Classic Films on DVD in May

By: Kevin Filipski

Tuesday May 09, 2006

Take a peak at the latest group of classic films being graced with a DVD in May.
Unbelievably, nearly a decade after the rise of DVDs, major filmmakers are still underrepresented.

Jan Troell is one such, even though Swedish's second-greatest film director - behind only Ingmar Bergman - has created such major works of art as the perfectly-pitched two-part epic, The Emigrants and The New Land, the documentary Land Of Dreams, and the Oscar-nominated The Flight of the Eagle.

None are on DVD in America, particularly distressing in the case of The Emigrants and The New Land, available in beautiful prints on Swedish DVDs without (alas) subtitles: why doesn't Warner Home Video get those transfers for domestic release?

At least there's finally Hamsun, Troell's meticulous, absorbing 1996 biographical drama about Norway's Nobel laureate and Nazi apologist, on DVD from First Run.

Kurt Hamsun is not your typical movie hero, the kind of endlessly complex and tortured character made for Troell, who has always been among the movies' best chroniclers of the contradictions that afflict truly original characters, not mere cardboard cutouts.

Of course, writer-director-photographer-editor Troell is helped immeasurably by his lead actors: Max von Sydow is simply remarkable as he creates a believable Hamsun, unafraid throughout to show all the warts of this unlikable yet compelling protagonist. As his wife Marie, Ghita Norby is easily Sydow's dramatic equal in a supremely difficult role.

It's too bad that First Run's Hamsun disc isn't top-notch; the print looks as mediocre as a VHS tape, and it's non-anamorphic to boot. At the very least the film deserves extra features like a Troell interview.

Hungarian Bela Tarr, who may be the most lionized living director, receives accolades in inverse proportion to his actual talent. Tarr makes ponderous, pretentious pictures that take forever to reach their moot points. His magnum opus, the excruciating seven-hour Satantango, is referred to in reverent terms usually reserved for an appearance by the Pope.

Still, Tarr - no one's idea of an "audience-friendly" director - has seen some of his work reach DVD under the Facets banner, including his most interesting and memorable study of quotidian lives in his native land, Damnation. Like all Facets' Tarr discs, however, Damnation is damned by a poor print (which looks again like a VHS dupe), burnt-in subtitles and lack of any extras that might further illuminate Tarr's singular style.

The Passenger is nowhere near Michelangelo Antonioni's best - that's the trilogy with which he began dominating European and American arthouses in the 1960s, L'Avventura, La Notte and L'Eclisse - but even this vacuous, ridiculously-plotted study of identity (Jack Nicholson plays a reporter who assumes the character of a dead man only to find himself in over his head) is filled with Antonioni's usual dazzling visuals, including the breathtaking climactic seven-minute shot.

Nicholson owned the picture for years, and was apparently the reason why The Passenger had virtually disappeared. It has finally returned in a sparkling new print on Sony's DVD, along with a respectful but occasionally irreverent Nicholson audio commentary to boot. (The less said about screenwriter Mark Peploe's commentary the better.)

Another major director, Sam Peckinpah, slowed considerably in his later career, but his 1977 World War II drama, Cross of Iron, shows much of his earlier mastery even if it's at the service of a hackneyed melodramatic plot.

Casting American James Coburn as a German soldier isn't particularly inspired, even if Coburn gives a restrained performance. The Brits-as-Germans (e.g., James Mason and David Warner) acquit themselves well. And Peckinpah orchestrated violence like no other director - the battle sequences are second to none, even in these days of CGI and other optical illusions.

Cross of Iron is not up to Peckinpah's best - like The Wild Bunch and Straw Dogs - but it's no embarrassment either, like The Getaway and Convoy. Hen's Tooth Video has released Cross of Iron on DVD in a good if not perfect print, along with the inevitable (and occasionally insightful) commentary by several Peckinpah scholars.

No one considers Moonstruck a true "classic," but it holds up 20 years later as a flavorful, entertaining romantic comedy. Although playwright John Patrick Shanley's script is the movie's calling card - while not up to the level of his best plays like Italian American Reconciliation, Doubt and Defiance, it contains the usual rat-a-tat Shanley dialogue and several sharply-etched characters just this side of caricature - Norman Jewison's direction is lighter than his usual heavy handed approach, and Nicolas Cage and Oscar-winning Cher have never been more likable (or less annoying, if you prefer).

MGM's Deluxe Edition Moonstruck DVD contains a lively audio commentary from Shanley, Jewison and Cher, and short features on the making of the movie, the music (mostly opera) and a tour of Little Italy's restaurants.

Another derivative of Seven Samurai imitators like The Magnificent Seven is The Dirty Dozen, which in 1967 was a huge box office hit. Its depiction of a group of military misfits molded into a unique fighting machine against the Nazis is, thanks to director Robert Aldrich, alternately action-packed and blackly humorous. The ensemble (led by Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and Oscar nominee John Cassavetes) is one of the most colorful ever assembled for an action flick, even if, at 2-1/2 hours, The Dirty Dozen finally stretches itself too thin.

Warners' Special Edition two-DVD set includes the 1985 sequel The Dirty Dozen: The Next Mission with Marvin and Borgnine returning for more to ever diminishing returns. Other extras are a Borgnine introduction, several documentaries about the film's making and a nine-person audio commentary.

Finally, the Criterion Collection has just released two more masterpieces by two master directors: 1961's Viridiana by Luis Bunuel and 1949's Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu.

Bunuel's Viridiana, his first film in Spain after a prolonged period in Mexico and the U.S., might very well be his greatest film. Its story of a nun whose propriety is put to the test is Bunuel at his most satirically vicious; Criterion's disc includes an excellent new transfer, interviews with lead actress Silvia Pinal and author Richard Porton, and a brief episode of the French TV show Cineastes de notre temps about Bunuel.

Ozu's Late Spring - the equal of the director's own Tokyo Story and An Autumn Afternoon for sheer poetic heartbreak - follows a widow who reluctantly Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, Late Spring is an unqualified triumph, giving its ordinary characters the dignity they deserve, like all Ozu's best work.

Criterion's Late Spring two-disc set includes a new high-def transfer, Richard Pena's illuminating commentary and, on the second disc, director Wim Wenders' full-length Ozu tribute, Tokyo-Ga. But Late Spring is the real bonus for Ozu fans.