DVD Quick Takes - "Classics"

By: Kevin Filipski

Thursday October 26, 2006

Older films keep getting welcome DVD releases, but not all are real classics - just read on.
Jean-Luc Godard's luminous Hail Mary (New Yorker) is finally on DVD, coupled with the equally wondrous short by Anne-Marie Mieville, The Book of Mary. How these amazing, spiritual films became the cause of boycotts and damnation from the Catholic Church in 1985 is still headscratching, and it's too bad there's no look back at that insane time included. The extra we do get, Godard's own "making-of" short, Notes about Hail Mary, is another in this master diector's indispensable dissection of the art and technique involved in filmmaking.

Hamlet (Facets), Russian director Grigori Kozintev's 1964 adaptation of Shakespeare's most famous tragedy, is-like his later film of King Lear-a fascinating mess, with good performances side-by-side with bad, intriguing directorial interpretation side-by-side with distortion, and dramatic Shostakovich music side-by-side with bombastic. The print is OK, but not nearly as good as Ruscico's Lear; the forced subtitles are also a recurring Facets problem.

A quarter-century later, Body Heat (Warners) has entered movie lore not as a great film noir, but as an entertaining guilty pleasure that introduced the sultry voice and look of Kathleen Turner, who steals the movie from William Hurt. Lawrence Kasdan does better with the clever lines in his script than with his derivative direction; an hour's worth of new interviews with Kasdan, Hurt, Turner, Ted Danson, cinematographer Richard H. Kline, composer John Barry and editor Carol Littleton are included, along with a handful of deleted scenes and short interviews with the two stars upon the film's release.

The Fifth Horseman Is Fear (Facets) is a masterpiece of 60s Czech cinema; Zbynek Brynych's dark drama works as both a downbeat look at WWII's effects on ordinary people as well as a subtle allegory about then-Communist society in Czechoslovakia. Facets has used a restored print from the Czech National Archives; unfortunately, those annoying forced subtitles are again present.

Mike Judge's Beavis and Butthead Do America (Paramount) is out in a 10th anniversary edition. Although it's a typically hit-and-miss affair with howlingly funny craziness followed by equally unfunny foolishness, Judge revisits it with his usual dry humor, detailing its creation on an audio commentary with animation director Yvette Kaplan, a "making-of" segment, and a discussion of the music with composer John Frizzell.

One of Fritz Lang's silent epics, Dr. Mabuse (Kino) is a stunning crime drama pitting master criminal Mabuse against Police Commissioner von Wenk. Thanks to a superb restoration, this is one of Kino's very best discs, and it includes the bonus "The Story Behind Mabuse" featurette.

If The Big Animal (Milestone) seems at times like Krzysztof Kieslowski-lite, it's because Jerzy Stuhr's wryly observant comedy about a middle-aged couple who adopt a camel (don't ask) is based on a script by the late Polish director. Stuhr smartly shoots in black and white, which keeps the movie grounded in an unreality that's ultimately affecting. A short on-set featurette and a 30-minute interview with Stuhr are the extras.

Based on a story by acclaimed Scandinavian Knut Hamsun, Hunger (New Yorker) is Henning Carlsen's best film, an exacting, difficult drama about a struggling writer's physical and emotional suffering. Filmed in stark black and white (which looks striking in the print used for the DVD), Hunger is as thoroughly draining as the best of Ingmar Bergman. Plentiful extras include an interview with Carlsen and a conversation between novelist Paul Auster and Hamsun's granddaughter.

Body Double (Sony), even by Brian de Palma's mediocre standards, isn't among his entertaining pictures: its "eye-opening" look at the porn world (represented by Melanie Griffith's implausible heroine) is juvenile parody. The only interesting scenes are lifted directly from Hitchcock; the in-depth retrospective interviews with the director and his actors rarely get into anything that's illuminating.

In many ways just another Holocaust-themed melodrama, Angry Harvest (Image) works slowly and effectively to an offhandedly tragic ending. Agnieszka Holland-who has returned to themes of WWII throughout her career-powerfully evokes the sheer randomness of survival in this strangely gripping film; no extras, with acceptable print and subtitles.

The murder of director Pier Paolo Pasolini in 1975 is the subject of Philo Bregstein's 1981 documentary, Whoever Says the Truth Shall Die (Facets). Only one hour long, Bregstein's doc can't hope to delve too deeply into the possibility that Pasolini was murdered by a far-ranging conspiracy, but he raises thoughtful questions through interviews with fellow filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, actress Laura Betti and others.

They All Laughed (HBO) is considered Peter Bogdanovich's best film by none other than Bogdanovich himself. While certainly not as insufferable as some of his pictures, and including classy actors like Ben Gazzara and Audrey Hepburn, They All Laughed is a romantic comedy with very little heat and even less humor. There is, however, the tragic realization that Dorothy Stratten-who could have become a wonderful light comedienne-was murdered before this was released, putting a further damper on things. Bogdanovich's boring commentary is skippable, but his half-hour sit-down with director Wes Anderson is marginally interesting.

Motion Picture Masterpieces (Warners) is a misnomer for this five-disc set of 1930s-40s literary adaptations: none of these films is really a masterpiece or a classic, but there's fun to be had nevertheless. The Champ's Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper re-team for a fast-paced Treasure Island; Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities proves too much for the likes of Ronald Coleman, David O. Selznick and director Jack Conway; Dickens' David Copperfield fares better thanks to Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan and W.C. Fields; Norma Shearer and Tyrone Power star in a slow-moving Marie Antoinette that's still preferable to Sofia Coppola's revisionist monstrosity; and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier look properly embarrassed by this failed attempt to bring Pride and Prejudice to the screen. Cleaned-up prints help immeasurably, but the bonus shorts on each disc have nothing to do with any of the films.