If you look at that list, however, you'll see that one figure sticks out anomalously. Jean Renoir is, conventionally, the antithesis of his colleagues. While Hitchcock and the others represent the principle of pre-planning, of "pure cinema," the language of film, of elaborate tracking shots through territories of sexual angst and frustration, then Renoir is the robust, hedonistic embracer of life, a spontaneous improviser for whom everything is negotiable: the script, the cast, the camera angle, the setting. His real disciple would probably be Cassavetes, sharing an interest in actors, developing scripts from improves, and a robust view of life.

Curiously, there are some broad parallels between the careers of Hitchcock and Renoir. Both were Europeans (basically) who came to America in mid-century; if Renoir's later films marked a distinct change in his mood, toward brightly colored theatricality, the second half of Hitchcock's career was notable for a darkening (and it was a darkening in conflict with the requirements of a commercial cinema). Both men are consistently rated among the top five directors, and between them worked with nearly everyone of significance in international cinema. Both were interested, by necessity or the nature of their films, in performance, as a facet of daily life or action.

At some point, Renoir dropped out of my list. Over the years as I continued to concentrate more deeply on far fewer filmmakers, I added Kubrick, Wilder, Sturges, and Melville to the very, very short list of top obsessions. What had happened to Renoir? Perhaps his films grew harder to find. Or perhaps he became encrusted with such accolades that he and his career came to be stamped "final" by that amorphous cloud of critical consensus, which no one can control or affirm really exists.

The joyous occasion of Criterion issuing numerous Renoir films on DVD over the past year in healthy packages with extras and critical commentary has inspired a renewed interest in Renoir.

Chronologically, the Renoirs begin with BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING [Boudu sauvओ des eaux] (The Criterion Collection, No. 305, 84 minutes, black and white, 1932, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, static musical menu with 19-chapter scene selection, eight-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and three essays including one by Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner, keep case, one disc, $29.95, released on Tuesday, August 23, 2005). And right from BOUDU the themes and visual motifs that interested Renoir were clear. There are three major ones

Rivers BOUDU begins and ends on a river, as Boudu emerges from the depths of nature to arbitrarily commit suicide and than at the end just as he is about to become "civilized" he makes his escape back into the wild. Rivers seem to stand for Renoir for a whole complex of associations, ranging from childhood, where rivers were probably key passages of transportation to loftier symbols of the indifferent flow of life. THE RIVER might have been the title of any number of Renoir films. Perhaps the "hardness" of LA BETE HUMAINE is due to the fact that its "river" is actually a rail track, the route from Paris to Le Havre.

Multiple Lovers In an essay on THE RULES OF THE GAME, Robin Wood pointed out that Christine is the real central figure in the film and that in the course of the narrative she has no less than four suitors or potential lovers. In this resembles Anna Magnani in THE GOLDEN COACH and Elena with her THREE LOVERS. Wood makes the case that RULES effectively offers up a progressive attitude to relationships where monogamy is rendered a more flexible social bond. In FRENCH CANCAN it is the Jean Gabin character who has the three loves, but the principle remains the same. ELENA AND HER LOVES, too, could, mutatis mutandis, be the title of any number of Renoir films.

Artifice versus Authenticity If the first half of Renoir's career is more "neorealistic" the second half if theatrical, often even set in the world of performance, with Renoir's "Hollywood years" right in the middle. Renoir's career is much more complicated than this, however, and even in the realistic movies you see actual performances as comments on society and human behavior and a world view that objects to the sterility and constriction of social norms and mores, especially in GRAND ILLUSION. Some commentators have seen a political shift in Renoir from the radicalism of the 1930s to a grudging acceptance of the class system in his later frothier comedies, which "betray" the meaning of GRAND ILLUSION. However, a fascination with performance in a Goffman sense permeates his film from the beginning, and Boudu is a nightmare of a man because he is immune to the internalized guilt that makes most people conform.

The things you look for in a director are consistency of style and uniformity of vision. Renoir has both, but he also does change a great deal as he ages. Still, it's an exaggeration to say that Renoir was the antithesis of Welles and Sternberg. His generosity to actors masks the fact that his films were carefully planned and shot. Probably the greatest number of myths about Renoir's improvisations on scripts linger around RULES OF THE GAME, but each of the early films has the quality of a found object, a great illusion of spontaneity. BOUDU tells the simple story of a tramp named Boudu (Michel Simon) rescued by a bourgeois rare book dealer Lastingois (Charles Granval), whom the bibliophile soon invites to stay in his home. A mockery of liberal piety, the film shows Lastingois consumed by his own goodness, while Boudu, a Pan like force of nature, creating chaos wherever he goes. Today we would medicalize Boudu and ascribe to him various mental conditions such as OCD or manic-depressive syndrome. But for Renoir's purposes it is enough that Boudu is a counter statement to middle class propriety, formality, and piety. Boudu soon beds all the women in Lastingois's life, and just before he too is tied down to a life similar to Lastingois's he escapes, knocking over the wedding flotilla and swimming to shore, where he feeds the remnants of the wedding feast to a goat. Boudu has no "views," political or otherwise. Having none, he is the source of views in others. Others seek to either exploit him or contain him. And once he is "rehabilitated" into ordinary society, it turns out that he is only fit to marry the maid.

Criterion offers up BOUDU in a restored high-definition digital transfer that is crisp and satisfying. Supplements include an introduction to the film in black and white by Jean Renoir, plus a new video interview with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, plus an excerpt from a French TV show called Cinéastes de notre temps from 1967 with Renoir and Michel Simon and a French TV show in which director Eric Rohmer and critic Jean Douchet discuss the film, Douchet often discounting or contradicting Rohmer's views. One of the best features is an "interactive" map of '30s Paris that explains what the film's locations tell us about the characters and what they mean to Parisians. This feature reminds me of the "slang" guide included on BAND OF OUTSIDERS.

Seven films later and while still deeply involved in pre-war leftism, Renoir adapted Gorki's play THE LOWER DEPTHS [Les bas-fonds] WITH THE LOWER DEPTHS [Donzoko] (The Criterion Collection, No. 239, 1936, 90 minutes, black and white, full frame, DD mono, animated musical menu with 19-chapter scene selection, 20-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and two essays, one by film scholar Alexander Sesonske, dual keep case, two discs, $39.95, Tuesday, June 22, 2004), but perhaps some slight withdrawal from the Communist line compelled Renoir to make the play his own. It is much different, much less ponderous than the Kurosawa version in the same set, and Renoir takes several liberties, though they had Gorki's approval. The strength of the film lies in its performances, first Gabin in his patented poetic realistic, i.e., pre-noir mode, and especially the fascinating Louis Jouvert, as a baron reduced to life among the lower classes. The rest of the cast rather overacts, or at least act from the foundation of a different school of thought.

The film comes in another new high-definition digital transfer, with restored image and sound. Most of the extras are dedicated to the Kurosawa version on the other disc, but this one does have another introduction by Renoir.

Despite its weaknesses, LES BAS-FONDS initiated a creative streak of masterpieces, from GRAND ILLUSION to LA BETE HUMAINE (The Criterion Collection, No. 324, 96 minutes, black and white, 1938, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 24-chapter scene selection, 40-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and essays by Geoffrey O’Brien, historian Ginette Vincendeau, and production designer and close Renoir associate Eugene Lourié (who went on to do GORGO), keep case, one disc, $29.95, released on Tuesday, February 14, 2005) and beyond. LA BETE HUMAINE is simply a great film, and it may be the best of all the poetic realism films from this era that were precursors to American film noir. Small evidence consists of its being remade by Fritz Lang as HUMAN DESIRE a few years later, with a distinct diminution of star power but with its edifice of unavoidable fate intact. Here, Jean Gabin and Simone Simon are the passionate people wrestling with their biological imperatives. But even more, this film also shows Renoir receding from the proto-neo-realism that he was often associated with. The opening sequence is a masterpiece of editing, which means pre-planning, which means filmic thinking.

LA BETE HUMAINE also enjoys a new transfer, in this case of the original uncut version. Extras include the Renoir introduction, and an engrossing discussion of the film by Peter Bogdanovich, plus vintage footage of Renoir discussing the film and shown working with Simon. Finally, there is a gallery of stills and posters, and the theatrical trailer.

If LA BETE HUMAINE suffered from some studio interference and censorship, THE RULES OF THE GAME [La Règle du jeu] (The Criterion Collection, No. 216, 106 minutes, black and white, 1939, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 29-chapter scene selection, 24-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and seven essays, by Renoir, Truffaut, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Bertrand Tavernier, and Alexander Sesonske, folding case with plastic slip case, two discs, $39.95, released on Tuesday, January 20, 2004) is a nightmare of Wellesian proportions. We quite simply do not have the film that Renoir made. It was severely truncated shortly after release and then reconstructed in the 1950s by two film scholars who created a longer version that at least has Renoir's imprimatur (the disc goes into exhaustive details about the differences between the versions). But the fact remains that we simply don't have a definitive edition of this film, and are unlikely to unless someone finds a bunch of footage or negs hidden in a projection booth or archive somewhere.

This disc is packed, as befits one of the greatest films of all time. Once again, there is a, somewhat truculent, introduction to the film by Renoir, plus an insightful audio commentary written by film scholar Alexander Sesonske but read by Peter Bogdanovich (who does an excellent job, by the way). There is also extensive version comparison features: a side-by-side analysis of two endings to the film, plus script to screen comparisons, and "selected scene analysis" by Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner. Disc two includes passages from a French television program, Jean Renoir, le patron: La Regle et l'exception from 1966, directed by Jacques Rivette, as well as part one of Jean Renoir, a two-part 1993 BBC documentary by David Thompson, featuring interviews about Renoir by family members and others. There is also a video essay about the film's complicated production history, its compromised release, and its later reconstruction, which was supervised Jean Gaborit and Jacques Durand, who also explain their work. There is a video interview with Renoir's son, Alain, who worked as an assistant cameraman on the film, an interview with set designer Max Douy, and a 1995 interview with actress Mila Parely.

The first thing you likely to think while watching the first few minutes of THE RIVER [Le Fleuve] (The Criterion Collection, No. 279, 99 minutes, color, 1951, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 17-chapter scene selection, 16-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and essays by film writers Ian Christie and Alexander Sesonske, keep case, one disc, $29.95, released on Tuesday, March 1, 2005) is if you are really watching a Michael Powell film. It has Powell's visual lushness, his highbred color, his exotic locales, and even his Englishness, if you will. Based on Rumer Godden's novel, it even has a source that likely could have been Powell's. But where Powell's version might have mounted in visual and emotional hysteria, Renoir's recedes into acceptance. It's a beautiful film, and pre-dates Antonioni's RED DESERT, his first color film, by more than 10 years in its extreme use of color to make reality conform to personal vision.

The Powell "connection" gains some currency in that on the disc, Martin Scorsese, a Powell proselytizer, gives an interview discussing the film, suggesting that he too, if only unconsciously or by matter of taste, feels a sympathy between the two filmmakers on this work. The film was restored in 2004, whence comes this new digital transfer. As usual, the film is "introduced" by Renoir. Other extras include "Rumer Godden: An Indian Affair," a BBC doc from 1995 in which Godden returns for a tour of her childhood home, and an audio only interview with producer Ken McEldowney. Finally there are stills and posters galleries and the original theatrical trailer.

For the last three Renoir films Criterion has cleverly packaged them together in one box (they are also available separately) thus making explicit the linkage between them as films with a rather theatrical orientation (two of them are set in the world of performance). As noted above, each of them retells a similar story in which one charismatic figure is courted by at least three suitors. In THE GOLDEN COACH [LE Carrosse d'or] (The Criterion Collection, No. 242, 103 minutes, color, 1953, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 27-chapter scene selection, 12-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and two essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum on and Andrew Sarris, keep case, one disc, part of STAGE AND SPECTACLE: THREE FILMS BY JEAN RENOIR, $79.95, released on Tuesday, August 3, 2004) it is Anna Magnani's Commedia Del Arte actress Camilla, who during a layover in a South American town in the 16th century ensorcelles a diplomat, a bullfighter, and a aristocrat, ending up with none, as is her nature, being both the epitome of sex and beyond sex. It's all very light and frothy and forced and energetic trivial except to students of Renoir who can see new facets of his world view.

After the requisite intro by Renoir, the disc also has another video introduction, by director Martin Scorsese, plus "Jean Renoir parle de son art," the first part of a three-part interview by Jacques Rivette. Finally there is a stills gallery.

The spirit of GOLDEN COACH still obtains in FRENCH CANCAN (The Criterion Collection, No. 243, 105 minutes, color, 1955, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 26-chapter scene selection, eight-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and essay by Andrew Sarris, keep case, one disc, part of STAGE AND SPECTACLE: THREE FILMS BY JEAN RENOIR, $79.95, released on Tuesday, August 3, 2004). It purports to tell of the "birth" of the sexy peek-a-boo dance, but is really about the romantic travails of Jean Gabin as Danglard, the theatrical entrepreneur who creates the club where the dance takes off. Like Camilla and Elena he is dangling three potential mates but ends up with none, the film making the melancholy suggestion that the theater transcends love, though at the last second he does eye a new prospect.

FRENCH CANCAN enjoys a new transfer with restored image and sound, and also has a video introduction by Peter Bogdanovich and the second part of "Jean Renoir parle de son art," along with a new interview with set designer Max Douy. Finally, there is a stills gallery.

FRENCH CANCAN was followed immediately by ELENA AND HER MEN [Eliana e gli uomini] (The Criterion Collection, No. 244, 95 minutes, color, 1956, NR, full frame, DD mono in French, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 24-chapter scene selection, eight-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and one essay by Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner, keep case, one disc, part of STAGE AND SPECTACLE: THREE FILMS BY JEAN RENOIR, $79.95, released on Tuesday, August 3, 2004). This is the kind of film that really taxes a Renoir lover's patience, like Fuller's THE BIG RED ONE or Ford's SEVEN WOMEN, late films that seem to be mired in old fashioned ways of making movies. ELENA is stagy, artificial, and arch, and only a true Renoir lover will see past the surface to the vision hidden underneath, or see past the seemingly retrograde aristocratic politics of the thing. Ingrid Bergman doesn't seem all that comfortable in the lead role, even though it is one she practically lived in real life.

Still, the film enjoys a new high definition digital transfer with restored image and sound, and after an introduction by Renoir other extras include part two of David Thompson's BBC doc, "Jean Renoir — Hollywood and Beyond" and part three of "Jean Renoir parle de son art," Jacques Rivette's doc for French TV, Finally, there is a stills gallery. This heavy a dose of Renoir seen chronologically is likely to leave you in a melancholy mood, not just because of the change in his style in his later years, but because of the twilight mood of the later films coming across as a distillation of his world view. But the important thing is that Renoir has a worldview, one steeped in culture and born of a rich and varied life. Renoir was so lucky in so many of his projects there was no way he could end up a pessimist. But in the end life itself has its reasons, and finally Renoir's vision is revealed as melancholic rather than tragic.

[As an alternative, here is my slightly different audio review of METROPOLITAN. ]

No matter how inherently good the work, there is almost always a highly personal, nearly inexpressible reason for liking a film. Whit Stillman's METROPOLITAN (The Criterion Collection, No. 326, 99 minutes, color, 1990, PG-13, 1.66:1 enhanced, DD mono, English subtitles, animated musical menu with 25-chapter scene selection, eight-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and essay by Luc Sante, keep case, one disc, $39.95, released on Tuesday, February 14, 2006) is one of my favorite films and has been since about seven minutes into it, from my first screening of it way back in 1990. I've been eager to get a copy of it and Criterion's release of the film is one of its coups of the year. Not only is METROPOLITAN well written and wonderfully acted (really acted, by the way, as director Whit Stillman and some of the other filmmakers are at pains to explain on the yak track — only a couple of the people in the film are associated with the upper class that Stillman portrays), but also because for a very short period of time I circulated with elements of that society, during a summer of bar hopping lo those many years ago.

The core person of that crowd was a fellow named Jeff Lilly, whose accent is exactly like that of some of the older characters in METROPOLITAN. He was an Andover grad who ended up at Reed College here in Portland, Oregon. Lilly was tall and thin and looked like John Cusack. He was an aspiring novelist (who wasn't in those days?) who was dissipating his talent, at least during one summer, in places like Jake's and a former bohemian club turned singles bar called the Veritable Quandary (which we called the Very-Terrible Quandary). He was funny and acerbic and aloof. We shared an interest in Nabokov and that was about all; he was pretty disdainful of me and my public school education and ignorance and social awkwardness. We were about the same age but he seemed so much more mature, civilized, and well-traveled. He also could read Greek and Latin. Me and two other buddies spent a lot of time with him that summer, but then he got a job at Coleman College in California teaching Latin, and then he was gone in a mist of ennui. I wrote him one letter; he never replied and that was the end of that. The sheer illiteracy of the letter no doubt inspired him to write me off, but at the same time it represented what I took to be the lack of attachment he and his social class embodied.

Ten years later, when I saw METROPOLITAN for the first time, I instantly cried out (inwardly, at least) Jeff Lilly!!!," after not having thought of him in eons. The film captured the dissipation, the intellectual ambition, the detachment, the snobbism unconscious or not, the secret lives, and the biting sarcasm, except that METROPOLITAN spreads it across a whole bunch of characters as it tells an Austen like tale of love and social climbing during the Christmas and debutant season in Manhattan sometime in the 1980s. The central character is Tom Townsend (Edward Clements), an interloper who becomes a sort of debutant escort despite the fact that as an intellectual radical he despites that social set. The post collegial set he comes to be involved with is the SFRP, or Sally Fowler Rat Pack, which includes Nick (Christopher Eigeman), his Charon into this group, Audrey (Carolyn Farina), who has loved Tom since school when Tom was dating Serena (Elizabeth Thompson), and Charlie (Taylor Nichols), a stammering intellectual in love with Audrey. If the film has a villain it is Rick von Sloneker (Will Kempe), Nick's nemesis for reasons that are ultimately unclear.

I seem to recall that METROPOLITAN was well-accepted by critics, but that among people I know it was disparaged as right-wing post-Reagan nostalgia with no story to speak of. Though Stillman himself comes from a family significant in Democratic Party politics, like Steven Keaton, he has gone to the other side, and his byline used to pop up in the AMERICAN SPECTATOR and other conservative journals. I found his political situation kind of fascinating, and liked the fact that he really was a writer unlike so many of the faux writers in Hollywood. And in fact the film does have a story, but it also enjoys lovingly (but not uncritically) examining its characters, who drive the plot in a way that brings reality to what is usually a critical and screenwriting guide truism. The story is Proust lite, in that we meet the characters, grow to enjoy their social set, and then see it evaporate under the feet of Tom as the times change and people move on.

I guess you have to see it to see if you'll love it, and Criterion makes that easy now to do with this fantastic disc with a restored digital transfer. The main feature is a highly informative audio commentary track with Stillman, editor Christopher Tellefsen, and actors Eigeman and Nichols, who speak primarily about the various short cuts that had to be taken to get the film made. In addition, there is an outtakes montage as well as a set of memorial outtakes of a crew member who died. Most interesting is a pair of scenes with alternative casting. In the first, Troma meister Lloyd Kaufman one of the girls is dating, and of Will Kempe temporarily playing Nick Smith. This is the second Kaufman extra I've seen on a non-Troma disc; the other was on ROCKY. Finally there is the original theatrical trailer. Since Criterion likes to pair up its directorial releases, I am hoping that there is a Criterion LAST DAYS OF DISCO in the works.

John Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (The Criterion Collection, No. 320, 100 minutes, black and white, 1939, NR, full frame, DD mono, with English subtitles, animated musical menu with 24-chapter scene selection, 32-page insert with cast, crew, transfer information, chapter titles, and two essays, by Geoffrey O'Brien and Sergei Eisenstein, dual disc keep case, two discs, $39.95, released on Tuesday, February 14, 2006) is probably his most written about of his film's within academic film publishing, most famously in a lengthy essay that appeared in SCREEN magazine in Autumn of 1972 and which was a synthesis of ideas about literature derived from Lacan, Derrida, Althusser, Foucault, Levi-Straus, Metz, and Barthe, generally filed under the handles "semiology," "structuralism," or "post-structuralism." Called "John Ford's YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, and credited to the collective editorship of CAHEIRS DU CINEMA, where it first appeared, it's a 40-page Freudian analysis of the film as an instrument of internalizing oppression. Lacan, a psychoanalyst, is probably the real godfather of this particular critical study. His notions, unprovable as science, of course, and of limited help as critical tools, were founded on the dubious ideas of Freud, the man famous for, according to Nabokov, "applying Greek myths to our private parts." It follows that the lengthy critical study was of limited use to fans of Ford, but it did announce an abrupt new direction for critical chit chat. Theory was in, art was out. Suddenly criticism served as a tool to help you understand, not why you liked a specific work, but why you hated it.

Literature and film were now the enemy. It was through the "tools" of popular culture that the dominant ideology brainwashed us into accepting its worldview, which was, of course, sexist, racist, and patriarchal. LINCOLN provided a handy tool for exorcising the hidden demons of the Establishment (an old fashioned term that the Semios never used but that's what they meant) residing in our pop culture. It's easy to make fun of the kind of pseudo-intellectual or pseudo-scientific writing that dominated film criticism in the mid-'70s to the late 1980s, but I'm lazy so I'm going to take the easy route. The writers begin by indicating that "a certain number of 'classic' films are readable … insofar as we can distinguish the historicity of their inscription." Thus, right from the beginning you realize that these people are speaking a new language, one you don't understand. And since time immemorial cults and cliques use their own private language to both brainwash their members and exclude non-believers. Here, the Law and the Word are the driving forces that Ford is seeking to honor or elevate to key principles despite logical irregularities or the sheer inhumanity of them as principles that one must obey regardless of their being nonsense.

The funny thing is that stripped of all its jargon (which would get worse in subsequent academic film writing), this essay is a pretty good model for approaching a film historically. It starts out with the setting of the times, then discusses Hollywood in the '30s, followed by a brief history of Fox and Zanuck, then Ford and Fox and Ford and Lincoln. The rest of the essay is a detailed deconstruction of how the film works "ideologically," with Lincoln representing The Law that the film advocates that we are obey. If the essay misses anything on a fundamental level it is a certain subversive quality to the "text," i.e., that Lincoln isn't much of a by the book lawyer.

The problem is, I don't like Ford much (which means that an essay exposing his pro-hegemony bias should have appealed to me). I like some of his films, love THE SEARCHERS, though really in spite of itself, and a few others, but for the most part Ford leaves me cold. I find him stagy, and I'm not much of a fan of his Irish hokum and male sentimentality, but worse, like Hawks, Ford is prone to bending the nature of his story and his characters to illustrate his rather hard morality and belief system. There is something stiff and unbending about his films. He is only "flexible" in some of his early sound comedies such as STEAMBOAT ROUND THE BEND, JUDAS PRIEST, and a few others, which may well be his best films, not the award laden official masterpieces, or the stodgy hierarchy loving westerns from the '50s (when Mann's westerns are better). I basically don't get Ford. Everyone quotes the line from THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, that when the legend becomes a fact, print the legend. Like Elaine on SEINFELD, I hear that and go, What does that mean, what does that mean? This is all in the way of a disclaimer, that the reader should not take my views on Ford seriously. Sometimes a critic has blind spots, though blind spots also have a habit of being early versions of critical insights.

Anyway, Criterion offers up an excellent package for YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, first of the film itself in a nifty new transfer, and then on the second disc with multiple features that put Ford and the film in perspective. First is a BBC OMNIBUS profile of Ford with Ford fanatic Lindsay Anderson taking us on a tour of his early career, and Henry Fonda appearing as a guest on another BBC show called PARKINSON. Next up are archival audio interviews with Ford and Fonda, conducted by the filmmaker's grandson Dan Ford, and the Academy Award Theater radio dramatization of YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, which is also downloadable as an MP3 file. Finally there is a stills gallery, which also includes Lamar Trotti's script.

When it first came out, CLASS OF 1984 (Anchor Bay, 98 minutes, color, 1982, R, 1.77:1 enhanced, DD 5.1 and Surround 2.0, "Blood and Blackboards" making of, audio commentary with director Mark Lester, trailer, TV spots, poster and stills gallery, Mark Lester bio, screenplay (DVD-ROM), animated musical menu with 16-chapter scene selection, one disc in keep case with slip case, $19.95, released on Tuesday, February 21, 2006) was reviled by some writers for its gratuitous violence. This was at a time when DEATH WISH and THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3 and numerous other films were appalling critics and driving urban audience wild with excitement, films that were portraying New York, and by association all big cities, as reliquaries of immorality, injustice, and violence. It seemed like just a revenge tale, in which a liberal, peace-loving high school music teacher, Andrew Norris (Perry King) falls into the maelstrom, wherein vicious gang leader and seeming neo-Nazi Stegman (Timothy Van Patten) rules everything, and Norris must drop all his ideals in order to exact true justice. Ultimately, it's a pretty right wing message. Today, director Mark L. Lester says he was trying to warn America about what was happening in its schools. This is not hindsight rewriting history. He did a lot of research and incorporated several shocking news incidents into the narrative.

Lester comes across as something of an egomaniac in his commentary track and the disc's making of segment, although he doesn't sound arrogant, and also when you think about it, he's right about everything he says, such as, yes, THE PRINCIPAL and a couple of other high school stories do steal CLASS OF 1984 note by note, and yes, the scene where Stegman bashes his own head against a bathroom mirror and in essence beats himself up and then blames it on Norris was the first time that sort of scene was done (FIGHT CLUB was one of the many films that later borrowed the idea). If you haven't seen it CLASS OF 1984 is not what you think it is going to be. It is not a cheap exploitation film. It is a well-made, well-acted film with a budget much higher than normal for such material, and with a mix of crude violence and political ideas that are surprisingly sophisticated.

This is the opposite of an exploitation film. If New World had made it, the bias would have been toward Stegman's gang, not for officialdom or the adults and teachers. Lester is appalled at what is happening to the young (this was one of the first films to show punk rockers). To him in this film, they are scary, they are monsters, though not without complexity. Essentially, Stegman is smarter than Norris. He is a gifted pianist, and has the skill set to run a whole gang of black marketers, pimps, and drug pushers. He is so smart that Norris is reduced to the base violence that is Stegman's stock in trade.

Thus when commentators say that the model for the film is BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, yes, it is, with what that implies about the film's orientation, that is, shock at what is happening to society. There is even a scene in which the vicious kids get back at the gentlest of teachers (Roddy McDowell) by, not breaking all his jazz records (as they do to Richard Kiley), but by killing all the biology teachers pet animals. New World and Corman films in general made their fortunes out of pandering to the youth market and mocking adults.

I really enjoyed Anchor Bay's package of materials. It's a great transfer with good sound, and a modest set of highly informative (if somewhat repetitious between them) elements. "Blood and Blackboards" is a nifty retrospective making of, that more or less tells you all you need to know about the production. The yak track with Lester (and DVD Producer Perry Martin as amanuensis) repeats some of them but adds some new information. The disc also includes the trailer, two TV spots, a poster and stills gallery, a text bio of Lester, and the whole script in DVD-ROM. Finally there are trailers for some upcoming Anchor Bay '80s films, VICE SQUAD, BAD BOYS, and HEATHERS.

And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.

Not only that, I've got a new book out on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!

And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, March 22, at 9 AM, with the critics' ten best lists.

COMING SOON: Italian horror films, giallo, and action flickers, plus Italian poster books, a package of Hitchcock movies and TV shows, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, the third annual DVD Tray of Horror, and more!

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