April Classic DVDs
By: Kevin Filipski |
Friday April 06, 2007 |
| Epic character studies |
| Alexander Revisited: The Final Cut (Warner Home Video)
It's taken him three tries, but Oliver Stone has finally gotten his epic about Alexander the Great right. The original 175-minute theatrical cut had powerful moments, but was structurally misshapen and dramatically diffuse; the 167-minute "director's cut" was more coherent as Stone reshaped several sequences, adding and dropping footage; now, the lengthy but never dull 214-minute final cut is a mesmerizing cinematic vision that displays what Stone had in mind tackling Alexander's life story. Of course, Colin Farrell is only adequate in the title role, but a few added scenes show that even he's able to better develop his character with more breathing room. Lone extra: a short Stone intro. 
Alfred Hitchcock: the Early Years (LionsGate)The first LionsGate DVD collaboration with the French company StudioCanal is this excellent set of five early Hitchcock talkies, including at least one true classic (1930's "Murder") and another rarely-seen experiment (1928's "The Ring"). The prints look quite good on all five films, and included as an extra on the third disc is a 15-minute featurette, "Pure Cinema: the Birth of the Hitchcock Style," which includes interviews with scholars and family members, along with the ever-ubiquitous Peter Bogdanovich. This first-rate set bodes well for the LionsGate/StudioCanal partnership, with an upcoming three-disc Jean Renior set definitely on the way and a rumored Jean-Luc Godard set in the future. 
La Belle Captive (Koch Lorber)
Alain Robbe-Grillet-best known for scripting Alain Resnais' surrealist classic "Last Year at Marienbad"-wrote and directed this 1983 feature, an intriguing if ultimately failed example of his rabidly non-narrative style. The protagonist is a young man who meets a beautiful and willing woman and, following a satisfying night together, cannot discover anything about her: Is she real or a dream? Is she alive or dead? Is he alive or dead? The writer-director borrows liberally from very prestigious sources (storywise, it's Schnitzler, which is why some may be reminded of "Eyes Wide Shut"; visually, it's Magritte), but he cannot make this intentionally nonsensical drama anything more than a dated curio. 
Gandhi (Sony)
Richard Attenborough won the Best Director Oscar for his reverent three-hour biopic-which won seven others including Best Actor (Ben Kingsley) and Best Picture (beating out "E.T.," believe it or not)- but "Gandhi" remains a movie to respect, not love. The obvious model is David Lean, whose best epics are richer and more resonant than this by-the-numbers bio. Billy Williams' and Ronnie Taylor's exquisite photography and Kingsley's superb portrayal lend Attenborough's pedestrian direction greater cache than it deserves. The 25th anniversary DVD includes several retrospective featurettes, vintage newsreel footage of Gandhi, interviews with Kingsley, Attenborough and others, and a director's introduction and commentary. 
La Haine (Criterion)
Mathieu Kassovitz's angry diatribe against the ongoing racism in France was seen as sensationalized when it was released in 1995; obviously, more recent racially-motivated events in French neighborhoods have instead exonerated the writer-director, who was only 28 when he made it. This stark black and white drama seems even more explosive now, if only because the world has caught up to its convincing, if depressing, slice of life. In the usual Criterion fashion, this two-disc set is packed: a new English-language commentary by Kassovitz, an appreciation by Jodie Foster (who championed the film in the States enough to see that it got released here) and several fascinating, informative featurettes imported from the French DVD release, including a new documentary, "Ten Years of 'La Haine'"; interviews with sociologists who discuss the film's importance; behind the scene footage; and deleted and extended scenes. 
Muriel (Koch Lorber)
Alain Resnais' 1963 masterpiece is one of his subtlest explorations of the painful complications of memory and how difficult it is to forget even the most hateful episodes of our past and move on with our lives. Although partly a commentary on the still-open wound of the Algerian war, "Muriel" is also much more, as Resnais and screenwriter Jean Cayrol delve into several lives that have been torn apart by various personal difficulties, from shattered romances to wartime torture. Aided by his splendid cinematographer Sacha Vierny and the exquisitely-crafted music of modernist Hans Werner Henze, Resnais creates a remarkably rich study of emotional detachment that, paradoxically, becomes almost unbearably moving due to its psychological complexity. The lone extra is a 15-minute interview with Francois Thomas, who has written about the director. 
Tempest (Sony)
Paul Mazursky's extremely loose 1982 adaptation of Shakespeare's final play is an unmitigated fiasco, nearly 2-1/2 hours of whiny self-indulgence and painful attempts at "whimsy." Prospero the magician has morphed into Phillip Dimitrius, a famous movie director who runs off with his teenage daughter Miranda to an isolated Greek island to escape the insanity of his life and work. It's difficult to decide who gives the most affected, least sympathetic performance-John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Raul Julia, or Vittorio Gassman. Only 14-year-old Molly Ringwald, in what was her very first film appearance, gives anything resembling an actual performance. This unmagical "Tempest" is strictly for Mazursky, Cassavetes or Ringwald completists only. |
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