Remembrance of Things Past
THE LEOPARD
From the perch of mid-year, what a fantastic six months this has been for DVDs. Already we have seen fantastic editions of LITTLE MURDERS, COP LAND, some Rathbone Sherlock Holmes, PANIC ROOM, RIPLEY'S GAME, KILL BILL VOL. 1, THE CHASE, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, CROUPIER, the BETTER TOMORROW series, LOST IN TRANSLATION, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, along with numerous Criterions, among them SALVATORE GIULIANO, THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE, and PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, to name only a few that I have managed to view this far.
Now Criterion has struck again, with a three-disc release of THE LEOPARD, a key transitional masterpiece in the career of Luchino Visconti.
If there is one film that has inspired uncontrollable salivation in film buffs, it is THE LEOPARD. Its influence is wide ranging, from Scorsese (THE AGE OF INNOCENCE) to Coppola (THE GODFATHERs), and even Mike Nichols's magpie CATCH-22 (in a long sequence near the end).
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So what is all the fuss about? THE LEOPARD is a long, languorous contemplation of a societal upheaval. An old man looks on as the younger generation takes over, coarsening the edges of the culture, and as the world of the aristocracy gives way to the nouveau riche. We are meant to share his pity and melancholy. And Visconti, adapting Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's novel published in the late '50s, whole heartedly identifies with him, too, making a film that is probably inexplicable to those unfamiliar with mid-1800s Italian history — and which might rankle those who remember the social realist films of Visconti's early career and who don't "get" his affection for this old man, presented elliptically or indirectly, as if from an angle.
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The famous ball scene, in which all the threads of the film are gathered, probably doesn't make sense to such viewers. But to those sympathetic to its masculine sentimentality, it is beautifully done, a masterpiece of the art of misdirection, and there is something noble in its taking something so fragile as the passing of a generation so seriously. Fanatical film buffs tend to favor the old over the young, the hard-bitten directors and actors who have been through the mill over the callow youths who preoccupy most filmgoers, and THE LEOPARD is an old man's film, a contemplation of age, and the only end of age. At the same time, THE LEOPARD has among the most interesting battle scenes I have ever seen, usually the work of a young man. These are sequences that evoke, with their long takes and distance from the action, the films of Miklos Jancso.
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The production was not without its problems. Co-produced by Fox, the studio appears to have imposed Burt Lancaster on Visconti, who initially resented the star's presence. Still, they became friendly enough for Lancaster to appear in what turned out to be Visconti's last film. And Fox also saw fit to shed 20 minutes from the film's running time. The full-length version of THE LEOPARD has been a cinematic holy grail for many film fans, and Scorsese helped a lot by sponsoring an American release of the complete version a few years ago. Now the full version comes to DVD.
The Criterion Collection's three-disc LEOPARD comes in a restored widescreen transfer (2.21:1, enhanced) supervised by Giuseppe Rotunno, the film's cinematographer, with a Dolby Digital 1.0 track. The full version is on disc one, with the American version, dubbed into English in a process supervised by Lancaster himself and director Sidney Pollack, on the third platter.
The main supplement on the first disc is an audio commentary by Peter Cowie. If you have just heard his track for SALVATORE GIULIANO, then you will also want to hear this one. Cowie manages to provide a great deal of information to the viewer painlessly. He is fully informed, but wears his learning lightly. He also manages to keep his information keyed to what is happening on the screen, which suggests that Cowie actually rehearses his tracks, almost unheard of in the field. But Cowie also acknowledges that, as a man watching a movie, he the critic is that man: his personal enthusiasm for Visconti's film shines through. He seems to know everything about the movie, from the origin of shirts that the rebels wear in the film's battle scene, to the cast that might have been (Visconti considered Brando and Olivier before Fox stepped in with Lancaster).
Disc two kicks off with an hour long documentary made by Criterion itself, called "A Dying Breed: The Making of THE LEOPARD, "which features interview snippets with numerous people who worked on the film, including Claudia Cardinale, Rotunno, the script's writers Suso Cecchi d'Amico and Enrico Medioli, and Sydney Pollack, and some who knew Lampedusa. In a separate interview, producer Goffredo Lombardo talks about working with Visconti, while an interview with Italian history prof Millicent Marcus gives more background on the events leading up to THE LEOPARD. The disc wraps up with a stills gallery, Italian newsreels, the Italian trailer, and two American trailers.
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Those with all-region DVD players have had access to the Italian two-disc set, which has five supplements, several galleries, and a 68-page booklet on the film. It's nice to know that America, that bastion of film geekdom, has finally caught up with the rest of the world. THE LEOPARD hit the street on June 8th, and retails for $49.95.
Party Animals
SWANN IN LOVE
When Lampedusa's novel was published, comparisons to Proust's IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME were inevitable. There are some similarities, but also crucial differences, but now there is no better way to compare them than with the near-simultaneous release of Vokler Schlondorff's adaptation of just one portion of Proust's oceanic novel.
TIME has defied adaptation. Harold Pinter's script has not yet been filmed; Raoul Ruiz's adaptation was, in this reviewer's mind, a disaster. Only Schlondorff's film comes close to the book, and in his case perhaps only because he chose to work on a bite sized bit of it.
A French-German co-production with an English lead (Jeremy Irons as Swann of the title), an Italian co-star (Ornella Muti as Odette) and a German director seems like an unlikely combination to bring to the screen's Proust's digressive yet sweeping portrait of the French upper classes before the first world war. Yet somehow it works.
It's also interesting to see Alain Delon, who is also in THE LEOPARD as a young Turk, appear here as the aging homosexual Baron de Charlus. Other members of the all-star cast include Fanny Ardant and Marie-Christine Barrault as the awful Madame Verdurin.
Proust combines precision of detail and exhaustive meditation with broad sweeping scenes of dinner parties and ballroom scenes. Frankly, no one film could really capture the book (not even a mini-series) if for no other reason than that the people who understand that world and who could re-create it are passing rapidly. Still Schlondorff does his best, and within the tight confines of just accurately transcribing what happens in the book is successful. If there were something missing from the adaptation I would charge it to be the novel's humor. Proust's book is a great comic novel, though few people assume that.
Home Vision Entertainment's DVD release is an acceptable affair, a good widescreen transfer (1.66:1, enhanced) with disappointing mono sound (but that's what the 1984 movie comes with). Extras are confined to a Schlondorff filmography. SWANN IN LOVE is available for $19.95, and hit the street June 8th.
The Manner from Hollywood
CITY OF GOD
It's official. "Tarantino" is now a style. Filmmakers from around the world can freely, uninhibitedly use what they take to be the Tarantino manner for their films and everyone will instantly know what they are doing, and not even judge the director harshly for what a decade ago would seem like at best derivative filmmaking. It's a genre, like noir or the westerns.
CITY OF GOD is only the latest film to come along made in the spirit of Tarantino. When Tarantino first got started, he said in interviews that he was disappointed in the bulk of modern movies, which didn't tell stories, but merely portrayed situations. He worried out loud to interviewers about what happens to innovative directors. In the wake of MEAN STREETS, there were dozens of Scorsese imitators (there still are), and not long after RESERVOIR DOGS, there were an equal number of Tarantino mimics. But now the Tarantino style has evolved into a viable technique that anyone can use.
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Fernando Meirelles CIDADE DE DEUS, made with Kátia Lund (there was a credit dispute which may explain why there are few supplements on the DVD) is a perfect realization of the Tarantino style in other contexts. It is fast moving, poignant, politically important, and even in its small way, uplifting (things that Tarantino doesn't necessarily want to be) as it tells the story of a Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), a young lad in the favelas or poor neighborhoods of Rio de Janero who aspires to become a photographer, while all around him, including his older brother, join in, during the period from '60s through the '70s, with drug peddling gangs.
The scariest character in the film, and in fact one of the scariest characters in all cinema, is Little Zé (Leandro Firmino), one of the most cold-blooded psychopaths ever to hit the screen. A monster out of American noir but taken to the nth degree, he is a person whom no other human being can reach. He has no loyalty to anyone, only urges, only desires. But so bereft of human qualities is he that you wonder if he even recognizes his own demands. His like a person on life support, only walking around instead of confined to bed, all lower stem brain capacity. He is based on a real person, as are most of the characters, which is even scarier.
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Buena Vista's DVD release of the Miramax film CITY OF GOD features a top notch widescreen transfer (1.851, enhanced) with a good Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track in Portuguese with English, French, and Spanish subtitles. Virtually the only extra is an hour long 1997 documentary called NEWS FROM A PERSONAL WAR, which gives a lot of background on the drug wars in the favelas There are also trailers for other Miramax releases. CITY OF GOD debuted on June 8th, and retails for $29.99.
Comic Book Confidential
ROBOCOP
ROBOCOP is the greatest comic book adaptation yet to hit the screen. The only problem is that the film is not actually based on a comic book.
Instead, it adapts a general comic book sensibility. It's got the male masochism of comics. It has the impossible love theme of comics. It has the extreme villains that you almost only find in comics. It features the sort of social commentary that movies are afraid to engage in but that comics can thrive with. And some of its shots, particularly of RoboCop writhing in agony while under attack, look like panels right out of a Jack Kirby page.
There have been lots of versions of ROBOCOP. There were three laser discs, and two DVDs. One was from Image, the other from Criterion, which did several Orion films before the license lapsed. The Criterion is famous for its audio commentary track, and it is the complete version, with all the violence put back in.
Now, MGM has gathered together ROBOCOP and its two (basically straight to video) sequels into one huge package in THE ROBOCOP TRILOGY. All three films are widescreen transfers (1.85:1, enhanced — unlike the Image and Criterion editions), and are quite good, the sequels being better than the original. Audio is Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks with optional subtitles in English, French, and Spanish.
Extras are confined to the first disc. Leading off is an audio commentary track with director Verhoeven, writer Edward Neumeir, and executive producer Jon Davison. I'm not quite sure where this track comes from. For one thing, they are all in the room together, unlike with the edited Criterion track; yet at the same time they don't seem to be watching the same movie we are, given that they talk about deleted violence which is now back in the film. In any case, their interactions are amusing, and it is interesting how much ribbing Verhoeven endures.
Next is "Flesh And Steel — The Making Of ROBOCOP," a 37-minute making of featuring Verhoeven, Davison, Neumeir again, along with co-writer Michael Miner. ROBOCOP has an interesting production history and the doc goes into detail about that. "Shooting ROBOCOP and Making ROBOCOP are making ofs shot at the time, in 1987, and have interviews with some people who don't appear in the new one.
The five deleted scenes are a little odd. Titled "OCP Press Conference," "Nun In The Street," "Interview," "Topless Plaza" and "Final Media Break," they seem more like footage that would be used partially in the news segments of the movie. The fifth one serves as an alternative ending, linking up as it does with a remark that Ronny Cox's character makes toward the start of the film. Anyway, these don't seem like deleted scenes in the conventional sense.
Finally, there are trailers and an extensive stills gallery. The extras on the other two discs consist solely of each film's trailer. Robocop 2 and Robocop 3 only have their respective films theatrical trailers as extras. There is also an unusually informative and serious eight-page insert included in the folding multi-DVD pack. THE ROBOCOP TRILOGY went on sale June 8, and retails for $39.96.
Almost Famous
SUNSET STRIP
One of the reasons that I wanted to review SUNSET STRIP was because I had heard a rumor that Cameron Crowe had worked on the screenplay. However, that appears not to be true, and I think now that I was mixing it up with THE WILD LIFE, the great, unknown Crowe film. SUNSET STRIP just happens to take place during the same time frame and similar locations as ALMOST FAMOUS, and Art Linson, who worked with Crowe in the past, produced it.
Linson talks in detail about the film in his book WHAT JUST HAPPENED?, his history of working at Fox making FIGHT CLUB, THE EDGE, and a few other films. SUNSET STRIP was the most personal because it was based on Linson's own youthful experiences in the music industry back in the day. It was also the last Fox film he made. Even he doesn't like it, though Linson defends certain aspects of it in his fascinating book.
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Kind of a modern version of LA RONDE, SUNSET STRIP follows a handful of characters through one day in August of 1972. One of them is Zach (Nick Stahl), a struggling guitarist with a crush on the rich chick who lives up the street. She turns out to be the wife of a famous musician (possibly based on members of the Mamas and the Papas) who abuses her. Meanwhile, photographer Michael Scott (Simon Baker, the dead gay guy in L A CONFIDENTIAL) is in love with the loose Tammy (Anna Friel), a clothes designer whose shop is across the street from the Whiskey-a Go-Go. She has sex with two rock musicians within about five minutes of each other, one being Tommy Flanagan, the other Jared Leto. In the film's scheme of things she passed on VD from one to the other.
There are a few other characters but none of them is particularly enjoyable or worth following. Overall the film feels cold and incompletely thought out, and drastically radical in its mix of tones. Comparing it to ALMOST FAMOUS brings out some of its good points, however. For example, SUNSET STRIP is a film about sex, drugs, and rock and roll that actually has sex and drugs in it.
The film enjoys a good widescreen transfer (1.85:1, enhanced), with a full frame version on the B-side, DD 5.1 in English, with French and Spanish DD Surround. There are no extras, though a yak track from Linson might have been fascinating. SUNSET STRIP hit the street on June 1, and retails for a mere $9.98.
NEXT TIME: SPIDERMANs, THE SNAKE PIT, TOUCHING THE VOID, and more!
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