The DVD-Laser Disc Newsletter July 2023
4K scares
In the past, when people would ask us what the ‘scariest’ movie was that we had ever seen, we would reply that it was Evil Dead. Once home video took over and you could watch movies hundreds of times, nothing was really scary anymore, but we could still recall how we felt the first time we saw the film, which had left us even more unnerved than The Exorcist with its isolated atmosphere and nightmarish sense that there was nothing, really, which could stop the essentially invisible entities from possessing you or possessing the things around you. That, and the cabin’s cellar, which reminded us of our grandmother’s very scary cellar, where there was also a dirt floor. Evil Dead was so horrific that the filmmakers who created it (Sam Raimi and star Bruce Campbell) had nowhere to go for their sequels except to comedy. Yes, the comedy was terrific, but the scares had evaporated.
In terms of audiences, that was several generations ago. However basic it had been, Evil Dead was so good that its essential popularity endured—maybe not parents handing the film down to their children the way we did, but older siblings or uncles treating their younger siblings or the children of their younger siblings to the movie when more prudent parental figures were not around—and so at last, a film company (or, rather, a company within a company, which is, after all, rather like demonic possession) that specializes in horror, New Line Cinema, wrangled the rights from Raimi and Campbell to have another go, the result being a 2023 production released as a two-platter WB SDS Studio Distribution Services 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Evil Dead Rise (UPC#883929806812, $45).
The film, which was directed by Lee Cronin and runs 96 minutes, kind of gets off on the wrong foot. It begins, using a meta-drone shot (the drone soon become a source of gore), with a prolog set in a picturesque A-frame lakeside wood cabin, where familiar Evil Dead mayhem ensues, followed by a title card that declares, “One Day Earlier” (see Muna Moto on page 6). The bulk of the film is then set in a condemned apartment building (on the thirteenth floor, natch), with the prolog left completely unexplained until the very last scene. Hence, rather that settling in with the story at hand, part of you is agitating for much of the film, wondering how everybody is going to get to that cabin and why you don’t recognize any of the players from the first scene. If you let that go and just enjoy the ongoing gore, you will have a much better time.
We shouldn’t say that the film begins with its prolog, however, since it actually begins with what is now rarely glimpsed on home video, an MPAA card declaring the film is rated ‘R.’ Don’t be fooled by this, however. This film is designed specifically to invite and then scare the pants off of unsuspecting youngsters who are not yet jaded by horror film traditions and clever applications of gore effects. There are five primary characters and three of them are below the drinking age. The other two—their mother and her sister—are not that much older. Dad left a while ago. Not only is it a stormy night, but there is an earthquake, which opens up a forgotten vault in the apartment building’s basement, where one of the kids finds the evil book (technically, it is a less elaborate version than the original, but hoary enough that you get the idea) and thinks it is sufficiently interesting to bring back up to his room. Not a wise idea.
The gore effects are suitably creative, and the kids are not spared. This is where the 4K comes into play. The presentation of the film on the standard Blu-ray included in the set is fine, with sharp images regardless of how dark it gets, and a great Dolby Atmos surround mix that has noises coming at you every which way. But the 4K presentation is even better. From the film’s opening moments, the sounds are meticulous, relentless and spatially fluid. The image is so sharp that every special effect looks valid, and the more grotesque the movie becomes, the more exciting it becomes. If you’re a jaded horror fan, the film is a great thrill ride. The effects are not exaggerated to a point of humor—the film is the least funny of any Evil Dead program that has appeared after the original—but they are creative enough to be legitimately amusing if you are so inclined. Now, if you happen to qualify for that MPAA restriction, and you sneak the 4K Blu-ray out one night while the ’rents are out—or if the babysitter brought it with her and doesn’t care—there is just enough added precision in the 4K presentation to leave your psyche permanently scarred. It may not have the purity of the original Evil Dead, but Evil Dead Rises is what a horror movie is supposed to be, and in 4K, with the movie’s modern filmmaking tricks unleashed in full force, the innocent will be defenseless.
The picture is grandly letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. There is an audio track that describes the action (“Bridget slithers down the counter and crawls on her hands and knees towards Beth. Beth crabwalks backwards and kicks the teen into the dishwasher that knocks a cheese grater at her. Bridget snatches the four-sided box grater from the air as Beth tries to crawl off, and scrapes it across the back of her calf. Beth sees the spatula, and slugs the teen across the face with it. Unfazed, Bridget turns back toward her with a blood-dripping grin.”), alternate French and Spanish audio tracks and six subtitling tracks including English. Along with those audio choices, the 4K presentation has an additional German track, a track that describes the action in German and twelve subtitling options, including English.
4K laughs
Regardless of a director’s timing or wacky production designs or whatever, the best and most enduring humor in any comedy comes from the performances. There is something so rich and all-encompassing about the human presence that it can never be entirely dissected or copied. You may not laugh the second time you hear a joke’s punchline, but watching a comedian deliver the same joke can make you laugh over and over. Often times, a fan will play a comedy until its minutia becomes tiring, but one need take a break for only a while and it will become fresh again, and funny again. That is the essence of the appeal of Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy comedy, Time Bandits. Its ensemble cast delivers so many amusing and even riotously funny moments that the film never really becomes tiresome. It runs a challenging 115 minutes, and its second half has an entirely different premise than its first half, so that the conclusion can start to feel prolonged after an initial dozen viewings or so. But put it away for a bit and then put it on again, and the actors will seem even funnier than they did before.
This is especially true if the film has undergone some sort of general improvement, such as The Criterion Collection releasing Time Bandits in 4K format (UPC#715515284615, $50). Their original Blu-ray release (Jan 15), which is also included in the two-platter set, looked and sounded terrific to begin with, so there is not that much room for improvement. But it doesn’t matter. Any little tweak—a sharper detail, a richer color, a smoother transition—enables your subconscious to concentrate all the more on what is appealing about the film (about a young boy, played by Craig Warnock, who is whisked through time and space after a group of diminutive bandits drop into his bedroom through a wormhole). For example, we’ve always enjoyed the group performances of the short-statured actors who also star in the film—David Rappaport, Kenny Baker, Malcolm Dixon, Mike Edmonds, Jack Purvis and Tiny Ross—and sure enough, this time through, we were even more aware of the bits of business each one was doing and how it added to the whole effect of their comical mayhem. But this time, as well, David Warner, who seemed in the past to be pushing the humor of his lines a little as the villain, comes across as gloriously amusing every second he is on the screen. Was it the precision of the backgrounds? The details of his exasperated expressions? Or was it just that, because of the enhanced clarity and immediacy created by the 4K format, although not obviously discernible, he is more ‘alive’ and ‘real’ on the screen, and so it becomes that much easier to connect with his performance and find delight in the actor’s energy delivering it. The same is true of Ian Holms’ Napoleon shtick. Sometimes the sequence feels prolonged and tiresome, but this time it was exquisite, and funny as all get out, thanks to the crispness of his phony French accent.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. As seems to be the habit with Criterion, bright reds are a little more cherry-colored on the standard Blu-ray than they are on the 4K, but in this case the differences are so slight that the subdued red actually looks better. The DTS sound is stronger and better detailed on the 4K presentation, as well. There are optional English subtitles. The 4K version is accompanied by a commentary track with Gilliam, Warner, Warnock, and Gilliam’s collaborators and guest stars, Michael Palin and John Cleese, which was available before on the BD and on Criterion’s original DVD release (Jul 99).
The standard BD also has the commentary, and comes with the special features from before, including a 23-minute segment on the film’s special effects, an 80-minute interview with Gilliam, a 9-minute interview with costar Shelley Duvall from The Tomorrow Show, a trailer and a collection of behind-the-scenes photos in still frame.
Guy Ritchie action
MGM added the director’s name to the title so that potential fans would have a better idea of what to expect from the terrific 2022 military thriller, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, released by MGM, WB and SDS Studio Distribution Services as a two-platter Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Code (UPC#883929812196, $35). Running 123 minutes, the film is fully loaded with one exhilarating action sequence dropping into the chamber after another, but at the same time it has the engrossing and satisfying drama that the actual title implies. Set near the end of America’s involvement in Afghanistan, Jake Gyllenhaal is a platoon sergeant and Dar Salam is the platoon’s interpreter. The film parcels out its narrative arc carefully and dutifully, so that there are some introductory action scenes before the main mission. The main mission succeeds, but also goes terribly wrong, so that only those two characters are left standing, and must make their way back to base across a harsh landscape with every insurrectionist in the area on their trail. When Gyllenhaal’s character is severely wounded after one encounter, Salam’s character then lugs him stealthily the rest of the way. And that is just the first half of the film. After Gyllenhaal’s character recovers in the States, he returns to search for Salam’s character and his family and help them get out, with the action and the suspense not only continuing, but increasing in intensity from one scene to the next, up to the exhilarating finale.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The color transfer is fresh and precise. The Dolby Atmos sound is outstanding, and Chris Benstead’s excellent musical score adds to the inherent thrills provided by the gunshots and explosions. The picture quality on the DVD is great, although it does not feel quite as riveting or as immediate as the Blu-ray’s image, and the 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track is not nearly as colorful or impactful as the BD’s audio options. The BD does not start up where it left off, however, if playback is terminated. Both platters have an audio track that describes the action (“Another Taliban truck arrives. As Tom swivels around to fire at them, they launch an RPG that engulfs the Humvee in flames.”) along with optional English and Spanish subtitles.
Classic Eighties action thriller
Say what you will about the Eighties and the Nineties, they gave us the modern action thriller. The genre was a crystallization of components that had appeared in previous action films and previous thrillers, but not only were these components blended, they were ‘modernized.’ Even before computer graphics became a big thing, the technology of motion picture making was improving, while, at the same time, filmmakers could see what was working and what wasn’t working with audiences in films from the past, and they just, basically, started cherry picking all of the stuff that did work and cramming it into a single narrative display. The same is true of fights and stunts, always attempting to top what had worked before. There was also a renewed seriousness regarding both the police and the military. As the animosities of the Sixties faded away, a renewed respect arose for law enforcement and for, specifically, the individuals who genuinely toil to protect our rights and our lives. While the upper echelons of both organizations could be depicted as clueless or corrupt, the heroes were often those in the lower ranks who were working their hardest, often without recognition, to do what they had been trained to do.
While John McTiernan could be considered to have kicked off the craze with his 1988 classic, Die Hard, Andrew Davis followed closely behind and created several indelible entries in the genre. One of Davis’ initial features that found an ideal balance of narrative, suspense and action was the 1989 Orion feature, The Package, starring Gene Hackman and Tommy Lee Jones (whose performance is crisp perfection—he would go on to win an Oscar for another film he made with Davis). Joanna Cassidy, Denis Franz and John Heard co-star in the 108-minute thriller, which is brilliantly edited by Don Zimmerman to sustain an unrelenting blend of action and paranoia. Pam Grier is almost unrecognizable in a nicely cast supporting role. Hackman plays a sergeant pulled out of his duty in Germany to transport an insubordinate soldier played by Jones back to America. When Jones’ character escapes upon landing, with help, Hackman’s character discovers that the records of Jones’ character have been altered or erased. As he is then himself chased by security forces, Hackman’s character has to figure out what the plot is and how to prevent it. Cassidy plays his ex-wife and Franz is an old Army buddy, the only two people that Hackman’s character can trust. On paper, the plot could be from any film in any era, but it is the choices that Davis made in its execution that make it both utterly gripping and irresistibly repeatable.
MGM and Kino Lorber Incorporated have released The Package as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329263065, $25). One of the film’s components that sets it apart is its sound design, and particularly the music track. James Newton Howard’s score is perfectly serviceable, as is its orchestration, but the audio levels at which the orchestration has been laid out are exceptional, particularly with the Blu-ray’s DTS playback, which creates a compelling dimensional sound space that enhances your identification with Hackman’s character at almost every moment in the film. Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, there are maybe one or two scratches, and a bit of grain in some of the more wintry scenes (the film is, as the title might suggest, a Christmas movie), but on the whole, the image is slick and vivid. It is that final combination of a you-are-there image with a you-are-there soundtrack, on top of the brilliantly paced and exquisitely performed suspense drama, that makes the film one of the classics of its type and time.
Along with optional English subtitles, there are two TV commercials, a trailer, a 2-minute introduction to the film by Davis and a nice 6-minute interview with Cassidy. Davis and Cassidy also supply a relaxed commentary track, although she doesn’t really speak up too often. Davis primarily focuses on identifying the locations (most of the movie was shot in and around Chicago) and supplying legitimate profiles of the many bit players in the film. He does share a little gossip, such as revealing that Hackman and Jones were not speaking to one another by the end of the shoot, but overall the information the track provides is limited.
Fabulous Losey transfers
Joseph Losey’s 1948 RKO Radio Pictures fable, The Boy with Green Hair (his first feature), has received what is probably the best picture transfer we have ever seen for an older color film on the Warner Bros. WB Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray (UPC#810134940277, $22). Most of the film has the vivid immediacy one associates with digitally shot afternoon soap operas, and even when the image is not quite that precise, it still looks as good as the best sequences in any other great Technicolor transfer. The detail is so intricate that you can spot the work done during the film’s shoot from one day to the next by the dust and loose threads on the actors’ sweaters. If the full screen presentation is an indication of what the future holds for old movies, the thrills are just beginning.
Dean Stockwell is the title character, telling his story in flashback to explain how the stresses and self-denial of his life as a war orphan, even after an avuncular singing waiter played by Pat O’Brien takes him in, causes his hair one morning to turn bright green. Robert Ryan, Barbara Hale and Regis Toomey costar, and Dwayne Hickman is among the youngsters ridiculing Stockwell’s character after the change. It is difficult to place a finger precisely on what the story’s allegorical components represent—perhaps the anxieties of war, or perhaps an early ecological alarm—or if any of it presages the situation Losey was soon to find himself facing with HUAC, but running 72 minutes, it is weird enough that both youngsters and adults will feel compelled to keep watching it, and will respond to the emotional connections the characters make with one another as they work their way through the drama.
Adding to the film’s metaphorical aura, the 1947 pop hit, Nature Boy, not only plays in a cover version over the film’s opening credits, but becomes the primary orchestral theme throughout the soundtrack. The monophonic sound is very clean and clear, and while it is not as exceptional as the picture quality, it is without any significant shortcomings. There are optional English subtitles and a 1946 black-and-white MGM John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade short also starring Stockwell, A Really Important Person, running 11 minutes, about a young boy who runs afoul of his father, a cop.
Losey teamed with Harold Pinter for his breakthrough 1963 British production, The Servant, which has been released on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection (UPC#715515284714, $40). Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1, the black-and-white image is immaculate. Once again, you can see threads and dust on the clothing of the actors, including a hair that is clearly on the shoulder of James Fox’s suit in one shot, and then disappears in the next. That said, however, the fantastically detailed and intricate transfer adds significantly to the film’s impact, supported by another smooth, solidly delivered monophonic audio track and an appealing jazz and airy orchestral score from John Dankworth.
There is a scene about halfway through the 115-minute film, where Fox’s character and his fiancée, played by Wendy Craig, have lunch in a restaurant. The cast of restaurant patrons, including Patrick Magee, are singled out in the opening cast credit list even though it is the only scene they are in, and you understand why once you reach it. It is the ultimate sophisticated person’s nightmare—a restaurant where everyone is speaking Pinter! The masterful direction is mind boggling, not only for the way in which the individual conversations of the restaurant patrons start and stop, but how they all seem to be fully engaged in their own little dramas, as if the overall scene were a common point shared in a half-dozen other films.
The precision of Pinter’s choices are underscored by the riveting image transfer, leaving a viewer spellbound by Douglas Slocombe’s cinematography and Losey’s often subversive blocking and camera angles. Set in London during a seemingly perpetual winter, Dirk Bogarde stars as the title character, hired by Fox’s character when he moves into a London townhouse. Taking advantage of the Fox character’s youthful insecurities, Bogarde’s character gradually plies him with alcohol and takes total control of his life. The film can be said to depict a palpable downward social spiral that has echoed through British society as a whole because of the changing times after the War, or it can seem like a cryptic anticipation of Persona and the mystical transfers of dominance and psychological subservience. From the dialog to the advancements of the characters—Sarah Miles co-stars as either Bogarde’s victimized collaborator or a schemer who takes advantage of the psychic deterioration the other characters are undergoing—the film is gloriously ambiguous, and it is the precision with which that ambiguity relentlessly recurs in the dialog and in the breathtaking images that makes the film so captivating.
Along with optional English subtitles and a trailer, there is a good 21-minue piece that focuses on Losey’s sense of design with clips and shots from several of his films, an excellent 29-minute audio-only interview with Losey from 1976 about making the film and the different challenges he encountered (he also dances around the film’s political undercurrents), a great 23-minute interview with Pinter from 1996 talking about his love of film and his work with Losey on a number of movies, a wonderful 1992 interview with Bogarde about his experiences with Losey running 11 minutes, a thorough 48-minute reminiscence about making the film with Fox from 2013, a nice 11-minute interview with Miles about the film from 2013 and a decent 6-minute interview with Craig about the movie and her character, also from 2013.
Amazing Clement crime thrillers
A fantastic French thriller from 1964, René Clément’s Joy House, has been released by Gaumont and Kino Lorber Incorporated as a KL Studio Classics Blu-ray (UPC#738329262815, $30). Several years before his hyper cool Bullitt score, Lalo Schifrin supplied Joy House with a very similar jazz accompaniment, setting a tone that is so awesomely Sixties the film can really do no wrong. Alain Delon is a playboy who is being chased in the Riviera by mobsters seeking revenge for his dabbling with their client’s wife. Barely escaping, he hides out in a men’s shelter and is quickly hired by a gorgeous widow to be her chauffer. Lola Albright co-stars, and Jane Fonda plays the widow’s cousin, both staying at an otherwise empty mansion. Both of the women are overly attracted to Delon—although really, who wouldn’t be?—and it eventually turns out that he has pretty much jumped out of a frying pan and into a sizzling fire. Running 97 minutes, the film is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and is in black and white, so that as the plot twists and turns, the cinematography captures all of the eccentric art pieces in the seaside chateau, while the characters put up false fronts to hide their inner fears and dastardly plans. Sure, in a world of serious film criticism, the movie can seem a bit too playful or jokey, but if you step back and look at it as an early precursor to the triumphant stylism of murder thrillers that would in a few years enthrall European cinema, it fits right into a critic’s darling box, and in the meantime, you are glued to the screen just hoping that some or any of its suave continentalism will rub off on your starved consciousness.
There is both an English track and a French track, with optional English subtitles, and either one is fully acceptable, since it is an additional bit of fun to listen to Fonda do her lines in French (Delon’s English is a little weaker). The music may be pushed a little loud at times, but it still sounds fantastic on the monophonic audio track and the dialog is clear on either option. The image has no stray markings, and contrasts are reasonably clear. A wonderful French language trailer has been included.
An outstanding commentary track—you really couldn’t ask for more than what they provide—is presented by Sixties movie enthusiasts Howard S. Berger and Nathaniel Thompson. Although we grew up amid them, we learn more about the Sixties every day, since the Sixties now are not the Sixties we were seeing then, especially when it comes to films. As Berger and Thompson point out, Clément, because he was a bit older than the New Wave whippersnappers, was dismissed by them as an old school director who was out of touch with the times. Critics on both sides of the Atlantic fell for that line as well, so it is only now that viewers can come to the movie with an unbiased eye and realize what a terrific work of art it is. Along with stepping the viewer through the filmmaking itself and pointing out that even though there wasn’t a completed shooting script, Clément had firm ideas about what was going on in the story (“Every scene is crammed with some kind of character balance for illustration. Nothing is just out of the blue. There’s nothing just to dazzle you. It’s all worked out in their minds, whether it’s improvised or semi-improvised or not. Clément really knows where this is heading.”), they talk about the careers of the artists who made this film and how the expectations regarding all of those artists at the time are at odds with our perspectives of those artists now. And they pay particular attention to Fonda, whose career was far more complicated and intertwined that the Barefoot in the Park to Barbarella to They Shoot Horses Don’t They? vector that critics saw at the time. She was learning about herself as she made movies, growing and maturing with each film. “You’re watching the 1964 Jane Fonda, and you’re not just watching a character or an actor in a ‘misfire’ or whatever a critic wants to say about it. You’re watching some really interesting development, human development. And who better to do that than [Clément]?”
Clément’s terrific 1960 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon, is available on Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection (UPC#715515090117, $40). Again, as critics were going gaga over Breathless, here is a film with a criminal anti-hero that is exquisitely composed but was largely dismissed in its day as being superficial and glossy. The film is set in the summer, up and down the Italian coast between Rome and Naples. Deftly designed, there are some terrific sailboat sequences, many picturesque locations, and Highsmith’s devious plotting, which essentially has you rooting for a villain from beginning to end, exploring the details of a luxury lifestyle and the avoidance of responsibility. The conclusion to the film’s story had to be changed from Highsmith’s conclusion to meet the expectations of the times that later adaptations didn’t have to abide by, but otherwise the 117-minute film is not only a viscerally escapist pleasure, it is also morally escapist, allowing the viewer to absorb the pleasures of doing truly wicked things. Delon plays the protagonist, who at the beginning of the film has ingratiated himself with a wealthy young couple played by Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforêt. He gradually takes on more affectations of Ronet’s character. We envy those who aren’t familiar with the story and don’t know what happens next, but regardless of what you know, the film is as intoxicating as it is intricate and beguiling.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1. The color transfer is certainly lovely, with accurate fleshtones and fresh hues, but the image does appear a step too far away from its source compared to the best picture transfers, and colors are a touch light at times. The monophonic sound is adequate, and there is a terrific musical score by Nino Rota. The film is in French—its original title was the preferable Plein Soleil—with optional English subtitles.
In the supplement, a 27-minute appreciation of the film is presented that goes over Clément’s career (although he made a number of crime films, they make a point of stating that he ‘never wanted to do the same thing twice’) and deconstructs the film’s artistry (among other things, they point out how a dead chicken aligns with a human corpse in a shot). While they do draw parallels to La Dolce Vita, which was being made at the same time, they fail to make the most obvious connection between the two films—Rota’s music. Also featured, along with a lively trailer (which calls the film, ‘Talented Mr. Ripley’), is a great 19-minute interview in French with Highsmith from 1971 talking about her own lifestyle choices, her career, her writing strategies and the films that had been made from her books at the time, and a good 9-minute interview with Delon from 1962 talking about how his career got started and why he liked working with Clément. It seems worth noting that if you don’t count Louis Malle, except for one Jean-Luc Godard film in the Nineties, Delon, who was certainly of the same generation, never worked with any of the New Wave directors, preferring instead to collaborate with Clément, Jean-Pierre Melville, and other ‘older’ French directors (Delon was slated to start Breathless in the fall after he finished Purple Noon in the summer of 1959, but he dropped out at the last moment).
Fighting the Mafia on their own turf
A systematically engrossing and entertaining period Italian feature from 1977 about combating bandits and Mafiosi in Sicily, The Iron Prefect, has been released on Blu-ray by Radiance (UPC#760137128281, $35). Giuliano Gemma is an aristocratic prosecutor sent by Mussolini to clean up the island, which he does with a steady combination of military tactics and investigatory determination. Reminiscent of Battle of Algiers, right down to the pulsing Ennio Morricone musical score, the film is outstanding by any measure, including its political perspective. Based upon historical events, the film, directed by Pasquale Squitieri, moves from one sequence to the next as Gemma’s character identifies informants and bandits, working with one group while busting the other. As he proves his mettle on the island, more people come forward and his attacks grow larger, until he places an entire mountainside town under siege. Yes, for a while you are rooting for the fascists to win, but by the end of the 110-minute tale, Gemma’s character learns full well what that victory entails. Francisco Rabal costars, and Claudia Cardinale has a small supporting part that at first seems gratuitous but turns out to be necessary, so there is at least a grain of hope at the film’s conclusion.
The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. The image transfer is excellent, without a blemish, and the monophonic sound is strong and clear. The film is in Italian with optional English subtitles. There is a very good 35-minute retrospective interview with Squitieri (he says there are two types of directors—those who are good at copying, and those who are bad at it) and Gemma about making the film, the history it represents and the many challenges they encountered along the way. Also featured is a trailer, a comprehensive 40-minute analysis of the film (“None of that epicness would have been possible without Ennio Morricone’s grandiose score. In a way, Morricone is the glue that joins together Squitieri’s taste for socially conscious cinema but done in a big, commercially successful way with the popular style of epic Western cinema pioneered by Sergio Leone’s sweeping, baroque films.”), Squitieri’s other movies and his artistry, and a good 11-minute summary of Gemma’s career by Alex Cox.
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