyd made a smooth transition into
talkies, making several successful sound pictures in the thirties. Suzanne says
that her grandfather embraced sound. “He was dedicated to giving his audience
what they wanted, and he was willing to go to the edge. He was always
progressing. And his voice fit his character, which helped!â€
Lloyd’s
estate in Beverly Hills, “Greenacres,†was a popular destination for the
children of other silent film stars during those exciting years in Hollywood.
Since Lloyd socialized and played tennis with Charlie Chaplin, the Little
Tramp’s first two sons, Charles Jr. and Sydney, often came over to play with
Lloyd’s children—Gloria, Harold Jr., and Peggy. “They would always want to
spend the night and stay over,†Suzanne says. “The boys would tell my mother, ‘your
dad is so generous, he plays with us, plays golf with us, swims with us, throws
ball with us... our dad never does
that!†Shirley Temple was also a frequent visitor to Greenacres. “She actually
lost her first front tooth eating sponge cake at my grandparents’ house, and
boy, was that a big drama for Mrs. Temple,†Suzanne remembers being told. “My family
had to call Darryl Zanuck and say, ‘uhm, guess what!’†Suzanne, who was raised
at Greenacres, had similar experiences with her own friends.“They really liked my grandfather, too. They
asked if they could call him ‘Harry,’ as a nickname, and he let them.He was absolutely a great grandfather—he took
me to Beatles concerts, Las Vegas, and Disneyland. He was happy to be with
younger people.â€
February
is a good month for The Criterion Collection. Last week we reviewed the
company’s restored Blu-ray/DVD dual format release of Foreign Correspondent. Coming quickly on its heels are two more
excellent releases on this red carpet of home video labels.
First
up—Tess, directed by Roman Polanski.
This 1979 picture—released in the U.S. in 1980 and nominated for Academy Awards
(Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Score) and winner of three (Art
Direction, Cinematography, and Costumes) is a scrumptious, beautiful depiction
of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the
D’Urbervilles. It is a very faithful adaptation, although several scenes
from the book are left out or shortened. Still, the film is nearly three hours
long—but don’t let that scare you, it’s never dull. I have to confess that I
fell in love with Nastassja Kinski when I first saw Tess in a Manhattan cinema. She remained my onscreen heartthrob for
over a decade as a result! Kinski is strikingly beautiful, and it is this
beauty that carries her extremely subtle performance through the character’s
difficult emotional upheavals. Kinski’s Tess is shy, vulnerable, introverted,
and naive—until she is the victim of sexual violence. Then the character is
forced to mature, and rather quickly. When it’s all over, on reflection, one
realizes the actress never relied solely on her looks. Superbly supporting
Kinski are Peter Firth as Angel, the man who at first rejects her but then
rescues her from the likes of Leigh Lawson, as the sexual predator Alec.
This
was Polanski’s first feature after fleeing from the U.S. under, ahem,
disturbing criminal charges. He made the film in France, where he took up residence.
His late wife, Sharon Tate, had given him the novel back in the Sixties, and
he’d promised that he would one day make the film for her. As we all know, Tate
didn’t survive that decade. Ten years later, Polanski kept his promise (the
film is dedicated “To Sharonâ€). It is certainly a love letter to her and his
cinematic audience. Since the story involves what the poster tag line read as
“She was born into a world where they called it seduction, not rape...†one
wonders if the picture might have also been Polanski’s way of apologizing for
his crime.
At
any rate, Tess can be listed among the
director’s best pictures. It is gorgeously rendered, exquisitely acted, and,
like Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, is one
of the most visually-stunning films of its era.
The
new 4K digital restoration—supervised by Polanski himself—looks fantastic on
Blu-ray. Several extras document the making of the film, including Once Upon a Time...Tess (a piece from 2006),
three programs featuring interviews with Polanski, Kinski, Lawson, producer
Claude Berri, costumer Anthony Powell, and composer Philippe Sarde, and others.
A 1979 interview with Polanski on The
South Bank Show is revealing, and there is also a documentary shot on
location for French television during the film’s production. The package comes
with both Blu-ray and DVD disks.
Another
wonderful release from Criterion in February—Breathless, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Released in 1960, this is
simply one of the most important entries in modern film history. While it
wasn’t technically the first French New Wave film, it was the one that truly
ushered in this unique movement with significant critical and commercial impact.
It really is the quintessential French New Wave film, for it serves as a
checklist of stylistic traits:
low-budget, handheld camera, improvised dialogue, existential theme, and
radical editing. The French New Wave took the Neorealism of the forties and
made it arty. It’s the cinema equivalent of jazz.
The
story is paper thin: Jean-Paul Belmondo plays the studly petty criminal who has
a short-lived romance with a beautiful American girl working in Paris (Jean
Seberg) until he can’t hide from the authorities any longer. As the film
follows the couple over a course of a few days, Godard plummets deep into the
characters’ psyches as we follow them through a series of seemingly trivial
events, but which in fact are extremely intimate. It’s all very striking, and you
can still feelthe revolutionary
punch the movie had in its day. In truth, Breathless
is perhaps Godard’s most accessible movie. Honest, it really is a love story—just a quirky, edgy
one.
Both
actors are marvelous. They are both frankly sexy individuals, and Godard makes
sure you get that. With Breathless, Belmondo
defined his image as the handsome cad, while it solidifed Seberg’s career as an
art-house darling; it’s tragic that her tenure in the motion picture business
was sadly cut short. She is simply radiant in the film.
Criterion’s
new release is a dual Blu-ray/DVD package. All of the extras from the label’s
previous DVD edition of the film are ported over to this one. The only
difference is the magnificently restored, high-definition digital
transfer—approved by director of photography Raoul Coutard—that makes Breathless a must-have in any serious
film collector’s library.
Alfred
Hitchcock’s 1940 film Foreign
Correspondent is often underrated or forgotten when it comes to lists of
the director’s “best†films. In fact, it was nominated for an Oscar Best
Picture the same year as Rebecca (which
won), and, personally, I think it’s the better movie. It’s certainly more of a
“Hitchcock film†than Rebecca, as it
is one of those cross-country espionage adventure-thrillers along the lines of The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by
Northwest.
It
was the director’s second Hollywood movie. Although Hitchcock was contracted to
David O. Selznick (who produced Rebecca),
Hitch’s deal allowed Selznick to “farm out†the director to other studios and
producers, for a piece of Hitchcock’s salary, of course. In this case, Foreign Correspondent was produced by
Walter Wanger (who had also produced John Ford’s Stagecoach). It’s interesting that during the seven-year period in
which Hitch worked for Selznick, the non-Selznick-produced pictures, in my
opinion, were arguably better (Shadow of
a Doubt, Lifeboat, and Notorious, are other examples).
The
story concerns an American journalist (Joel McCrea) who is sent to Europe,
prior to September 1939, to interview various personages in order to determine
if war is likely to break out. Predictably, McCrea immediately falls into a
plot involving assassination, the kidnapping of a diplomat, and devious Nazi
spies. Co-starring Laraine Day as the blonde love interest, Herbert Marshall as
her father, George Sanders as McCrea’s ally, and Albert Bassermann (nominated
for Best Supporting Actor) as a Dutch diplomat who is really the MacGuffin of
the story, the picture served as propaganda to persuade America to be more
sympathetic to what was occurring across the Atlantic. When Hitler invaded
Poland in 1939, America stayed neutral while Britain and France declared war on
Germany. The allies pleaded with the U.S. government to enter the war and come
to their aid, but there was significant anti-war sentiment in America at the
time.
Being
British to begin with, Hitchcock, instead of returning to his native England to
face the crisis with his kinsmen, chose to support the war effort in a more
subtle way—by making propaganda films thinly disguised as entertainment.
Actually, the picture itself is in no way subtle—its message hits you on the
head with a hammer. McCrea’s final monologue, in which he broadcasts to the
American people that they must join the fight in Europe, was at the time deemed
quite controversial. Like Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator (the same year), the language is strongly
proselytizing. The film includes several signature Hitchcock set pieces—the
black umbrellas in the rain, the windmills reversing direction, the plane crash
into the sea—all the while keeping the audience in a state of nail-biting
suspense. McCrea is splendid and serves as a fine Hitchcockian “everyman,†and
the visual effects, for 1940, are extraordinary. Foreign Correspondent, it’s been said, was also admired by Ian
Fleming, who at the time of the film’s release had once worked as a journalist
but was then serving as the personal assistant to Britain’s Director of Naval
Intelligence. It’s understandable why a spy story like Correspondent would appeal to the future creator of James Bond.
The
Criterion Collection once again graces us with a dual Blu-ray/DVD format
package (three disks), which makes sense marketing-wise, and the new 2K digital
film restoration looks marvelous. Extras include a new piece on the film’s
special effects; Hollywood Propaganda and
World War II, a fascinating look at cinema in that era; an excerpt from The Dick Cavett Show featuring guest
Hitchcock, who comes off as more of a comedian than a filmmaker; and a very
interesting photo essay about wartime rumors shot by Hitchcock himself that originally
appeared in a Life Magazine issue
from 1942—it tells a story in the form of photographic storyboards. Add the
booklet with an essay by film scholar James Naremore, and you have another
must-have gem from not only Criterion, but from the Master of Suspense.
It’s
not only my favorite Francois Truffaut film, but it’s also my favorite French
New Wave picture. While Godard’s Breathless
is often cited as the quintessential French New Wave movie—and it is indeed
a hallmark of the movement—for me it’s Jules
and Jim that fully represents that important development in cinema history.
It contains all the recognizable stylistic and thematic qualities that those
French upstarts brought to their films (what?
French critics becoming filmmakers?
How dare they!), but it’s also a darned good story with wonderful
performances by its three leads. And while the movie ends on a bittersweet,
somewhat tragic note, Jules and Jim is
really a feel-good movie because of the way Truffaut chose to tell the tale.
The director has never shied away from pathos and sentimentality—something the
filmmaker was very good at—but in Jules
and Jim he keeps it from being maudlin or syrupy by infusing the picture
with whimsy. Perhaps the best way to describe Jules and Jim is that it’s a pure delight, a quirky joy from start
to finish.
Jules and Jim was released in
1962 to international critical acclaim and established Truffaut as one of
France’s great directors. He made many wonderful pictures during his brief
career (which was tragically cut short by a brain tumor), including the
magnificent Oscar-winner, Day for Night,
but none would reach the heights achieved by Jules and Jim. Its influence on future filmmakers is
undeniable—Martin Scorsese once claimed that GoodFellas was directed in the same style as Jules and Jim, with disjointed narrative, rapid-fire cutting, and
voice-over narration. Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie
is practically a love letter to the French New Wave, especially the frivolous,
whimsical nature that was present in Jules
and Jim. The recent Frances Ha,by Noah Baumbauch, also owes a lot to
Truffaut’s masterpiece, especially to the significantly fanciful score by
Georges Delerue.
Criterion
has seen fit to re-issue their earlier DVD release as a Blu-ray, and the
results are astounding. The new 2K digital restoration is gorgeous. Beyond
that, the extras are exactly the same as the previous DVD edition, which includes
two separate audio commentaries (one by Jeanne Moreau herself), several video
interviews with Truffaut from different periods of his career, the
previously-mentioned documentary on the true story behind the film, video
interviews with cinematographer Raoul Coutard and co-writer Jean Grualt, and
much more. This new release is dual-format—you get the Blu-ray and two DVD
disks, all containing the same material.
If
you already own the previous release, the question for you is whether or not
you want to experience Jules and Jim in
the best possible visual and aural presentation. For me, the answer to that is
a no-brainer. Jules and Jim is
Francois Truffaut’s gift to cinema lovers.
It’s a Mad, Mad,
Mad, Mad World,
the 1963 classic epic comedy directed by Stanley Kramer, is one of those
Hollywood train wrecks that you can’t help but like.It’s a one-of-a-kind all-star extravaganza
featuring some of the biggest names of mostly 1950s and early 1960s comedy (and
a good number of them were known primarily as television actor/comics rather
than big screen performers). The United Artists release was one of a current
trend of movie star ensemble film in which the producers attempt to throw in as
many big names as possible (e.g. Exodus,
Judgment at Nuremberg, The Longest Day).As Kramer himself states in a reunion extra that
appears on Criterion’s new Blu-ray/DVD combo set, “It would be impossible to
make today,†due to the salaries stars demand now.
Nowhere
can you find such a collection of brilliant actor/comics in one motion
picture—Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Mickey
Rooney, Ethel Merman, Terry-Thomas, Phil Silvers, Dick Shawn, Edie Adams,
Dorothy Provine, Eddie “Rochester†Anderson, Jim Backus, William Demarest, Carl
Reiner... to name a few of the more prominent folks in the sprawling story.Spencer Tracy is top-billed and serves as the
anchor, more or less, to the truly insane shenanigans going on.Then there are a bunch of cameos by the likes
of Jack Benny, Jerry Lewis, Don Knotts, and ZaSu Pitts, some of which are
delightful and serve as a “spot the player†game for the audience.Unfortunately, a handful of these cameos are
wasted, having no “punch line†for their appearance.For example, why bring in the Three Stooges
if they’re only going to stand still and stare straight ahead for a few seconds?The Three Stooges were not particularly known
for portraying silent statues on screen.Another disappointment is the use of Buster Keaton.We barely know it’s him (in the general theatrical
release), due to the lack of close-ups or identifiable visual Keatonesque
traits.
All
that sounds terrific, doesn’t it?In
truth, the picture comes off as some kind of bizarre stunt.The plot is paper thin.A bag with $350,000 has been buried beneath a
“big W†in Santa Rosita Park in the California town of the same name.A bunch of nincompoops go their separate ways
and then proceed to go nuts trying to get to the treasure first.In the general theatrical release, Kramer
takes 163 minutes to tell this tale with a series of slapstick set pieces,
mostly shot on location, and generally consisting of crash-bang, destructive,
pratfall humor.A little bit of that
noisy kind of comedy goes a long way.Two
hours and forty-three minutes of it is exhausting.Criterion has also attempted to piece together
something resembling the original road show edition of the film by utilizing
visual and/or audio elements that are, unfortunately, not in the kind of
sparkling condition as the 4K digital film transfer of the general
release.This extended edition clocks in
at 193 minutes.Both versions are too
long, as many of the critics of the time complained.While It’s
a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World has its legions of admirers and fans, I tend to
agree with those contemporary reviews.As with other “big†comedies (1941,
The Blues Brothers), the size of the
stunts and destruction overpowers the humor.Comedy simply works better on a more intimate, personal level.
In
this case, the performances are larger than life.The superstar comics more or less spend the
entire film in a hysterical state, frantically yelling their lines.They
start at a fever pitch and then have nowhere to go from there.Rooney and Hackett are particular guilty of
this.A handful of the principles are also
supposed to be funny, but they end up being annoying.Ethel Merman, in particular, was written and
directed to play the mother-in-law from hell, and she does such a fabulous job
that I want to strangle her in the first five minutes of screen time—but alas,
we have to put up with her for the next excruciating two and a half hours. When it’s all over you feel shell
shocked.But I guess that’s the point.
That’s
not to say there are no laughs in Mad
World.There are.Jimmy Durante “kicking the bucket†is one such
highlight; unfortunately that occurs in the first ten minutes.I particularly like the sequence in which
Caesar and Adams are stuck in a hardware store basement and try all the wrong
things to escape.I’d forgotten what a
babe Edie Adams was in those days.
Technically,
the picture is superb.The
cinematography, particular, is fabulous—imagery of 1963 southern California
almost transforms the picture into a western in which factions of outlaws are
vying for hidden gold.
The
Criterion Collection does an appropriately epic job in bringing Mad World to Blu-ray, and it’s a lavish,
five-disc set—two Blu-rays and three DVDs.The general release version looks absolutely gorgeous (it was the first
picture to be shot for Cinerama without using the Cinerama three-camera
process).The audio commentary (on the
extended version) by Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo, is
very entertaining and enlightening.I
recommend watching the general release edition first, then watching the extended
version with the commentary.Also
included are several fun extras, including vintage and recent television
interviews and spots, an excerpt about the film from the 2000 AFI program 100 Years...100 Laughs, a new
documentary with behind-the-scenes footage detailing the picture’s visual and
sound effects, a selection of humorist and voice-over artist Stan Freberg’s
original TV and radio ads for the film, and more.You even get a map of the locations.
No
matter if you’re a huge fan, or, if you’re like me, a respectful viewer that
appreciates the picture for its earnest in-your-face effort, Criterion’s new
release is an educational journey into mad, mad, mad, mad Hollywood.
Two
of the superb releases recently issued by The Criterion Collection are classics
from the 1950s international scene. One
is arguably the best caper/heist movie ever made, and the other is perhaps the
best Shakespearean adaptation ever produced.
First
up—Rififi, released in 1955 and
directed by American director Jules Dassin—who had exiled himself from America
due to the blacklist. It’s a film noir
made in France with French and Italian actors and a French crew. As the lyrics in a cabaret number, sung by
Magali Noel in the film, reveal, rififi
means “rough and tumble.†In other
words, Rififi is about riff-raff,
tough guys, and would-be gangsters. In
this case, the protagonists are a quartet of jewel thieves who plan a big caper
together—to break into the safe in a notable jewelry store in Paris. Led by Tony (Jean Servais), the motley crew
also includes an Italian safecracker played by Jules Dassin himself, mainly
because the original actor became unavailable at the last minute. Dassin stepped in and his performance is,
frankly, one of the best things in the picture.
Rififi earned Dassin the
Best Director prize at Cannes that year, and it’s no wonder why. It’s safe to
presume that most caper/heist pictures that came afterward owe a big debt to Rififi. The structure of the film—the gathering of the crooks, the meticulous
planning, the showpiece of the robbery execution, and the tragic aftermath—has
been copied in one way or another. Of
note is the half-hour sequence in which the four thieves break into the store
at night and perform their handiwork. It’s completely without dialogue or music. The men use hand signals to communicate with
each other, for the robbery is so well planned that they don’t need to
talk. The addition of the time limit—they
have to get it done before sun-up—makes it one of the most riveting set pieces
in the crime movie genre. In a
supplement on the disk, Dassin (interviewed in 2000) reveals that the film’s
composer insisted on writing music to accompany the scene. Dassin expressed reservations, but the guy did
it anyway. When it was done, Dassin ran
the film for the composer first with the music, and then without. After seeing the footage, the composer
acquiesced to Dassin’s original vision. The
sequence was better with no music. It turned
out so well that several countries banned the film because the heist scene was
something of a “master class†on how to do it!
The
transfer is a new 2K digital restoration, and it’s an improvement over
Criterion’s previous release of the title. The aforementioned interview with Jules Dassin is a delight, for the
director is candid about the blacklist, his struggle to get his career back on
track after his exile, and the origins and making of Rififi. Also included are
set design drawings by art director Alexandre Trauner, production stills, the
trailer, and an optional English-dubbed soundtrack. The booklet contains an insightful essay by
critic J. Hoberman.
Throne of Blood is Akira Kurosawa’s 1957
masterpiece that brilliantly transposes Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Japanese feudal era. It works like a charm. Drawing
extensively on some of the formal elements associated with traditional Noh
Theatre, Kurosawa choreographs a danse
macabre that is at once graceful, poetic, and most certainly violent.
Starring
the masterful Toshiro Mifune in the Macbeth role (he’s called “Taketoki†in the
film) and Isuzu Yamada as the Lady Macbeth equivalent, the picture is a
powerful concoction of directorial originality, superb acting, and striking
imagery. Asakazu Nakai’s cinematography
is especially important to the film’s success. The outdoor scenes, often filmed in real fog, are eerily beautiful, supporting
the notion that Macbeth is, after
all, a ghost story. The scene in which
Mifune encounters the witch (one instead of three) is creepy as hell. And as good as Mifune is, this is
unquestionably Yamada’s picture. As Lady
Asaji, Yamada exhibits a wide range of emotional display, from the quiet and
sinister to the raging, mad bloodlust of power. She is the scariest thing in
the movie!
Thankfully,
the Criterion Collection saw fit to re-issue the DVD on Blu-ray. Again, the new 2K digital restoration is an
improvement over the earlier release. There are two subtitle translations to choose from—one by Japanese film
translator Linda Hoaglund, and another by Kurosawa expert Donald Richie—as well
as an audio commentary by Japanese film expert Michael Jeck. A too-short documentary on the making of
film, originally a segment of the Toho
Masterworks series on Japanese television, features interviews with
Kurosawa, Yamada, and other members of the creative team. Film historian Stephen Prince supplies the
essay in the booklet.
Kurosawa
gave us many great pictures, and for my money, Throne of Blood ranks in the top five. Treat yourself... and discover or reaffirm
why Kurosawa is one of cinema’s legends.
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
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€
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.
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.
Among
the wondrous Blu-ray products released this month by The Criterion Collection,
that Cadillac of labels, are a masterpiece from 1931 and an absolute gem from
2013—Charles Chaplin’s City Lights,
and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha. Both
packages come with Blu-ray and DVD discs, which apparently will be the norm for
Criterion releases from now on.
First
up—City Lights, arguably Chaplin’s
best and most enduring feature film. Made at a time when sound had already
taken over Hollywood, Chaplin insisted on shooting another silent picture.
Everyone thought he was mad. The moguls believed that even after only four
years of sound movies, audiences would not care to step backwards into the
silent era ever again. Chaplin proved them wrong. City Lights, even without spoken dialogue (but with a gorgeous
Chaplin score and sound effects) is sophisticated and intelligent,
hilarious and touching, and remarkably clever. Often regarded as one of the
best films ever made, Chaplin’s masterwork is the story of a tramp (duh) and
his love for a blind flower-girl, who mistakenly thinks Charlie is a rich man.
As our hero attempts to perpetuate this misconception, the results are
side-splitting funny—until Chaplin’s trademark pathos takes over and “there
isn’t a dry eye in the house.†It is said that Albert Einstein had tears
rolling down his cheeks at the premiere.
Boy,
oh, boy, does the film look good on Blu-ray. The new digital restoration from a
4K film transfer is crisp, sharp, and blemish-free. Like Criterion’s earlier
release this year, Safety Last!, City Lights looks as if it were made
last week. There’s a new audio commentary by Chaplin biographer Jeffrey Vance,
as well as a host of extras. Many of these are repeated from the MK2 Warner
Brothers release from around ten years ago, such as the documentary Chaplin Today: City Lights, archival
footage from the production of the film, rehearsals, and clips of the director
with boxing stars at Chaplin Studios in 1918. A new feature, Chaplin Studios: Creative Freedom by Design,
explores how Chaplin built his famous studio with a mind toward expressing his unique
ways of working. The usual outstanding booklet contains an essay by critic Gary
Giddins and a 1966 interview with Chaplin himself.
In
short, if you’ve never seen City Lights
or have any doubt that Charles Chaplin was the greatest film artist in the
industry’s first fifty years, then by all means pick up this set.
Second—Director
Noah Baumbach’s delightful Frances Ha originally
premiered at film festivals in 2012, but was released theatrically in 2013,
making it a contender for this year’s Academy Awards. I sincerely hope it’s not
overlooked. Baumbach is known for making quirky films (see The Squid and the Whale, for example), and Frances Ha is no different. However, unlike Baumbach’s earlier
mixtures of dark humor and tragedy, the new picture is definitely a comedy. At
its heart is Greta Gerwig’s performance as Frances, who also co-wrote the
screenplay with Baumbach. Frances is a well-meaning, life-is-mostly-wonderful
type of young woman who strives to be a choreographer but can’t seem to get the
opportunity to strut her stuff. Throughout the picture, she is a woman without
a home, crashing at various friends’ apartments in New York City, always
promising herself that she’ll “get her own place soon,†hopefully with her best
friend Sophie (played by Sting’s daughter Mickey Sumner), with whom Frances
shared a place at the story’s beginning. While the film is full of laughs and
smiles, there is an under-current of
loneliness that doesn’t really hit you until after the movie is over—despite
the genuine happy ending.
Shot
digitally in color and then converted into glorious black and white, New York
hasn’t looked so good since Woody Allen’s Manhattan.
Baumbach’s storytelling expertise is all in the characters and how the film is
edited, and in many ways, the picture resembles something Francois Truffaut
might have done in the early 60s. In fact, Baumbach utilizes famous French New
Wave movie music (by Georges Delerue and others) for much of the score. If ever
there was an homage to that important and creative movement in cinema history, Frances Ha is it.
Extras
include an interesting dialogue between Baumbach and director Peter
Bogdanovich; one gets the impression that the elder statesman might be
something of a mentor to the younger filmmaker. Also of note is the dialogue
between Greta Gerwig and filmmaker/actress Sarah Polley. A further conversation
about the look of the picture between Baumbach, DOP Sam Levy, and Pascal
Dangin, who did the film’s color mastering, is enlightening. The booklet
contains a perceptive essay by playwright Annie Baker.
If
you missed Frances Ha in the theaters
last spring, now’s your chance to catch up. It truly is a jewel.
It’s
not a title that readily pops into one’s head when recalling the great horror
films throughout the decades. A British
production released when Universal Pictures’ line of horror franchises had
declined and Val Lewton’s minimalist RKO productions had reached their height, The Uninvited has remained fairly
obscure, in the U.S. anyway, but has also consistently maintained a solid
reputation as one of the great, classic haunted house pictures. In fact, The
Uninvited could be the first film to treat ghosts seriously rather than as
an instrument for humor.
Directed
by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey and gorgeous Gail Russell
in her first film role, the motion picture was released by Paramount in early
1944. Milland was a minor star at the
time who would shoot to super-status the following year by winning a Best Actor
Oscar for The Lost Weekend. Russell, as described by filmmaker Michael
Almereyda in a visual essay extra, was a tragic case of Hollywood Chew-‘Em-Up
and Spit-‘Em-Out Syndrome. Remarkably
beautiful, Russell had nonetheless suffered from severe stage fright and yet Paramount kept
casting her in films over the next dozen years or so in an attempt to make her
a star—until alcoholism took over and she died young at the age of
thirty-six. However, Russell’s
performance in The Uninvited is an
impressive debut, and one can easily see why the studio had faith in the
actress. Her nervous, yet vulnerable
delivery—which apparently was her career downfall in later years—works well
with her character in the picture, i.e., a young woman tormented by the ghost
of her mother, who died violently by falling off a cliff to the sea—or was she
pushed? And is it really her
mother?
Milland
and Hussey play siblings who buy a creepy old abandoned mansion that sits on
the precipice of an English coastline. The previous owner, and Russell’s grandfather in the story, is the inimitable
Donald Crisp. Shortly after the couple moves
in, the ghost makes its presence known with spooky sobbing, moving things about,
and eventually materializing as surprisingly well-done animated ethereal
figures. But wait! There is evidence to suggest that there are rival ghosts haunting the couple and the
alleged daughter of one of the spirits. Who is the other ghost?
There’s
no doubt about it—this is great stuff. It’s English, it’s gothic, it’s romantic, and it handles the subject
matter with respect; Lewis really does want to creep out the audience, and he
succeeds. Beautifully shot by Charles
Lang (Oscar nominee for Black & White Cinematography), The Uninvited is old-fashioned intelligent movie making at its
best. Also of note is that the jazz
standard “Stella by Starlight†was written by Victor Young for the movie and
would be covered by a multitude of artists after lyrics were added to the tune
a couple of years after the picture’s release.
The
Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray edition of The
Uninvited upholds the label’s long tradition of quality work and
presentation. The film looks gorgeous in
its new 2K digital restoration. Extras
include the aforementioned informative and interesting visual essay, two radio
adaptations from 1944 and 1949, both starring Ray Milland, a trailer, and the
substantial booklet with an essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme and a 1997
interview with director Allen.
The
Uninvited is a perfect Halloween
movie. Tell the trick-or-treaters to go
away for an hour-and-forty-minutes, get comfortable, turn out the lights, and
watch it. You will be spooked
It
was the first and only time two famous filmmaking Swedes worked together—the
enigmatic, existential, and brilliant director Ingmar Bergman, and the glamorous,
international star of Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman (no relation). According to Ingmar in a filmed introduction
he made in 2003, he and Ingrid had met and agreed that one day she would act in
one of his films. Then, apparently he
and Ingrid met again at a film festival in the mid-70s. She reminded him of their promise; he told
her about the script he was working on, in which Liv Ullmann would play the
daughter, but he hadn’t cast the mother yet. Done deal. But, in a
recently-filmed interview, Ullmann relates how the two Bergmans did not get
along very well for the longest period. Ingrid wanted to do it one way, Ingmar another—and he had never dealt
with such a headstrong Hollywood personality before. In the end, though, Ingrid capitulated to the
director, eventually admitting that he was right. He must have been, for she was nominated for
a Best Actress Oscar and picked up a slew of other awards in 1978, and sadly,
it was to be her final feature film.
Autumn Sonata is a chamber piece
and feels as if it could be a stage play; indeed, it has been adapted to the
stage after the fact. The story is simple—a
world-famous concert pianist in her sixties stops touring for a moment to visit
her estranged forty-something daughter and husband in Norway. Both of them seem to know that they’re going
to come to blows at some point during the stay, and they do. The last act is a painful, cathartic
angst-fest, as both women—mother and daughter—have it out with what went wrong
with their relationship. Oh, and to
complicate things, the mother’s other daughter
is at the house, too—and she suffers from a severe disability (possibly
Multiple Sclerosis). By the end, the
actresses will be exhausted and spent—and the audience will be as well. This is serious, heavy-hitting Bergman (the
director), and it displays just how effortlessly—it appears—he could dig deeply
into the emotional psyches of two very gifted actresses, more so than we have
ever seen before. It’s not a
particularly “fun†time at the movies, but it is a powerful exercise in acting and directing. Serious fans of the theatre, and with the
Bergmans—both of them—will surely find this to be a stunning little drama.
Sven Nykvist’s color cinematography is gorgeous
in its new 2K digital restoration. The
Blu-ray exhibits some natural graininess, but the improvement over Criterion’s
earlier DVD release of the film is substantial. Extras include the previously mentioned Introduction by Bergman himself;
audio commentary by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie; the Liv Ullmann interview; a
vintage interview between Ingmar Bergman and critic John Russell Taylor at the
National Film Theater in London in 1981; and, astonishingly, a three-and-a-half-hour “making of†on-set
documentary. That’s more than twice as
long as the movie itself. The film
chronicles the entire production—initial readings, rehearsals, dress
rehearsals, filming—it certainly gives you a feel for how Bergman worked. The usual classy booklet (with an essay by
critic Farran Smith Nehme) and packaging, hallmarks of The Criterion Collection, make Autumn Sonata a terrific addition to the home collection.
THE EARRINGS OF MADAME DE... (The Criterion Collection)
SCARY SECONDS AND JEWEL-LADEN IRONY
By Raymond
Benson
Among the
new releases this month from The Criterion Collection, that Cadillac of Blu-Ray/DVD
labels, are two oldies-but-goodies—and very different ones—that will impress
both the average film lover and the hardcore art house enthusiast. For me, the
most anticipated title was Seconds,
the 1966 paranoia-science fiction-mystery-thriller directed by John
Frankenheimer, and starring Rock Hudson in a cast-against-type role. There’s no
question that the picture was ahead of its time. The circumstances sound familiar—it
was a very intelligent, well-made, strikingly photographed genre movie that audiences
found too strange or unpleasant, and it flopped... but later, because it really
was good, it became a cult classic.
Seconds is a shocking film today; in 1966,
it was radical. It was considered an “adults-only†movie, even though its
release was prior to the implementation of the American rating system (besides
some disturbing violence, there is an extended scene of Bacchus rite
enthusiasts stomping grapes in the nude). Filmed in black and white by James
Wong Howe—and his work on the picture is arguably the most impressive aspect of
this complex film—Seconds tells the
story of a middle-aged, successful, married-with-grown-daughter, man who
desperately wants a different life. He finds it through a mysterious
organization called the Company, which—for a fee—will fake the man’s death,
help him disappear, give him a new face and body through means of elaborate
plastic surgery, and plop him into the identity of someone else. If, however,
the man is not happy with his new life, then his body becomes the faked corpse
for the next client.
Thus, the
first third of the movie stars the actor John Randolph, whose features, in
retrospect, didn’t change all that much over the next forty years. Randolph is
terrific—he displays the character’s inner turmoil over his decision with “calm
nervousnessâ€; this is who will eventually be housed inside of Rock Hudson, also
poignantly wonderful as a sad, frustrated man... and this is the key to the
movie. The character that both actors play is not a happy person to begin with...he
is destined to be dissatisfied with
his second life, too, even though on the surface it seems more ideal.
Criterion’s
Blu-ray is gorgeous—the new, restored 4K digital film transfer, with
uncompressed monaural soundtrack, provides the best possible presentation of
this remarkable film. Also of note is the audio commentary by the late
Frankenheimer himself, an auteur whose oeuvre
is perhaps not as widely respected as it should be. Extras include a new
interview with Alec Bladwin (huh?), and the more relevant features such as Hollywood on the Hudson, a 1965 TV
program featuring on-set footage and an interview with Rock Hudson. There’s a
very good new program on the making of the film, featuring interviews with
Frankenheimer’s widow and actress Salome Jens. Plus more. In short, it’s the
usual first-class treatment from Criterion.
Also
released this month is Max Ophüls’ acclaimed 1953 French drama, The Earrings of Madame De... (also known
as simply Madame De...). For those
unfamiliar with Ophüls, you need to be. A German Jew, he escaped Nazi Germany,
worked in France, came to America in the late forties and made a few highly
regarded Hollywood pictures, then went back to France and made the four movies
that cemented his reputation, and Madame
De... is one of these. Ophüls was a pioneer in the tracking shot—in his
films, the camera moves like a fluid dancer, following actors through sets and
along streets. In fact, Stanley Kubrick often stated that Ophüls was one of his
favorite directors, and one can see Ophüls’ influence on Kubrick, especially in
the latter’s early work.
Madame De...starts off as a comedy, but it soon
becomes not a love story, but a tale in which love brings about the characters’
downfalls. It’s an ironic fable adapted from a novella by Louise de Vilmorin
about an upper class military couple (Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux),
their affairs, and the trust vs. mistrust that exists in marriages in 19th
Century France. Mostly, though, the picture is about pride, and how that
emotion can dominate that of love. Vittorio de Sica, the famed director, also
appears in a large supporting role as Darrieux’s paramour, and he is quite
charismatic.
The usual
high standard of extras include a commentary by film scholars Susan White and
Gaylyn Studlar, and especially the excellent “visual essay†on Ophüls’ tracking
techniques, narrated by film scholar Tag Gallagher. The booklet includes the
complete novella by de Vilmorin, and another extra is an interview with the
author, circa mid-sixties, in which she lambasts the film version, never
realizing that her own pride is also ironic. Recommended.
We
expect nothing less than greatness from that Cadillac of DVD/Blu-Ray labels,
The Criterion Collection, and this month’s releases do not disappoint. I’m
betting that even hardcore Cinema Retro readers
may not have seen these two brilliant classics—one a silent film from 1923, the
other a British work of wonder from 1936—both containing jaw-dropping visuals
that will amaze even the most cynical of cinema aficionados.
First
up—Safety Last!, the film for which
actor Harold Lloyd will be most remembered. Lloyd was often called “the third
genius†(after Chaplin and Keaton), and his works were not readily available to
Baby Boomers because he had refused to sell them to television at the low price
he was offered. Lloyd always felt his films were worth more, and rightly so.
This was a guy who made many more pictures
than either Chaplin or Keaton and transitioned smoothly into the sound era with
no hiccups. He had his own on-screen persona, too—that of an everyman (albeit
with glasses) with whom audiences could more easily identify than with his
contemporaries.
The
Criterion edition sports a new, restored 2K transfer that, on blu-ray, presents
a picture that appears as if the film was made yesterday. A 1989 score by Carl
Davis is synchronized and restored in uncompressed stereo (and there’s an
alternate score by Gaylord Taylor from the late 60s). Audio commentary by
Leonard Maltin and Lloyd archivist Richard Correll is included. Excellent
extras include an introduction by Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd; a
superb two-hour documentary, Harold
Lloyd: The Third Genius; documentary features on the photographic effects
and music; and three restored Lloyd shorts from 1919 and 1920. Fantastic stuff.
And
for something completely different—H. G. Wells’ Things to Come, an Alexander Korda production, which was the most
expensive British film to date in 1936. There wasn’t much science fiction on
film in those early days. Aside from Lang’s Metropolis,
most sci-fi on celluloid didn’t come about until the 1950s. Things to Come was totally Wells’
baby—he wrote the screenplay (based on his novel), and unofficially served as
executive producer and consultant.
The
story focuses on an English village, “Everytown,†and follows it from 1936 to
2036, illustrating the various social and technical changes that take place.
It’s interesting to note what the filmmakers accurately predicted. For example,
Wells foretold the outbreak of world war at Christmas, 1940—he overshot the actual
date by only sixteen months. Most of the film centers on the future years in
the 1960s and 1970s, when Everytown is ruled by a tyrannical dictator (Ralph
Richardson, outrageously chewing the scenery). The star of the picture is
Raymond Massey, who plays a sensible pilot in the early years, and then also
portrays the original character’s great-grandson in the year 2036. Nigel
Hawthorne appears in the later years as an outspoken rebel against the current
government—he too, entertainingly overacts with abandon. It’s all good stuff,
though.
The
real star of Things to Come is the
art direction/production design. Credited to Vincent Korda, the work, as noted
in the fascinating extra narrated by Christopher Frayling, was actually done by
several designers. The film was directed by William Cameron Menzies, who was
known mostly as a production designer. The “futuristic†scenes of 2036 are
quaintly hilarious with their post-modern, sleek and sterile sets, and costumes
that one contemporary reviewer described as “bathing costumesâ€â€”but for science
fiction enthusiasts, this was a groundbreaking, daring film for its time. It’s
a bit on the preachy side—a cautionary tale for those living in 1936—but it’s
also an important, courageous piece of art from Korda’s company, London Films.
Extras
also include clips of unused special effects by artist Lásló Moholy-Nagy, a visual
essay on the musical score, and an audio recording of Wells reading about the
“wandering sickness,†a plague-like disease featured in the film.
Terrence
Malick fans will rejoice for the newly restored (and director approved, I might add—so apparently he’s not as reclusive
as he’s been made out to be), marvelous release of the auteur’s first, and very
low-budget, feature film.It was
originally screened at festivals in 1973, and released to the public in early
’74.No punches pulled here—Badlands is a masterpiece, and its
arrival immediately garnered a fan following for the enigmatic director who has
made only five films in so many decades.But as producer Edward Pressman says in the exclusive video interview
that The Criterion Collection included as one of several good extras, Badlands was not a success on its first
release.Reviews were mixed—as would be
the case for any Malick film—and the public didn’t go see it.Pressman also had to fight for Malick to have
his own artistic vision, despite complaints and pressure from the backers.The film was properly “discovered†when it
started playing on cable television some years later.By then, Malick was making Days of Heaven, and these would be the
only two pictures he would make before a twenty-year gap in output.Already his mystique had been established.
Badlands is indeed a
remarkable film, not only because of the unique point of view Malick brings to
the table, but for the performances of young Martin Sheen and young Sissy
Spacek.They are both knock-outs, and
they were undeservedly ignored when awards season came around.Sheen, especially, gives a chilling
performance of psychopath-as-James Dean, more or less, because the character
fashions himself after the famous actor.You can’t help but like the guy.He is utterly charming to the girl he’s chosen to run away with him on a
killing spree, and the couple’s love for each other is so real and so oddball
that we can’t help but be fascinated by them.
It
is Malick’s most “accessible†film, perhaps, for it tells a linear,
sweeps-you-along story with characters you can follow through a story arc.If you know Malick only from his recent works
(The Tree of Life, The Thin Red Line), you’ll know he
didn’t always stick to that format.However,
Malick displays many of his signature traits even here.A common stylistic and thematic element of
the director’s films is the marriage of nature to whatever story is being told,
thus there are striking cinematographic images of plains, bugs, birds, flowers,
wheat, and sky, all set to some unusual piece of music from an eclectic palate
of recorded works.(The unique soundtrack
to Badlands has never been compiled
and released, and someone should do
it!)
Loosely
inspired by the real-life Charles Starkweather case of the late 1950s, Badlands is a road movie that is poetry
in motion, haunting and unforgettable.The 4K digital transfer is gorgeous.Other extras include an engrossing forty-minute piece on the making of
the film, featuring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek today, reminiscing about the
extraordinary experience they had with “Terry.â€Associate editor Billy Weber also provides an interview, and a highlight
is the 1993 episode of TV’s American
Justice about Starkweather.
If
you’ve never seen Badlands, take a
look at this exquisite Criterion release and experience something beautiful and
strange.
Ministry
of Fear,
1944, directed by Fritz Lang, and starring Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, and
Dan Duryea, looks fantastic on Blu-ray.It’s one of the best restorations and transfers I’ve seen of a
black-and-white film noir of the
period.Lang’s German Expressionistic
background is classroom-clear in the look of this intriguing spy tale, based on
a novel by Graham Greene (The Third Man).The high-contrast light-and-shadow and angled
lines are all over the place.Nazi spies
in England are the bad guys, and our innocent man on the run (Milland) thinks
he knows where a few of them are hiding.The problem is, he’s a former mental asylum patient who served time for
mercy-killing his already dying wife.This is a terrific World War II-era paranoia thriller, despite the fact
that so many American actors in the picture are supposed to be British, and they
make no attempt to sound that way.Still,
the story is compelling and the direction is superb.Includes an interview with Lang scholar Joe
McElhaney.
Finally!After years of sub-par and downright bootleg
quality transfers of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1934 British classic, The Man Who Knew Too Much, we now have a
very decent-looking
presentation.Thanks to The Criterion
Collection, the film has undergone a new digital restoration, and it looks
great.We can finally see a clear
photographic image!Peter Lorre is no
longer blurry and in soft-focus.And the
sound!Thanks to an uncompressed
monaural soundtrack, we can now actually hear the dialogue and understand it,
whereas on previous releases everyone sounded like they were speaking from
inside a barrel.
The Man Who Knew
Too Much was
Hitchcock’s first hugely successful talkie.In fact, Man was the number
one picture in the UK in 1934, and it more or less introduced America to the
Master of Suspense when it was imported across the pond.So, in many ways, The Man Who Knew Too Much was Hitch’s breakthrough to a worldwide
audience.And it’s such a good story
that he decided to remake it in Hollywood twenty-two years later.Film historians like to argue about which
version is better.As the director
himself said, the first one was the work of a “talented beginner†and the
second version was that of a “professional.â€Regardless, the 1934 edition is hugely entertaining and a worthwhile
addition to any cinema buff’s collection.
The
picture also marks the first English-language appearance by Peter Lorre, who
had recently escaped from Nazi Germany.While making Man, he was
learning English and legend has it that he recited his lines phonetically
without truly understanding their meaning.If that’s truly the case, then his performance is remarkable; he’s one
of Hitchcock’s best villains.Leslie
Banks and Edna Best are the protagonists, and while they are no Jimmy Stewart
and Doris Day, they carry the film along marvelously.
Extras
include a terrific hour-long 1972 British TV interview with Hitchcock conducted
by Ingrid Bergman’s daughter Pia Lindstrom and film historian William K.
Everson.The disk is worth the price for
that alone.There’s a new
interview/appreciation from Guillermo del Toro, audio excerpts from Francois
Truffaut’s classic interview with the master, a new audio commentary by film
historian Philip Kemp, and the usual thick booklet full of photos and an essay
by Farran Smith Nehme.
When
I walked out of the New York cinema in 1983 after viewing Koyaanisqatsi for the first time, I overheard someone say, “That
was the trippiest movie since 2001.â€I had to agree.I’d never seen anything like it, but it was a
feast for the eyes and ears.I’d been
mesmerized for 86 minutes, lost in a swirling and exhilarating journey through
North American landscapes of deserts, canyons, skies, and big cities.Using slow motion and time lapse photography
by Ron Fricke, director Godfrey Reggio presented a feature-length music video
that defied categorization.Accompanied
by the vibrant score by Philip Glass, the film seemed to be saying that man was
screwing up nature and that we’d better watch out.Life was “out of balance,†as the Hopi Indian
one-word-title of the movie meant.Koyaanisqatsi was one of the most moving
cinematic experiences I’d encountered.
Powaqqatsi
(Image courtesy of Criterion.)
Two
sequels followed—Powaqqatsi (1988)
and Naqoyqatsi (2002)—produced in the
same non-verbal style but with successively more challenging thematic
content.Powaqqatsi concentrated on the Southern Hemisphere and third world
countries, emphasizing how the more “modern†parts of the world fed upon the
poorer and harder-working civilizations.Naqoyqatsi went deep into the
computer, re-imagining the globe’s landscapes, people, and especially armies
into digitally-altered and enhanced imagery that suggested we’ve become an artificial
mechanization of our former selves.While
powerful in their own right and certainly worthwhile, it is Koyaanisqatsi that will always be the
ground-breaking piece of the trilogy, as well as the most effective.
Koyaanisqatsi
(Image courtesy of Criterion.)
Given
the deluxe Blu-ray treatment by the Criterion Collection, all three films are
presented in new restored digital transfers, approved by director Reggio, with
5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks.The results are amazing.Each of
the three disks also comes with an abundance of extras—vintage and current
interviews with key creative personnel; an early demo of Koyaanisqatsi shot in the 70s with music by Allen Ginsberg; Reggio’s
rare 30-minute short Anima Mundi, with
music by Glass; a thick booklet of essays, and more.
Wow.Turn out the lights, get comfortable, and
trip out.The Qatsi Trilogy will change your life, man.
Jean-Luc
Godard was the bad boy of the French New Wave.Whereas his contemporaries such as Francois Truffaut were “safe†and
“accessible,†Godard liked to shock people.A lot of his work, especially in the sixties, was also political in
nature—this was a man unafraid to scathingly portray French bourgeois society
at its worst and trumpet his views on class discrepancy with the ferocity of a
bull dog.In other words, he enjoyed
pissing off audiences.
Released
in 1967 with the opening titles caveat that “children under 18 should not see
this film,†we are told at the beginning that Weekend (or Week End or Week-end, depending on what country
you’re in) is a film “found on the trash heap.â€It is one of the darkest and most vicious black comedies ever made, and
naturally, it is one of Godard’s best pictures.It is simultaneously fascinating, repulsive, and hilarious, and not for
the faint of heart.But discerning fans
of art house cinema should eat it up.
The
story, as it were, involves a bickering married couple (Mireille Darc and Jean
Yanne, both of whom were major French TV stars at the time the film was made)
who have plans to kill each other and run off with their respective
lovers.But before that can happen, they
have to murder Darc’s father so she will inherit his wealth.They set off across country to her parents’
home and find themselves on a nightmare journey through a landscape of traffic
jams, automobile accidents (and fatalities) at nearly every juncture, and
violence.The humor comes with the
couple acting as if it’s all part of everyday life.
One
celebrated sequence is a lengthy tracking shot along a road backed up with
vehicles.As our anti-heroes attempt to
pass the idling cars and trucks to move to the head of the line, we’re treated
with all kinds of sight gags (such as one car that’s facing the opposite
direction and wedged between two vehicles going the right way).We laugh and laugh.Then, when we finally reach the front of the
traffic jam, we see that the cause was a bad accident, and entire families are
lying bloody in the road.The couple
drives through the scene as if the holdup was a minor nuisance.Later, when the couple’s car is also in a
collision and catches fire, Darc is more upset about her Hermes handbag getting
burned than the fact that she and her husband are covered in blood and the car
is destroyed.That’s the kind of movie Weekend is.
Criterion’s
new digital restoration with uncompressed monaural soundtrack is superb.The cinematography by Raoul Coutard always
had a color documentary feel to it, but the Blu-ray brings out a sharpness
hitherto unseen in prints.Extras
include archival interviews with the stars and assistant director, an archival
piece on Godard featuring on-set footage, and more.The thick booklet contains an essay by
critic/novelist Gary Indiana, selections from a 1969 interview with Godard, and
excerpts from a Godard biography.
Weekend was a comment on
French society in 1967, and the irony today is that the film might be even more
relevant in our own present world.
Children of
Paradise takes
place in Paris between 1830-1848, mostly centered in the “Boulevard du Crime,â€
the city’s “theatre row,†where the plays produced were typically crime
melodramas. Thus, the film is a massive period costume drama to begin with. The
protagonist is a mysterious woman named Garance (portrayed by the actress
Arletty, one of France’s most famous stars), who is a feminist long before that
word was invented. Four men vie for her attentions—notably the mime Baptiste
(the magnificent Jean-Louis Barrault), the actor Frederick, the thief Pierre,
and the aristocrat Edouard. Each have their own way of wooing the object of
their desire, and Garance, in turn, has her own ways of dealing with them. Other
minor characters complicate the proceedings by initiating their own seductions
and pursuits of the four main men.
RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST FROM CINEMA RETRO'S ARCHIVES (This article originally ran in October 2010)
By
Raymond Benson
Often
called one of the best, if not the best,
anti-war movie ever made, Stanley Kubrick’s Paths
of Glory solidified the director’s standing in Hollywood as a talent to be reckoned
with. The second film in Kubrick’s collaboration with producer James B. Harris
(the first was the excellent The Killing),
and released in 1957, the picture demonstrated Kubrick’s flair for camerawork,
composition, and controversial subject matter. Certainly Paths of Glory stands out among his early works as a monumental
achievement.
Based
on true events during World War I, the story concerns how three innocent French
privates are court-martialed for “cowardice†simply to set an example after a
devastating defeat on the battlefield. Their commander (Kirk Douglas, in one of
his best performances) must defend them. Thus, the film is part war movie and
part courtroom drama.
Upon
release, the French government pressured United Artists not to exhibit the
film, so it wasn’t seen in France for nearly twenty years. It was critically
received in America and Britain, although it curiously failed to garner any
Academy Award nominations. (BAFTA nominated it for Best Picture, and Time Magazine cited it in their annual
“Ten Best†list.)
Paths of Glory’s battle scenes
are remarkably realistic and choreographed. The trademark Kubrick forward and
backward tracking shots, as Douglas marches through the trenches, are
particularly striking. The court-martial sequence, staged on a chessboard-like
floor, displays the director’s penchant for orderly, symmetrical composition.
The
film also contains some of the best acting in any Kubrick film—besides Douglas,
who carries the picture, there are strong performances from George Macready as
the general who insists on the court-martial, Adolphe Menjou as his superior,
and the three unfortunate privates—Ralph Meeker, Timothy Carey, and Joseph
Turkel (who was interviewed in Cinema
Retro #16). The only female in the film, Christiane Harlan (billed as
Susanne Christian), plays a German barmaid persuaded to sing to the troops. After
the film’s production, she became Mrs. Stanley Kubrick.
As
usual, Criterion does a splendid job in its presentation of the film on both
Blu-Ray and DVD. The restored, high-definition digital transfer results in a
crisp, clear picture unseen since the film’s release. Extras include an audio
commentary by film critic Gary Giddins; an excerpt from a 1966 audio interview
with Kubrick; a 1979 television interview with Kirk Douglas; and, more
importantly, brand new video interviews with producer Harris, Christiane
Kubrick, and Kubrick’s longtime executive producer, Jan Harlan. Also of great
interest in a vintage French television piece about the real-life World War I
execution that partly inspired the film.
This
is a must-purchase for any serious Kubrick fan, as well as for all aficionados
of cinema history.
The red carpet label
Criterion Collection has continued its mining of classic foreign language films
by releasing for the first time in the U.S. two pictures that first brought
famed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman some attention.Summer
Interlude (1951) and Summer with
Monika (1953) are both fairly commercial love stories but with a slightly
dark flair which only Bergman can produce.Both films are highly erotic (especially Monika) for the time, and these titles contributed to the notion in
America that Sweden made sexy movies.
In fact, Summer with Monika was first released in the U.S. as a
sexploitation film in 1956 by the self-proclaimed “world’s greatest showman,â€
Kroger Babb, an exhibitor/producer who specialized in low budget sleaze thinly
disguised as “educational material for adults.†Babb re-cut Summer with Monika, added
a dubbed English language soundtrack that had little to do with Bergman’s
original, laid on a jazzy, sultry Les Baxter musical score, and released the
film as Monika: The Story of a Bad Girl. Because the picture contained brief nudity,
it was marketed solely for titillation purposes. (Woody Allen once remarked that the only
reason he and his friends went to see it was because they’d heard there was a
“naked woman†in it.)
The character of Monika, in
Bergman’s version, is not necessarily a “bad girl,†she’s just from a poor
working class family and does what she can to have fun and bring excitement
into her life. She embarks on a
summer-long sexual affair with the rather young and innocent Harry and ends up
getting pregnant. Poor Harry does the
right thing and marries her; but wild Monika will have none of the domestic
life. She soon leaves her husband holding
the infant. A cautionary tale? Perhaps.
Summer Interlude may not be as dour, but it still ends with characters questioning the
meaning of life and death, and speculating how love fits into the
equation. Marie (played by the gorgeous Maj-Britt Nilsson, who has the
best legs of any Bergman actress) is a successful ballet dancer who, when she
was a teenager, had a summer fling with Henrik (Berman stalwart Birger
Malmsten) that was idyllic. Unfortunately,
the fellow dies in a freak accident, leaving Marie disillusioned and bitter,
even as she becomes famous.
Despite the heavy-sounding
storylines, these are two of Bergman’s most accessible and enjoyable
films. Bergman often touched on the subject
of young love in these early pictures, and he nailed the nervousness,
exhilaration, and angst that accompany what we have all experienced. The photography by Gunnar Fischer is
outstanding, especially with the new digital restorations on both disks.
Summer Interlude disappointingly has no extras. Summer with Monika, however, sports a
treasure trove, including a revealing new interview with legendary Bergman
actress Harriet Andersson—it’s hard to believe she was once the scandalous
nymphet of the film. Images from the Playground is a
collection of home movies Bergman shot while on the sets of these and other
films, including archival interviews with Andersson and Bibi Andersson. Especially interesting is the short on the
distribution of Monika: The Story of a
Bad Girl in the USA, with a profile of Kroger Babb. If only Criterion had obtained the rights and
a print of that sexploitation version of Monika
and included it—that would have
been a gem. Both disks come with thick
booklets containing essays and photographs.
If you’re a Bergman fan—and a
Criterion fan—these lost jewels are highly recommended.
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It
was surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s most popular film and his biggest
financial success, even outperforming the great Oscar-winning The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (the
idea for which was given to the director by actor Owen Wilson during a time
travel escapade to Paris in the 1920s*).Starring an effervescent, young and beautiful Catherine Deneuve in a
defining role that would forever typify her as the kind of cool, intense,
independent blonde she would portray for the rest of her long career, Belle de Jour broke ground for eroticism
and feminism alike.
Released
in 1967, the picture is one of Buñuel’s most accessible pictures.The plot is simple enough.Severine, a frigid and frustrated woman of
the Parisian upper class who is married to a successful doctor, has disturbing
fantasies of being sexually humiliated and degraded.When a friend of her husband’s (a man who has
tried many times, unsuccessfully, to seduce Severine) tells her about a high
class brothel, she becomes curious.At
first frightened and timid, Severine applies for afternoon work at the brothel,
and there she ultimately discovers the path to her own sexual fulfillment.Yes, she’s a masochist, but she is one by
choice and desire.Her new vocation
improves things at home with her husband until she becomes involved with a
client who happens to be a hit man.The
gangster also grows obsessed with Severine, a story twist with tragic
results.
The legendary mystery: are the contents of the box erotic, disgusting or both?
As
with any Buñuel film, there’s a lot more going on.There is humor, to be sure, as well as the
kind of shocking imagery typical of the auteur’s work.Severine’s fantasies take on the surrealistic
touches the director has been known for since his first picture, Un Chien Andalou (made with Salvador
Dali), but the “realistic†scenes in the brothel also venture into absurdist
territory.For example, one client, a
successful gynecologist, insists on role-playing a disobedient servant to a punishing
mistress.Another client, an Asian man,
carries a jewelry box, which, when opened, emits a strange buzzing sound.We can’t see what’s in the box, but whatever
it is gets mixed reactions from the various prostitutes (usually disgust).It is only Severine who finds the mysterious object
fascinating.Of course, Buñuel means for
the audience to interpret what’s in the box for themselves.
The
new edition from Criterion features a magnificent high-definition digital
restoration.Audio commentary is by
Michael Wood, author of the BFI Film Classics book on Belle de Jour.A very
interesting video interview with activist Susie Bright and film scholar Linda
Williams sheds light on the sexual politics and feminist themes in the
picture.Co-writer Jean-Claude Carrière
talks about working with Buñuel in a new interview.Finally, Deneuve appears in a vintage French
television program on the making of the movie.Also included is a booklet featuring a 1970 interview with Buñuel and
more.
Belle de Jour is a classic of the
new permissiveness of the late 1960s, and it is a must for true film
buffs.And watch for Buñuel’s cameo
appearance at an outdoor bar/restaurant!
*
As seen in Woody Allen’s new film, Midnight
in Paris
It’s
one of the best trilogies ever put on celluloid.Period.
This
trio of films by the late Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski can be
ambiguously described by these adjectives:insightful, enigmatic, mysterious, melancholic, personal, beautiful,
ironic, allegorical, and colorful.
Art
house cinema movie-goers are most likely well familiar with these works,
initially released in 1993 and 1994.Kieslowski was a preeminent filmmaker working since the 1970s behind the
Iron Curtain and was relatively unknown to the West until the fall of the
Soviet Union in 1989.Then, a flood of
previous entries in his oeuvre amazed
and challenged a new worldwide audience.His ten-part Polish television series from 1988, The Decalogue, became one of the most celebrated events in media. Now
free to work where he wished and make what he wanted, Kieslowski moved to
France and received funding for more ambitious projects such as The Double Life of Veronique (1991), a
co-French and co-Polish production.This
same configuration resulted in his masterpiece, the Three Colors trilogy of Blue,
White, and Red.The accolades and awards
were promptly showered on these unique films, and they were well deserved.
Kieslowski
is a filmmaker who likes to take a general concept, say, the “Ten
Commandments,†and then turn it upside down and examine it from a modern perspective.The
Decalogue did this by presenting the theme of each commandment re-imagined
in a modern context full of double meanings, coincidences, and irony.With his co-screenwriter, Krzysztof
Piesiewicz, he did the same in Three
Colors, which loosely examines the tenets behind the colors of the French
national flag—liberty, equality, and fraternity.
Well,
we are not Devo, although that famed New Wave band was inspired by this
wonderfully twisted 1933 science fiction-horror film in their song, “Are We Not
Men?—We Are Devo!â€Similarly, Danny Elfman
and Oingo Boingo used parts of the “Law†in their song, “No Spill Blood.â€The above mantra is used in the picture by a
group of, well, unusual beings.
Made
by Paramount to compete with Universal’s string of successful horror movies,
and directed by Erle C. Kenton, Island of
Lost Souls is nothing short of a masterpiece.Its unsettling nature is similar to that of
1932’s Freaks, in that the horror
comes from imagery of the physically grotesque.It is an influential film that many people have never seen.It was banned in the UK for many years, and
in America the picture was chopped up to varying lengths.It was never released on DVD until now.
The
movie is based on H. G. Wells’ novel, The
Island of Dr. Moreau, and it has been re-made a couple of times over the
years with that title, but the original version is by far the most effective
and scariest.Charles Laughton is superb
as the misguided Dr. Moreau, whose experiments turn animals into “man-beasts.â€Bela Lugosi also appears in a small, but memorable
role as one of the creatures.The
expressionistic photography by Karl Struss could be called a major character of
the film, but the real star is the outstanding makeup on a cast of dozens of
monsters.
Criterion
has done the usual splendid job with the new digital restoration, presenting
the film in its completely uncut theatrical version.Film historian Gregory Mank provides an audio
commentary, but of the many extras, the most amusing and interesting is the
discussion of the film by director John Landis, makeup artist Rick Baker, and
genre expert Bob Burns.Also of interest
is an interview with Devo members Mark Mothersbaugh and Gerald Casale, and a
little-seen early Devo promotional film.
This
is all great stuff, and Criterion’s release is just in time for Halloween.So pick it up, put on your favorite costume,
ignore the trick or treaters, and put on this movie!You won’t be disappointed.
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For
cinema history enthusiasts, the name Jean Vigo is one of legend.His career in France was brief, brilliant,
and controversial.In the early 1930s he
made one short silent documentary, a short sound documentary, and two (later)
critically-acclaimed and important feature films.Then he died of tuberculosis.
During
a period when Jean Renoir was the king of French cinema, Vigo refused to play
by the rules and created—at the time—very noncommercial products that would
outlive the filmmaker and influence others, especially practitioners of the
French New Wave.Francois Truffaut, in
one of the excellent extras in this fabulous new set from The Criterion
Collection, describes how he first saw L’Atalante
(1934) as a child and his life was forever changed.He admits that much of his own work owes a
lot to Vigo and that singular work of early naturalism.
Vigo
was controversial in his day for following in the surrealist footsteps of his
cronies, Luis Buñuel and Jean Cocteau, and then for daring to film a love story
that was too realistic for audiences of the time.In many ways, L’Atalante was a French slice of Italian Neo-realism that appeared
a decade earlier.
A
two-disk set, the first disk contains the four films:A
Propos de Nice (1930), which intercuts travelogue and daily street life of
the city with absurdist, surreal imagery; Taris
(1931), a short portrait of a champion swimmer; Zero de Conduite (Zero for
Conduct) (1933), a precursor to Lindsay Anderson’s If… in that it’s about a rebellion in a boys’ boarding school; and
the true showcase of the collection, L’Atalante,
a ultra-realistic story of an odd marriage and the honeymoon aboard a working
barge.The second disk contains a
plethora of fascinating extras, including the aforementioned vintage interview
with Truffaut, a television documentary about Vigo from the 1960s, a history of
L’Atalante’s tortured release
history, and more.And don’t forget the
usual top-notch and informative booklet full of essays.
The
collection is probably not for everyone, but the true film buffs out there are
going to eat this one up.
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Examining
early pictures by directors who went on to bigger and better things is always a
fascinating exercise. In this case, the experience is both academically
rewarding and monumentally entertaining. They are a tremendous amount of fun to
watch, yet film aficionados will certainly study the pieces and place them in
perspective with the later, betterl-known masterpieces by these two iconic artists.Are there common thematic elements?Do we see glimpses of the later Stanley
Kubrick or Roman Polanski in these early efforts?Without a doubt, The Criterion Collection’s
new releases of The Killing and Cul-de-sac display the beginning of masterful
craftsmanship from two youthful filmmakers.
The Killing package is two
bangs for a buck—not only do you get a crisply clean, picture-perfect
remastered edition of The Killing,
but on a second disk you also get the same quality remastering of Kubrick’s
earlier independent film noir, Killer’s
Kiss.What a deal!I remember the first time I saw these movies;
there were a double bill at a New York revival house, so I’ll always think of
them as a pair.
Killer’s Kiss was Kubrick’s
second feature film, released by United Artists in 1955.Kubrick made it guerilla-style on the streets
of New York—he never had permits to film at city locations, so the director quickly
shot what he needed and then skedaddled.Kubrick directed it, produced it, wrote it, shot it, edited it, and did
the post-sync work.Then he went out and
marketed it himself and sold it to a distributor.That’s impressive independent filmmaking,
especially for the early 1950s, when indy productions were not what they became
in the seventies and beyond.As an
entertainment, Killer’s Kiss is unquestionably
B-movie material, but most film noirs are.The story is passable, but the picture is so well photographed that it
doesn’t matter.Watch for the surreal
fight amongst naked mannequins in the warehouse toward the movie’s climax—it’s
pure Kubrick.
The
Criterion Collection has upgraded and re-released their excellent edition of
Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Diabolique
(officially titled Les Diaboliques—The Devils—but it’s been known simply as
Diabolique in America since it’s 1955 release), issuing the film with a new digitally
restored edition on DVD and for the first time on Blu-ray. Based on a novel by
Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac, the pair of mystery/thriller writers who
provided Alfred Hitchcock with the basis for Vertigo,Diabolique was a
project that the master of suspense almost filmed himself. In fact, Hitchcock
had bought the rights, but Clouzot snatched them immediately after making The Wages of Fear in 1953. Needless to
say, Diabolique is just the sort of
thing Hitchcock would have done well—but Clouzot did it exceptionally well.
It’s
a truly suspenseful chiller that takes place at a children’s boarding school in
France. The place is run by a strict, mean headmaster and his timid, fragile
wife (with a heart problem, and she’s wonderfully played by the director’s
wife, Vera Clouzot). Added in the mix is a forceful teacher, played by Simone
Signoret, who conspires with the wife to kill off the headmaster so that they
can inherit the school and run it together.
Things
don’t go as they plan.
Clouzot
masterfully sucks the viewer in to an intricate plot in which nothing is really
as it seems. And, yes, there is a surprise ending. In fact, Diabolique was the first movie to warn
viewers not to reveal the ending, several years before Hitchcock stole the
marketing concept for Psycho.
The
new Criterion edition contains selected scene commentary by French film scholar
Kelley Conway. Extras include an excellent new video interview and analysis by
film critic and novelist Kim Newman, and a new video introduction by Serge
Bromberg, director of a Clouzot documentary (Inferno). While the Bromberg introduction suffers from, perhaps,
being lost in translation—nothing Bromberg says makes any sense (“Clouzot
places his film in a box and invites the audience to join him in that
box…â€)—the Newman video is insightful and explores the many layers of the film.
Bromberg also makes the claim that Clouzot is one of the top ten directors in
the history of cinema. While Clouzot was certainly a master of his craft and a
great storyteller, that claim is, well, a stretch. The enclosed booklet, always
a Criterion showpiece, features an essay by film critic Terrence Rafferty. The
black and white photography by Armand Thirard is more akin to the Universal
horror films of the 30s and the German expressionists of the 20s. Since the
transfer is absolutely gorgeous and crystal sharp, the picture is visually
breathtaking.
So,
turn out the lights, sit back, huddle with your loved one, and watch this
wonderfully frightening crime thriller—told by a master.
Director Samuel Fuller is a controversial figure in American cinema history.Audiences either love him or hate him, and there is usually no in-between.Incorporating a style that is often over-the-top, no matter what the genre or story might be, Fuller’s films are very much in your face.Outspoken, opinionated, and an auteur who wasn’t afraid to stand on a soapbox and shout to the masses what he felt was injustice, bigotry, or hypocrisy, Fuller belongs in the camp of directors who attempted social change but never achieved popular success doing it. Today he is revered as a cult figure by such filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Jim Jarmusch, and Tim Robbins (all who appear in the documentary, The Typewriter, the Rifle and the Movie Camera, a bonus feature on the Shock Corridor DVD).One can certainly see Fuller’s influences on the films of Scorsese and Tarantino.Scorsese admits “stealing†a sequence from an early Fuller war film, The Steel Helmet, and using it in Raging Bull.
The Criterion Collection has remastered and restored in high definition two of Fuller’s gems from the sixties—Shock Corridor (1963) and The Naked Kiss (1964) for DVD and Blu Ray.Anyone unfamiliar with the director’s work will do no better than to dive in to these powerful, dynamic dramas—or shall I say… melodramas.And that they are.In both pictures, the acting is heightened, the dialogue borders on the corny (some sequences are unintentionally funny today), and the subject matter is lurid.How these films were released in a time when the Production Code was still in effect is a mystery (they were issued “for mature audiences only,†several years before the ratings in America came about).
Once
again The Criterion Collection digs into master director Ingmar Bergman’s vault
and brings us his exquisite, enigmatic film from 1958, The Magician (originally titled The
Face in the UK; in fact, the Swedish title, Ansiktet, means “Faceâ€).
Set
sometime in the 1800s, the story concerns a traveling magic and medicine show
called “Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater.â€The troupe consists of Vogler (Max von Sydow), the mute magician of the
picture’s title, his “ward,†Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin in disguise, although it’s
no surprise that the character is a woman), Tubal (Ake Fridell), who acts as
manager/spokesman, and the inscrutable Granny (Naima Wifstrand), an old witch
who dabbles in love potions.Picked up
along the road is an alcoholic actor, Spegel (Bengt Ekerot, who was memorable
as Death in The Seventh Seal).
Before
the company can perform in a small Swedish village, they must first prove their
credibility for the Minister of Health, Dr. Vergerus (Gunnar Bjornstrand), the
chief of police, and a government official (Erland Josephson).All three men interrogate the company.Later, the troupe presents a private
performance in the official’s home.It
is the intention of the three townsmen to expose the magician as a fraud—but,
as only Bergman can do it, the tables are turned on the antagonists.
The Magician, in a way, is
Bergman’s Stardust Memories (Woody
Allen, 1980), in which the artist answers his critics.The Vogler character could be interpreted as
representing Bergman himself—an artist who hides behind a mask, creates
illusions for entertainment, but in reality is an insecure and doubtful
man.Bergman himself calls the film a
comedy, and indeed, there are many humorous moments.By making the three townsmen extreme
caricatures, Bergman targets the types of upper class detractors who gave him a
hard time during his formative years as a filmmaker.(As the Swedish playwright August Strindberg
once responded to one of his critics, “I’ll see you in my next play!â€)
While
not on the same level as some of Bergman’s masterworks such as The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, The Virgin
Spring, Persona, Cries and Whispers, or Fanny and Alexander, The Magician still ranks as a solid
3-star effort from the director.For
fans of the man’s work, it will provoke discussion and head-scratching analysis—and
at the same time manage to be entertaining.
Gunnar
Fischer’s gorgeous black and white photography is never better presented than
in Criterion’s high-definition transfer.Every frame is a work of art.Extras include a new visual essay on the film by Bergman authority Peter
Cowie, and two wonderful vintage interviews with Bergman—one in English!
There
simply aren’t enough Bergman movies available on DVD in the United States; hats
are off to Criterion for continuing to unearth them.Hopefully the company will soon release Face to Face, From the Life of the Marionettes, Summer with Monika, A Lesson
in Love, Secrets of Women… the
list goes on and on!
Except
for perhaps Stanley Kubrick, no other American filmmaker has generated more
mystique about himself than Terrence Malick.Famously reclusive, Malick never gives interviews or even allows his photograph
to be taken on the set of any film he directs.In four decades, he’s made only four pictures (although a fifth, The Tree of Life, appears to be finally
set for a release in 2011).
After
a twenty-year absence from filmmaking, the artist returned to Hollywood in 1998
with The Thin Red Line, an
existential, philosophical, and meditative war movie that only Terrence Malick
could make.Critically received, it was
nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director,
and Best Screenplay.It couldn’t have
been more different from Saving Private
Ryan, Steven Spielberg’s “other†war picture of the year and one that was
immensely more popular with theater-goers.Perhaps this was because Malick’s film is mostly about sight and sound
and mood and ideas—not story or characters.Terrence Malick is a cinematic poet, and anyone who doesn’t understand
this will surely have a difficult time with the director’s work.
The
Cadillac of DVD labels, The Criterion Collection, has released a superb two-disc
set in both DVD and Blu-Ray that showcases the beauty and wonderment of The Thin Red Line.All of Malick’s films are technically
gorgeous—Oscar nominee John Toll’s cinematography was arguably the more
deserving work in that year’s category—and the new DVD presents a newly
restored high-definition digital transfer supervised by both Toll and
Malick.Toll, production designer Jack
Fisk, and producer Grant Hill contribute an enlightening audio commentary to
the film.(And Malick himself delivers a
single message to the viewer via text on the screen—he suggests it be played loud.)
Directed
by Costa-Gavras, Z was a landmark
thriller from 1969, a political film that pointed to the kinds of pictures
Oliver Stone would make two decades later. It was the first film to be
nominated for both Best Picture and Best Foreign Film the same year (it won the
Oscar for the latter, as well as for its innovative, dynamic editing). The
mostly French production was filmed in Algeria, doubling as Greece—which at the
time would never have allowed the crew to film there.
Based
on true events that occurred in Greece in the early 60s, the story concerns the
government-backed assassination of a pacifist political candidate (played by
Yves Montand) and the subsequent investigation (led by charismatic Jean-Louis
Trintignant) that eventually brought down the chief of police, head of
security, and other government officials. The location is never named in the
film and it really doesn’t matter. Z is
about the corruption of a military regime in any country, and the film was yet another call for peace, justice,
and the end to wars. The movie struck a chord, was a box-office hit, and a
critical darling. It didn’t hurt that it was a nail-biter—a truly suspenseful
and riveting investigative-procedural drama—superbly directed and photographed
on a remarkably low budget.
The
folks at Criterion do their usual excellent job with this release—the
remastered transfer is especially clear and gorgeous, and the sound mix is
perfect. Extras include an enlightening contemporary interview with
Costa-Gavras about the background and making of the film, and vintage
documentaries about the true crime and the movie’s production. Kudos all
around.
Roman
Polanski wasted no time moving out of the more repressive artistic environment
of Iron Curtain Poland after the success of his first feature film (Knife in the Water, 1962—released in the
West in ’63).The director went to the
U.K., where he made his first English language picture, the 1965 classic horror
film Repulsion.It is surely one of the creepiest—if not the
scariest—movies ever made.A young
Catherine Deneuve stars as a mentally disturbed woman staying alone in her
sister’s apartment for the weekend.Needless to say, her imagination runs loose and gets the better of her.Before long, she’s murdering anyone who comes
to the door and dumping bodies in the bathtub.
Ultimately,
the subtext here is sexual child abuse.It’s not blatant, but the clues are there—Deneuve’s character is frigid,
shrinks away from any thought of sex or even intimacy with the man who is
supposed to be her boyfriend, and hallucinates being assaulted by a shadowy
older man who seems to invade her bedroom from a secret door in the wall.When released in 1965, the UK slammed it with
an “X†certificate. The U.S. ad campaign warned that the film was strictly for
mature audiences.They were correct in
doing so…this is heavy, scary stuff.Harrowing and frightening, Repulsion
established Polanski as a visionary director of the macabre; it’s easily
one of his best pictures.Some films
merely scare you—this one haunts you for a long time after viewing it.
Repulsion has been released by dubious studios
over the years on VHS and DVD, and none of these earlier editions are much
good.The video quality has always been
sub-par and the audio no better.The red
carpet label Criterion Collection finally acquired the rights and restored the
film to a crisp, clear, and magnificent high definition black and white
splendor (approved by Polanski)—it’s as if you’re seeing the picture for the
first time (it’s a must-purchase item for this reason alone).Additionally, the audio no longer sounds
muddy as it did on previous releases.In
short, Criterion’s new edition is near-perfect.Extras include a commentary by Polanski and Deneuve; a documentary on
the making of the film featuring interviews with the director and others; a
vintage documentary from 1964 on the set of the film; original theatrical
trailers; and a multi-page booklet.
Available
in both DVD and Blu-Ray.Highly
recommended!
.
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Woody
Allen once said Ingmar Bergman was the greatest filmmaker since the invention
of the cinema, and his favorite of the many masterpieces created by the auteur
is The Seventh Seal (originally
released in Sweden in 1957).While an
earlier edition of the film was released on DVD by The Criterion Collection
years ago, the company has seen fit to restore and re-release it in a special
2-disk set (both on Blu-Ray and DVD).In
short, the results are magnificent.
Extras
on the first disk are the previously mentioned filmed Afterword, a commentary
by Cowie, a narrated tribute to Bergman by Woody Allen, an audio interview with
Max von Sydow, and the theatrical trailer.The bonus disk is the same as Bergman
Island, also a separate release by Criterion (see below).
Any
serious film buff must have The Seventh
Seal in his or her collection.
Mishima—A Life in Four Chapters(The Criterion Collection, 2008)
Paul Schrader has always opined that Mishima—A Life in Four Chapters was his best film as a director,
and I have to agree.Originally released
in 1985 (and executive produced by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas), the
film is a fascinating bio-pic about controversial Japanese author/actor Yukio
Mishima.Schrader, a successful
screenwriter who has also had an interesting hit-and-miss career as a director,
co-wrote the film with his brother Leonard and filmed it in Japan with a
Japanese cast and crew.Ironically, the
film was banned in Japan
upon its release due to the controversial nature of Mishima’s infamously public
display of seppuku (suicide) in
1970.But despite Mishima’s questionable
act, there is no doubt that he was a formidable novelist, poet, and
artist—certainly one of his country’s greatest.Schrader’s film attempts to visualize Mishima’s life and work, and make
sense of his final days in different stylistic approaches that are beautiful to
behold and brilliant in conception.Philip Glass provides one of his best motion picture scores to date,
John Bailey’s cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and Eiko Ishioka’s
theatrical production designs are perfectly suited to Schrader’s
sensibilities.Whether or not you know
anything about Yukio Mishima, you will find the picture to be an extraordinary
cinematic experience.
Criterion Collection has done another outstanding job of
producing a new, restored high-definition digital transfer of the director’s
cut, which was supervised and approved by Schrader and Bailey.There are optional English and Japanese
voiceover narrations (by Roy Scheider and Ken Ogata, respectively—the U.S. theatrical
release only had the Scheider narration).There is also an audio commentary by Schrader and producer Alan
Poul.A second disk contains a wealth of
background and supplementary material, including the excellent 1985 BBC
documentary The Strange Case of Yuko
Mishima.There are vintage video
interviews with Mishima himself, new segments of Mishima’s biographers and
translators, Philip Glass, John Bailey, and other members of the film crew, and
more.Highly recommended—one of the best
DVD releases of the year so far.--Raymond Benson
The Last Emperor.(The
Criterion Collection, 2008).
Red-carpet DVD producer Criterion does it again with its
lavish, four-disk box set release of this Oscar winner from 1987.Directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, the film is
one of two films in Academy history that won all of its nominations in nine
categories (Gigi being the other;
only one other film won a higher number of nominations without a loss, and that
was The Lord of the Rings—the Return of
the King).Emperor is a magnificent and intelligent epic about Pu Yi, the last
reigning emperor of Imperial China.While full of spectacle on a grand scale, the picture also manages to be
an intimate human drama about a young man trapped by historical events out of
his control.After all, this was a
person who became the emperor of a country at the age of three.Of particular historical cinematic importance
is the fact that the film was the first commercial picture to be shot within Beijing’s Forbidden City.Starring John Lone and Joan Chen as the
emperor and empress, and featuring a marvelous supporting turn by Peter O’Toole
as Pu Yi’s British tutor, the film is clearly Bertolucci’s masterpiece and
arguably one of the best films of the 1980s.It richly deserved every award bestowed upon it.
Criterion has restored the theatrical version (at 165
minutes) in a beautiful, high-definition digital transfer, supervised and
approved by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.There is also an audio commentary by Bertolucci, producer Jeremy Thomas,
screenwriter Mark Peploe, and co-composer/actor Ryuichi Sakamoto.
A second disk features a restored high-definition digital
transfer of the 218 minute ‘director’s cut’ televised version (that also played
briefly in the theaters in the 1990s).This version delves deeper into Pu Yi’s incarceration at the
“reconditioning†camp during the 1950s, as well as more scenes in the early Forbidden City sections.
Disks three and four are loaded with supplements.There are several lengthy documentaries, both
vintage and contemporary, about the making of the film.The crown jewel is the feature originally
broadcast on BBC television’s The South
Bank Show.A new and entertaining
interview with co-composer David Byrne is also a highlight.
The Last Emperor
has often been called “the last great epic.â€While this contention is arguable, Criterion’s presentation of this
magnificent motion picture certainly goes a long way toward proving it.--Raymond Benson
