The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter February 2024
Warriors come out in 4K-yay…
The 4K format continues to surprise us in the ways it can enhance a film’s ability to enthrall and entertain a viewer. Walter Hill’s 1979 Paramount cult classic, The Warriors, was superbly edited by Billy Weber, and it is that editing that is sharpened to razor precision on the Paramount Arrow Video two-platter 4K UHD Blu-ray release (UPC#760137141488, $60). The film’s cinematography, by Andrew Laszlo, has a gritty realism that is softened by the glow of the film’s lighting. Set entirely over the course of a single night and early the following morning, a handful of shots are grainy, but the film’s transfer is very careful in its precision so that the original image is preserved without distortion. Paramount and Arrow have also released a standard two-platter Blu-ray (UPC#760137141495, $50), and the cinematography is accurately replicated there. The film, a quasi-fantasy about a street gang from one end of New York City that must make it back to their home from the other end with every other gang in the city looking to waste them, effectively blended the griminess of the film’s world (it was as if New York’s efforts to pull itself back from economic disaster in the early Seventies had failed) with the ever-so-subtle neon and soft fluorescents that convey its dream and nightmare milieu. Hence, the standard Blu-ray is perfectly acceptable (the color detail in the crowd scenes near the beginning is fantastic even on the standard release), but the reason the film has endured is that its fantasy absurdities are backed up by solid technical filmmaking, and this applies as much to the editing as it does to Hill’s original direction. Every scene in the film is exhilarating because of the mix and pace of the shots, and it is those individual discoveries, as one shot flips to the next, that cut right to the viewer’s subconscious on the 4K playback. From the gradual exposition of each environment, to the emotions of the characters (and the cast’s wonderful performances) and to the frantic action of the fight scenes, it is the crispness with which the 93-minute feature plays out on 4K that makes an old, out-of-date and likely over-watched movie not only fresh, but worth watching many times again.
We reviewed Paramount’s Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD release in Aug 06. That release presented both the theatrical version of the film and an alternate presentation, and it is those two versions that are split onto the two platters of the two releases. At the time, Paramount was basically trying to accelerate the film’s growing reputation as a cult favorite, and the additions to the film in what is identified on the Arrow releases as the 2005 Alternate Version play to that aspect of its popularity. Running 94 minutes, there are a number of graphic art insertions, like comic book panels, and an introduction explaining the film’s roots in ancient Greek literature. The theatrical version remains the preferable presentation format, but, as usual, if there is an excuse to watch a beloved movie more times, why not take advantage of it? Colors and shadows are better detailed on the new releases in comparison to the DVD.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The sound on both standard versions defaults to the original mono track, but there is an alternate Dolby Atmos track that basically boosts an envelopment of the film’s environment without creating any particular distortions or directional distractions. There are optional English subtitles. Both Alternate Versions do not have the mono track, and only have a standard stereo and a 5.1-channel DTS track. The theatrical version also has an alternate audio track isolating the awesome late Seventies Barry De Vorzon musical score in 5.1 DTS. Michael Beck, Deborah Van Valkenburgh, James Remar, Dorsey Wright, Brian Taylor, David Harris and David Patrick Kelly star. Mercedes Ruehl also has a small but memorable part.
Both the standard BD and the 4K release come with the same special features. The Alternate Version is accompanied only by a minute-long introduction from Hill that was shot in 2005. In addition to the 63 minutes of excellent retrospective pieces that were included on the DVD, the theatrical version comes with a trailer; an 8-minute montage of memorabilia, production, promotional stills and production photos; a 16-minute interview with Hill from 2023 (“Nothing has stuck with me more than The Warriors.”); an 84-minute podcast discussion about the film that doesn’t provide too much in the way of fresh insights but reinforces an understanding of the film’s strengths and how those strengths were achieved; a pleasing 8-minute interview with Weber from 2023 talking about the challenges he faced and how he approached various scenes; a great 9-minute interview with costume designer Bobbi Mannix (gang member extras would walk onto the shoot with their own clothes, but leave with the ‘costume’ clothing) and an additional 6-minute snapshot montage of her notebooks, drawings and the clothing; an interesting 10-minute then-and-now 2023 look at the Coney Island locations used in the film with Coney Island historian Adam Rinn; and an excellent 25-minute piece on the film’s musical score.
Finally, there is a very good commentary track by Hill expert Walter Chaw, who approaches the entire film from Hill’s perspective, including his work with the cast and crew as well as the movie’s production history. When he goes over the backgrounds of the cast members, for example, it is to explain why Hill hired them, and then how they went on to work with Hill in later features, mentioning only in passing other work they have done. Nevertheless, his enthusiasm for the film, his understanding of its intricate dynamics, and his appreciation of Hill’s artistry are rewarding. “I want to note here not only the train that provides refuge for them for a while, but the energy of these sequences. There’s so much life here. There’s so much joy of being young in this movie. You remember what it was like to run all day? Where every romance was a great romance? Where every offense was the worst thing that anyone had ever said? Everything was the most ‘thing’ that had ever happened because for you, it was true. [Hill’s] movies are about what it means to be young. A lot lingers about it, but for me, nothing so much as the exhilaration of its youth—its hellish lows and its unimaginable highs. It functions, I think, as an old Hollywood romance. It functions as an explanation of what I think you could call Hill’s social progressiveness, his belief in and maybe even fixation on masculinity as overwhelming any nuance of cultural or racial difference. And Hill is capable of kindling in old men, like me, that pang of longing and regret and melancholy for the age of romance and revolution, and how I’ve let it pass me by.”
Modern Tomorrow
A film more modern than most movies being made today, Robert Wise’s 1959 Odds against Tomorrow has been released by MGM and Kino Lorber Incorporated as a KL Studio Classics title (UPC#738329265090, $25). Abraham Polonsky wrote the script for the United Artists production about the preparations and execution of a bank robbery, which has an impressive cast, including Harry Belafonte, Robert Ryan, Ed Begley, Shelley Winters and Gloria Grahame. Before he became well known, Wayne Rogers has a small but recognizable part and Cicely Tyson can also be spotted. Shot in black-and-white and letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, the film makes excellent use of its locations in New York City and upstate, and is accompanied by a captivating John Lewis jazz score. The performances are uniformly outstanding, and it is on the strength of those dramatic portraits that the film systematically works its way to a wonderful, era-appropriate apocalyptic finale. Begley’s character is the leader of the group, persuading the other two men to join in his plan. Belafonte’s character is a musician in hock for gambling debts. Ryan’s character is an unabashed racist and has no compunction expressing his opinions, yet his scenes with the two female characters—one he is living with (this is not a movie where such couples slept in separate beds) and the other a neighbor—are incredibly sensitive and touching. As the stresses escalate and emotions are bared, regardless of whether you feel for Belafonte’s character or can at least understand the dogmatic animosity of Ryan’s character, it is Begley’s character who elicits the most sympathy, continually afraid that his painstaking planning is going to be upended by, well, the inherent flaws of American society.
As for Wise, not only does he guide the performances masterfully, but every obtuse camera angle and seemingly street-grabbed moment compiles the suspense, tension and even romance in the 96-minute feature with compelling precision. He had the ironic misfortune, in the second half of his career, to direct an enormous boxoffice and popular culture success, and it undercut his critical standing—the knives already out because of his history with The Magnificent Ambersons—but Odd against Tomorrow is proof positive that he belongs in the pantheon of American film directors. He was one of the best.
The source material has some speckling and occasional stray vertical lines, but the tone of the film is such that the flaws almost add to the generally grimy mood. Otherwise, contrasts are very sharp and the image is finely detailed. The monophonic sound is invitingly strong and there are optional English subtitles, along with a trailer, an excellent 49-minute interview with Belafonte about the film (even he says Wise was especially proud of what had been accomplished in it), his life and race relations in America, shot in front of an audience in 2009, and a similar interview from 2007 with co-star Kim Hamilton (who plays the wife of Belafonte’s character) running 19 minutes, talking about the film and her career (and her marriage to Werner Klemperer). Film historian Alan K. Rode supplies a reasonably good commentary track, going over why the film is an exceptional accomplishment, breaking down some of the sequences and providing thorough profiles of Belafonte, Ryan and Polonsky. He also talks about Begley, Winters and Grahame, but has surprisingly little to say about Wise.
***
Not as good as Odds against Tomorrow, the 1961 independent thriller distributed by Universal and released on Blu-ray by Universal and The Criterion Collection, Blast of Silence (UPC715515290517, $40), is good enough to accompany it on an ideally atmospheric double bill. Shot in black-and-white on location in New York City, the film follows a hitman played by director Allen Baron as he waits over the Christmas holidays (yep, it’s a Christmas movie) for a chance to kill a mobster. Much of the film was shot without sound and has an elaborate and omniscient voiceover narration by Lionel Stander that embellishes the killer’s psychological conflicts while he explains the steps being taken to ambush the victim. The narration was written by Waldo Salt, whose Midnight Cowboy script provided the same feelings of wintry isolation and despondency. The present may seem dreary, but the past, with its retro décor, always looks drearier, and that is the film’s primary appeal. Running just 77 minutes, the story provides a straightforward momentum to hold a viewer’s attention while the atmosphere revels in the loneliness and emptiness of the protagonist’s seedy surroundings. Like Odds against Tomorrow, there is an engaging jazz score by Meyer Kupferman that works as an excellent counterpoint to the destitute locations, while underscoring the idea that there is beauty and harmony even in the decorations of despair.
The picture is offered both letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and in a squared full screen format. The letterboxing adds a bit to the sides of the image and masks picture information off the top and bottom. While the letterboxing is better suited as a match to Odds against Tomorrow, the full screen version offers a greater alignment with the film’s era and pushes the viewer further into the past it has so effectively captured. The monophonic sound is reasonably strong and there are optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer and a 5-minute montage of snapshots taken during the shoot, there is an excellent 60-minute piece with Baron from 1990, visiting the film’s former locations as he talks about the production, how he ended up playing the lead (Peter Falk dropped out) and the path his career has followed since the film’s release. Although he identifies each location clearly, there is also an 11-minute then-and-now collection of photos of the locations taken in 2008 that feature detailed historical facts about each site.
French paranoia thrillers
Vincent Van Gogh walks into a wheat field and sets up his easel, yet what he paints isn’t reality but a deliberate exaggeration of his emotional response to what he is seeing, hearing and feeling that is far more compelling than what any photograph of the scene could render. For ages, storytellers have taken real events and altered them to create enduring fantasies. What is especially fascinating is living through such an event and then watching the storytellers grab hold of it and begin altering its components to create compelling, perpetual myths. American presidents James Garfield and William McKinley were assassinated and nothing came of it. Abraham Lincoln was murdered and his life was mythologized because of the timing of his death, but the murder itself was generally accepted as having happened the way it happened. John F. Kennedy’s death, on the other hand, has become an amazing cauldron of mythological invention. Part of that is because of how it coincided with advances in information technology, not just because facts and non-facts could be disseminated more efficiently than in the past, but because that technology presents a ‘front’ behind which is an unseeable force, something people subconsciously want to understand and equate with authority. Following the lead of novels, storytellers in film have used the Kennedy assassination in the same way that Van Gogh used the cornfield, as a starting point of expression and a search for greater emotional truths. From films based partially on history, such as JFK, to movies that are entirely fictional, such as The Parallax View, there looms as an unseen villain, an all-powerful entity capable of controlling if not our actions, then the actions of everyone around us. Despite the despair that such films embrace, they still make for compelling entertainment because, like the mythmakers of old, the filmmakers tap into a subconscious desire for authority and, counterintuitively, the affirmation of existence that such authority provides. In effect, Zeus has been replaced by the military-industrial complex (a word coined by Kennedy’s immediate predecessor), but the power of the tale remains.
Hence, there is Henri Verneuil’s engrossing 1979 Gaumont thriller, I… For Icarus, which has been released as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray by Gaumont and Kino Lorber Incorporated (UPC#738329265113, $30). We will not spoil things but the mere casting of the primary star in the film, Yves Montand, makes its conclusion entirely predictable. Still, despite its inevitabilities or, for that matter, its outright ludicrous turns of plot, it remains a wholly entertaining and involving drama precisely because it is deliberately patterning itself after—and then elaborating upon—the JFK assassination. Set in a make-believe country that has an American-like flag but people speak French and have French payphones, the president, running for a second term, is assassinated by three rifle shots during a campaign visit. A commission with an impressive array of government officials is convened and after an extensive compilation of evidence, their determination is that a single rifleman, acting alone, shot the president from a rooftop skyscraper balcony. Montand’s character is a prosecutor and member of the commission who disagrees with their findings…so he is given carte blanche to reopen the investigation, and he immediately starts looking at very obvious evidence that was entirely ignored the first time through. No matter. As he and his team systematically work their way from one revelation or witness to the next, the film is fully entertaining—but then something unexpected happens. At a point where the excitement in a regular movie would be ramping up to popcorn-missing-your-mouth levels, Montand’s character visits the psychology department of a university and is treated to a demonstration of the famous—maybe it wasn’t as famous in 1979—psychological test were the person being tested believes he is inflicting pain upon another person, but is persuaded by the parameters of the test to continue inflicting the pain, and even increase it. The turn does not stop the movie dead, however. Instead, it casts everything in an entirely different perspective, so that a viewer can indeed step back and accept the ludicrous story details as part of the entertainment because the film, which then proceeds to conclude just as one expects it to conclude, is not about the myth itself, but about mythmaking and why its authoritarianism is so universal.
Oh, and there is also a fantastic Ennio Morricone musical score. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1, the color transfer has a vivid immediacy that makes some sequences look more like high definition video than film. Overall, the image quality is excellent. The monophonic sound is also strong and delivers Morricone’s music effectively. The film is in French with optional English subtitles, and comes with a trailer.
Film historian Samm Deighan and assassination buff Rob Skvarla supply a fairly rewarding commentary track. They begin by diving straight into the movie’s plot and its relationship to the theories behind the Kennedy assassination, but after they go through that a while, they gradually expand to focus more on the social history of Europe (“The more times you watch this film and the more you learn about French history, you start to see all these threads tying this back to the Algerian War and back to World War II.”) and America in the Sixties and Seventies, and how the movie reflects the widespread pessimism that the assassinations in the Sixties instilled and how it eventually led to the radical uprisings in the Seventies, even pointing out that this film sits at a sort of halfway point between the paranoid assassination thrillers that came out in America in the Seventies and the police conspiracy thrillers—which were just as pessimistic—that came out of Italy in the same era.
Verneuil’s 1982 Mille Milliards de Dollars (it’s the weird French way of saying ‘a trillion dollars’) is a more audience-pleasing journey into the same world of political paranoia, and has also been released by Gaumont and Kino as another KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329265120, $30). Patrick Dewaere is a journalist (for a newspaper called ‘La Tribune’—viewers will be excused for momentarily thinking the movie is set in Los Angeles rather than Paris) who gets a tip about a wealthy executive laundering money through the sale of an office building (there are a number of story points in the film that remain relevant to the present day). As he digs deeper, he discovers that a multinational conglomerate is trying to take over the executive’s company, and soon after that there is a suspicious death. Maybe Verneuil got the fantasies out of his system with I… For Icarus, because the film is much more level headed and believable as it weaves its conspiratorial suspense, and there is even a happy ending (like Three Days of the Condor), although things look bleak for the hero until the finale arrives, and if you just got finished watching the other movie, you are cringing the whole time at what might happen to him. Running 131 minutes, the film is again systematic as the hero works his way through the leads he gathers and the various (nicely composed) characters he meets, building his story. The movie is also quite instructive in deconstructing how multinational organizations work—in one example, the hero learns that the company buys raw materials at a low price in Hong Kong, importing them to Switzerland, and then raises the price substantially before selling them again to its own sister company in France, because the Swiss tax breaks for the transaction are greater than the loss in profit that the French company experiences from the deal—and exploring the inherent ‘neutrality’ of such corporations in worldwide military conflicts. Mel Ferrer has a pleasing turn as the scary head of the conglomerate, and Jean Moreau and Anny Duperey also have enjoyable extended cameo parts as fragile wives, with Michel Auclair, Caroline Cellier and Charles Denner.
Again letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1, the color transfer is not quite as fantastic as the color transfer on Icarus, but it is otherwise excellent, with bright, fresh hues and accurate fleshtones. There is another terrific musical score, this time by Philippe Sarde, seeming to react to the emotions of a scene on a piano keyboard as other instruments fill in behind him. The monophonic sound is bright and clear, and there are optional English subtitles, along with a trailer. Deighan supplies another commentary, this time on her own, and she uses it to fill in the gaps she left out of the talk on the other feature, supplying a detailed summary of Verneuil’s career and exploring her treatise on the relationship between postwar politics and crime films more elaborately, while also talking about the other cast and crew members—both films had the same cinematographer, Jean-Louis Picavet, which is another reason they play so well as a double bill—and other aspects of the film’s artistry. At one point she seems to imply that Costa-Gavras directed Battle for Algiers rather than Gillo Pontecorvo, but given how rewarding and extensively knowledgeable her talk is as a whole, we can let it slide.
Irishman vs. submarine
Although its popularity may have been impacted by its bittersweet ending, Peter Yates’ 1971 World War II action drama, Murphy’s War, is a superb film, featuring a commanding performance by Peter O’Toole as the title character. Shot in Venezuela, the film is set on the Orinoco River, where O’Toole’s character, an Irish airplane mechanic, washes ashore after his ship is sunk by a German submarine and the rest of the crew is massacred in the water. The submarine has gone up river to perform repairs and O’Toole’s character, when he recovers, is bent upon revenge. Philippe Noiret is a local merchant and Sian Phillips is the Quaker missionary doctor who nurses O’Toole’s character back to health. Of course, the film immediately brings to mind such features such as The African Queen, Heaven Knows Mr. Allison, Father Goose and Shout at the Devil, but what sets it apart is its single-mindedness. There is, thank heaven, no scene where O’Toole’s character pauses to get drunk, and despite Phillips’ character’s continual urging that he take his quinine pills, which he constantly ignores, he never succumbs to malaria. Instead, he works to devise one method to take out the submarine, and when that backfires, he immediately begins another. The film runs 107 minutes. While Phillips’ character espouses a sensible, conscientious attitude, she otherwise has a minimal part, which she fills with the same moving effectiveness that the other performers fill their roles. Yates and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe get the most out of their fantastic locations, and they also get the most out of O’Toole, often just pushing in on his face and letting him do everything else. There are some marvelous action scenes, but in between those, there is just O’Toole, bringing a vivid character to life and engaging the viewer in that character’s adventures.
The Paramount production has been released on Blu-ray by Paramount and Arrow Video (UPC#760137142447, $40). The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer is beautiful and some of the location shots are heart stopping. And yet, the color transfer is so nice that the brief but necessary rear projection inserts where one must see O’Toole instead of his stunt double are not disorienting, even though they are fairly well delineated by the change in tone, because the colors remain so strong. The monophonic sound also has a very strong presence, lending itself not only to John Barry and Ken Thorne’s musical score, but to the deep, richly textured sounds of old boat engines. We reviewed a Paramount DVD in Apr 05, which was passable, but had wear, lighter colors and a less present audio. Along with a trailer and small collection of promotional photos in still frame, there is a very good 20-minute history of the production and its various problems; a 17-minute piece that goes over the reasons the film came up short at the boxoffice and with some critics; an informative 31-minute interview with assistant director John Glen about a number of production details (as well as how Yates had landed Bullitt); and another engaging 17-minute interview with focus puller Robin Vidgeon, sharing stories about the production, working with Slocombe and life in the wilds of Venezuela.
Italian costume drama
Marcello Mastroianni stars in the lovely period drama set in the early Nineteenth Century, Allonsanfàn, a 1974 Paolo and Vittorio Taviani feature released on Blu-ray by Radiance (UPC#760137144946, $40). Mastroianni plays an aristocrat who has become involved with a group of his peers, wishing to be revolutionaries and spark a peasant uprising. As they travel down the length of Italy attempting to buy arms and otherwise create a movement, the peasants generally ignore them. Mastroianni’s character quickly decides that he should run off with the money that has been collected and travel to America with whatever woman he is currently sleeping with instead, but every plan he makes to do that is upended by a chance encounter with one or more of his compatriots. Lee Massari and Mimsy Farmer co-star. The use of genuine locations for the period setting is consistently captivating, thanks to Giuseppe Ruzzolini’s lovely cinematography. The film also features a sporadically applied but magnificent Ennio Morricone musical score. Running 112 minutes, the film is a viable adventure tale. The story is somewhat episodic, and once you get the gist of it you know it is not going to end well, but it also has a wry sense of humor—there are dance numbers, only some of which are imaginary—aided immeasurably by Mastroianni’s exquisite performance, which enables the film to explore the foolishness of men with noble ideas while also bringing life and empathy to individuals caught up in unending foibles.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1. Contrasts are a bit weak at times, and Ruzzolini does not shy away from intense granularity here and there, but overall the hues are accurate and the image is nicely detailed. The monophonic sound is strong enough to withstanding raising the volume to undue heights for the sake of the music. The film is in Italian with optional English subtitles. Along with a trailer, there is a 57-minute audio-only discussion (with a black screen and optional English subtitles) among several Italian filmmakers from 1966 about film, ideology and social responsibility. One of the Taviani brothers is there (the subtitles only identify the surnames of the speakers), although it appears the other is not, and Dino Risi and Florestano Vancini appear to be there, too. The talk will be interesting to some (they anticipate the advantages of home video and how it might relate to a more ‘private’ cinema experience—“We’re veering into science-fiction.”), but there are a lot of redundant opinions batted back and forth, and others may find it too filled with generalities and dogma to be worthwhile.
On the other hand, film expert Michel Brooke supplies an excellent commentary track, thoroughly going over the history of the film and the careers of the Taviani brothers (and how they share their directing responsibilities), expertly dissecting the narrative and the movie’s individual components (“If we interpret this choreography as two steps forward and one step back, the saltarello neatly serves as a metaphor for the typical course of left wing political progress, very much exemplified by this entire film, as well as the Tavianis’ own personal experience.”), and continually entertaining the listener with insights and observations. The film’s title is derived from the name of one of the secondary characters, which itself comes from the first two words in the lyrics of the La Marseillaise, which Brooke gleefully points out is the, “Ridiculously catchy French national anthem,” going on to provide a quick history of it, as well, and pointing out that those two words, ‘Arise, children,’ readily describes the characters in the film and the impulses the Tavianis follow in their filmmaking.
Kill the bad guys
About as far away from the Home Depot in the first film as you can get, The Equalizer3 is set on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, south of Naples, where the hero, played by Denzel Washington, recuperating from a bullet wound, settles into a small town nestled in the rocks next to the sea, only to learn that organized crime (the ‘Camorra,’ according to the subtitles) is putting pressure on the locals because it is a nice spot for a casino. Dakota Fanning is a CIA operative that he enlists for assistance. And, the Antoine Fuqua film is pretty much perfect. Running a brisk 109 minutes, it is everything you could want in an action film, with the addition of the Italian locations making all of the alteration that is necessary to freshen the experience after the film’s two predecessors. We recently reviewed the outstanding action series, Reacher (Feb 23), but if you don’t have the hours and you want the same fix—a hero with incredible skills is minding his own business, but has to step in when bad guys are picking on innocent people—the film delivers it all, with gorgeous Italian locations to boot.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The color transfer is smooth and details are clear in the darker portions of the image. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is terrific, with a very nice bass that kicks in to keep your adrenaline up and plenty of good separation effects. The film is in English, but there are passages in Italian that are automatically supported by English subtitling. There are also optional English subtitles for everything, French and Spanish subtitles, an audio track that describes the action (“Marco runs to the van. The driver lies against the airbag with a bloody temple. Marco gazes at the wreckage. In a close view, a man flips a wine bottle in his hand, while walking. He slams the bottle into Viking’s face, knocking him over. He tosses the bottle aside. Marco opens his switchblade. McCall emerges from the darkness with arms upraised. Marco swings his blade at him. McCall grabs his arm and displaces it. He forces Marco to stab himself multiple times in the chest. He takes the blade and thrusts it into Marco’s neck.”), a French audio track, a French audio track that describes the action, a Spanish audio track, an entertaining Jacob Banks karaoke music video, a trailer and 30 minutes of enjoyable promotional featurettes, particularly the piece about the town, Atrani, where much of the film was shot.
No There there
A 1983 Paramount 3D film, The Man Who Wasn’t There, has been released by Paramount, 3-D Film Archive and Kino Lorber Incorporated as a KL Studio Classics 3D Blu-ray (UPC#738329265175, $30) in standard 3D format, with the now common additional red/blue shift 3D format for fans who do not own a 3D viewing system. A single pair of red/blue glasses is included with the platter. As usual, the red/blue process suppresses the film’s other colors, so such a presentation comes across as fairly monochromatic (yellows and greens are vaguely discernible). The colors on the standard 3D delivery, however, are excellent, with bright hues and accurate fleshtones, as is the 2D version, which is included as well (not on the initial menu screen, but when you select the standard 3D choice). For all three, the source material is sharp and has no wear, and the presentation is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The monophonic sound is strong and clear, and there are optional English subtitles.
As for the 111-minute film, it is generally clownish and juvenile. Much of it was shot in Washington D.C., so there are a few tourist spots that are replicated in 3D. On the whole, there are only a handful of moments that really emphasize the 3D effects, although the dimensional process is so effective that standard shots of car interiors, girls’ shower rooms (the film does have a fair amount of nudity), stairwells and so on convey enough virtual perspective that enthusiasts should be satisfied. Steve Guttenberg is a State Department assistant about to be married, who is handed vials of an invisibility formula by a dying agent, asking that they be delivered to a specific contact. With the help of an enthusiastic maid of honor, played by Lisa Langlois, who appears to be far more enamored with him than his actual fiancée, the two run around D.C. trying to find the contact and avoid the bumbling foreign agents who want to grab them. In order to get out of jams, they start sampling the vials, but of course, they also have to be naked for it to be effective. Jeffrey Tambour, Art Hindle and William Forsythe co-star. Directed without sophistication or even maturity by Bruce Malmuth, the film has too much slapstick to be taken seriously and too little actual comedy to be funny. As the painfully accurate 3D trailer that has been included puts it, “Soon to disappear from a theater near you!”
3D movie experts Paul Corupe and Jason Pichonsky supply a commentary track, explaining the background of the film’s production (Paramount wanted to piggyback onto the brief enthusiasm for 3D that arose in the early Eighties) and how some of the effects were achieved, going over Guttenberg’s career, discussing the history of 3D movies and movies about invisibility and so on. They also digress from time to time on no more than vaguely related topics, and while we would take issue with their assessment of the film’s climactic plot revelation, which we feel is pretty much the only original and nicely logical twist in the entire script (and they don’t, saying that critics at the time weren’t happy about it, either), for the most part we would concur with their opinion of the film as a whole. “It’s kind of juvenile. It has moments to not be juvenile and it seems to always want to go for something a little more juvenile.”
The Fellini binge box
The career of the great Italian film director, Federico Fellini, can be divided into three very distinctive phases. The first was his neorealist phase, from 1950 to 1957, as he conformed to the general parameters of the other great Italian filmmakers working at the time, emphasizing stories about working class characters in genuine environments, while bringing a gentle sense of humor and a pronounced tenderness to his dramas. His wife, Giulietta Masina, appears in each of these movies except one. The second was his superstar phase, from 1960 to 1978, as he shifted to working almost entirely at Rome’s Cinecittà studios, making one international blockbuster hit after another while his name became synonymous not only with Italian movies but with foreign films as a whole. The final phase, from 1980 to 1990, came with the 1979 death of his composer, Nino Rota, who had scored every movie after the first one. Although the orchestrators, many of whom were prodigious composers in their own right, and who had worked closely with Rota before, took over his duties, and in some cases even utilized Rota’s compositions, the collaborative magic was gone. Fellini still made some very fine films during this timeframe, but his weakest movies also come from this period.
The Criterion Collection does not have the rights to every one of Fellini’s twenty-one movies, but they do have the rights to all of his features from the first phase and many from the second phase, as well as a couple from the final phase, and those fourteen films have been gathered in a tantalizing Blu-ray boxed set—at 12 inches by 11.5 inches, it is actually more like an album than anything else—Essential Fellini (UPC#715515252515, $250). The fifteen platters also have oodles of supplements, and
Inside: Fellini continues, Garbo talks, Bankhead rocks, cheap horror and much more!
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