STAY HUNGRY (MGM) Stay Hungry is an engagingly idiosyncratic film from one of the leading lights of 1970s American cinema, Bob Rafelson, who provides an on-camera introduction as well as a commentary track for the new MGM DVD. He has great fondness for the film and admits that the relaxed atmosphere during the shoot in and around Birmingham, Alabama is one of the main reasons. He also clearly enjoyed working with his stars; Jeff Bridges and Sally Field join him on the commentary track to share their happy memories of the shoot, although Bridges is conspicuously silent about the film's other featured actor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Rafelson talks about auditioning and hiring the bodybuilder—who even then exuded great confidence—but probably doesn't take enough credit for Schwarzenegger's relaxed, engaging performance. This may well be the most unusual work the present governor of California ever did on camera. Charles Gaines' novel about the New South is the basis for this quirky, low-key social comedy, which is less interested in story than character and setting. I greatly enjoyed seeing it again, and listening to its talented collaborators.

WHEN THE DALTONS RODE (Universal) - When the Daltons Rode is part of a recent spate of vintage Westerns released in low-priced, no-frills DVD editions by Universal. Made one year after the great Destry Rides Again, this 1940 release attempts to recapture some of that film's success by bringing an A-list cast and production values to a fairly routine story. Destry director George Marshall apparently believed that there was no such thing as a bad time for comedy relief, which spoils the film’s chances of being taken too seriously, but it's great fun to watch a slick production with so many likable and familiar actors going through their paces. The cast list just doesn't quit: Randolph Scott, Broderick Crawford, Brian Donlevy, George Bancroft, Andy Devine (who provides most of the broad comedy counterpoint), Stuart Erwin, Frank Albertson take the leading roles, with Mary Gordon (Mrs. Hudson of the Sherlock Holmes movie) as Ma Dalton, and Edgar Buchanan bookending the movie with some very amusing comic spiel. If leading lady Kay Francis was wondering how she wound up in a film like this after a decade of glamorous starring roles at Warner Bros she doesn't show it; she's likable and believable as the hardy Western woman who comes between Scott and Crawford. Print quality is generally first-rate.

ACROSS THE BRIDGE (Shanachie) - Across the Bridge is based on a novella by Graham Greene (most recently remade, poorly, as a vehicle for comedian Eddie Griffin called Double Negative), so naturally it deals with morality as well as suspense. Veteran director Ken Annakin provides an informative look behind the scenes of this well-regarded film in an on-camera interview accompanied by copious production photos. He also explains how a British production company set about to make a film set mostly in Texas and Mexico in England and Spain. Rod Steiger gives a typically commanding performance as an unscrupulous German businessman who flees his home base in London, hoping to reach a safe haven from Scotland Yard in Mexico. The film's central device--a bridge between two countries that represents freedom for Steiger--is still effective, even if some other elements of the story date somewhat.

TITANIC (Kino Video) - Bravo to the folks at Kino for continuing to bring us the best of world cinema, past and present. The video release of this little-seen German production from 1943 is especially notable. Although approved by Joseph Goebbels, it was banned ion its own country for fear that its scenes of panic would prove too distressing to the German public in the middle of Allied air raids. When it was finally shown there in 1949 an epilogue, in which a maritime court hears a German officer blame the famous sinking on the head of the White Star Line, was excised. It's here in this version, along with a closing statement to its (intended) wartime audience about the "eternal English quest for profit" that spurred the disaster at sea. The enduring fascination with the Titanic's maiden voyage makes the film quite watchable, even though its dramatic intrigues are no more inspired than those of the later American films. Some of the miniature work is impressive for its time, and Kino's notes claim that some shots were reused in the British film A Night to Remember. Titanic is a fascinating footnote to film history, and it's great to have it available uncut on DVD.

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (MGM) - When this 1962 film was reissued—and rediscovered—in 1988, the DVD hadn’t come along, yet someone was smart enough to get director John Frankenheimer, screenwriter George Axelrod, and producer-star Frank Sinatra together to discuss the film on camera. That conversation, though brief, is even more valuable today since all three collaborators have died, and Sinatra rarely discussed his film career. We are also lucky that Frankenheimer was an early advocate of director commentaries during the laserdisc era, and left behind a string of candid and comprehensive monologues about his work.

Two new pieces have been added for this DVD: an interesting interview with Angela Lansbury about her unforgettable work on this film, and a lively tribute by William Friedkin, a great admirer of Frankenheimer in general and this film in particular.

One word of warning: if you’ve never seen The Manchurian Candidate, be sure to watch the film before sampling the extra features, which give away essential story points.

All of this makes the timely release of this DVD a home video event, all the more so given the imminent release of the remake starring Denzel Washington, Liev Schreiber, and Meryl Streep. Revisiting the original film confirms what everyone pretty much knew from the get-go: they have their work cut out for them.

WALT DISNEY TREASURES: MICKEY MOUSE IN COLOR VOL. 2, THE CHRONOLOGICAL DONALD, WALT DISNEY ON THE FRONT LINES, WALT DISNEY’S TOMORROWLAND - (Walt Disney Home Video) - I cannot pretend to be objective about these DVDs, as I am their host and co-producer. I’m also very proud of them and want to call them to your attention. This marks the third “wave” of Treasures, finally available after a production problem caused a delay from their original December street date.

I’m especially fond of such early 40s short subjects as The Nifty Nineties and Symphony Hour, and I daresay even hardcore Disneyphiles may not have seen Mickey’s introductory segments for The Mickey Mouse Club in color before; they were never broadcast that way.

Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland is a collection I’m especially proud of, incorporating the famous Man in Space shows produced and directed by Ward Kimball for the Disneyland TV show in the mid-1950s. I’ve already heard from someone who works at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, confirming that many people of his generation got the “space bug” by watching these forward-thinking shows when they were new. Animation fans will revel in the wildly original and highly stylized cartoon segments devised by Kimball for these shows. Our set also includes Our Friend the Atom (which spawned a highly successful companion textbook), Walt’s original, full-length proposal film for Walt Disney World and Epcot (designed to be the city of the future), and new interviews with head Imagineer Marty Sklar and author Ray Bradbury, who talk about Walt as Futurist.

Finally, there is Walt Disney On the Front Lines, a compilation that many people thought would never see the light of day. For decades, the Disney company has kept most of its World War Two animation under lock and key, worried that it would be inappropriate to show to children, and that some of it might be offensive, since it caricatures the people who were our enemy during the 1940s. Fortunately, the Treasures series offered the company an appropriate outlet to allow these remarkable films to be rediscovered. If you’ve never seen Der Fuehrer’s Face or Education for Death, or not yet had a chance to see the rarely-screened feature film Victory Through Air Power, I hope you’ll seize this opportunity. I’ve taken some gibes for my mea culpa introductions to the more sensitive films on this set (and the others, too), but this was the only responsible way to present them to a p.c.-sensitized public of 2004. Besides, it would be foolish and unproductive to show any dated material without putting it into a proper historical context.

FIRST SOUND OF MOVIES (Inkwell Images)

Maurice H. Zouary has spent much of his life cataloguing, preserving, and championing the work of Dr. Lee DeForest, who exhibited talking pictures years before Al Jolson made history in The Jazz Singer. Now, at last, some of DeForest’s landmark Phonofilms of the 1920s are available on DVD, as part of an interesting forty-five minute documentary directed by Ray Pointer.

To see Eddie Cantor bound on stage and go into his act, or see Weber and Fields and Eva Puck and Sammy White perform their famous routines, as if we were watching them from the front row of the Palace Theater, is genuinely exciting. Ben Bernie and his Orchestra play two complete numbers, as do Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. There is even a 1924 speech by President Calvin Coolidge about the importance of income taxes. We also see excerpts of Max Fleischer’s groundbreaking Bouncing Ball cartoons, including the first words of dialogue ever uttered by a cartoon character on screen, “Follow the ball and join in, everybody.”

This straightforward documentary does its job well, documenting the way the film industry appropriated (and bypassed) DeForest’s idea of recording sound directly onto film, in direct violation of his patents. It’s a fascinating story, just as interesting as the Phonofilms themselves. To purchase this disc, as well as other silent-era animation, go to www.inkwellimagesink.com.

THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE (Criterion Collection) .

David Kalat provides an informative commentary, and hosts an additional feature that offers side-by-side comparisons of the German original, the French-language version shot simultaneously by Lang, and the heavily truncated and dubbed American release version of the 1950s.

Better yet, there is a generous excerpt from a 1960s interview conducted with Lang by German filmmaker Hans Eisler. Here, the director takes center stage as a master raconteur, and he is every bit as fascinating as Mabuse himelf.

Michael Farin discusses the character’s creator, Norbert Jacques, and sets the character into historical context, and Testament costar Rudolf Schundler recalls working with Lang.

This is not to dismiss The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, which has a significant place in history as a film that dared to liken its criminal “hero” to Hitler, though not in so many words. The film also has some genuinely startling moments that essayist Tom Gunning correctly describes as hallucinatory. For anyone who admires the work of Fritz Lang, it is required viewing. Criterion’s presentation makes it all the more valuable for any film buff or student.

THE JUDY GARLAND COLLECTION: MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, FOR ME AND MY GAL, ZIEGFELD GIRL, IN THE GOOD OLD SUMMERTIME, LOVE FINDS ANDY HARDY (Warner Home Video) — Here is another prime example of genuine film archivism at work in the commercial marketplace.  Not only does each of these vintage MGM Judy Garland films

MYRA BRECKINRIDGE — The years have not improved this notorious—and notoriously awful—1970 film about a man's fantasy of becoming a woman, but the new DVD from Fox is still worthwhile.  That's because everything about the film is interesting, except the film itself.  Director Michael Sarne, the wunderkind who was hired to bring Gore Vidal's “unfilmable” novel to the screen, provides a candid commentary track in which he details

the pressures he faced, the choices he made, and his unwavering admiration for Mae West.  He also has high praise for Raquel Welch, who saw this as a valuable opportunity to break out of her sexpot image and play the juicy role of a transsexual.  Welch than has her turn in a separate commentary.  While Sarne still finds much to admire in the film, Welch regards it the same way many others do:  as an unmitigated disaster.  Still, it's interesting to hear her perspective on the project, and her thoughts about her costars and collaborators.  Finally, there is a half-hour episode of the AMC series Backstory which neatly sums up the history of the film, interviewing Sarne, Welch, costar Rex Reed, and studio executive David Brown.
     Revisiting Myra after all these years, I take just a few things of value away from the experience: a  reminder of Mae West's extraordinary screen presence, even as an octogenarian... admiration for John H

uston's hearty performance as former cowboy hero Buck Loner (Sarne says he wanted to cast Mickey Rooney, but Huston lobbied to play the part)... and one brief but unforgettable scene in which Huston plays cards with three old cowboy cronies—Andy Devine, Grady Sutton, and B.S. Pully.  You just don't see gatherings like that often enough.

THOSE MAGNIFICENT MEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES — It seems to me that movies now have to be identified as being B.C. and A.C.—that is, before computers and after.  Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines used plenty of movie magic to spin its entertaining yarn, but achieved much of its success by doing things the old-fashioned way:  building enormous sets, constructing replicas of ancient aircraft and actually flying them.  What a concept! 
     Fox has bargain-priced this new DVD as one of its “Family Feature” series, and it fits that category quite well:  it's a big, sprawling, comedy adventure yarn, and it retains all of its entertainment value for viewers young and old alike, from Red Skelton's hilarious prologue through Ronald Searle's cartoon titles and the accompanying song.
     For film buffs, the main attraction is a full-length commentary track (originally recorded for laserdisc) by director and co-writer Ken Annakin, who remembers everything about the production as if it were yesterday.  There's also a brand-new twenty-minute interview with the spry 89-year-old filmmaker in which he details the adventure of planning and shooting this epic-scale comedy... from dealing with his actors to hiring just the right people to create and fly his fleet of antique planes.
     Alas, no one shot behind-the-scenes footage for this 1965 feature, but Annakin's production photos supplement his vivid descriptions of how the planes were constructed, and how some amazing structures were rigged to make them airborne for certain trick shots.

MAD LOVE: THE FILMS OF EVGENI BAUER — Every film buff and scholar I know of lives for the thrill of making discoveries:  coming upon that unsung or forgotten gem.  I was not present at the Pordenone film festival when Evgeni Bauer's long-unseen silent films were first unveiled, nor had I caught up with them in their subsequent screenings.  That's why I'm especially excited about Milestone's new DVD, produced in cooperation with the British film Institute.
     Here are three extraordinary silent feature films, made as early as 1913, which reveal a sophistication of storytelling and cinematic technique to rival any film made a decade or more later.  Milestone's promotional copy doesn't exaggerate when it says, “Russian film poet Evgeni Bauer combined the technical virtuosity of D.W. Griffith the haunting terror of Edgar Allan Poe and the artist's eye of Johannes Vermeer.  He is –perhaps—the great film director you have never heard of.”
     Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913), After Death (1915), and The Dying Swan (1916) are all haunting psychological dramas that make use of lighting, staging, editing, and a moving camera to enhance atmosphere and underscore the characters' feelings.  They are unmistakably Russian in their moodiness, but universal in their depiction of troubled, even tortured, characters.  I found them mesmerizing.
     Russian film scholar Yuri Tsivian provides a helpful visual essay that spotlights Bauer's innovations and puts them in a larger context.  The newly-commissioned chamber music scores are ideal.  If you love silent film, I urge you to seek out this disc.

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS — Cecil B. DeMille had an extraordinary career by any standards, although his place in the critical pantheon has never been secure.  I'm an unabashed fan of his work, from his earliest silents to his splashiest spectacles.  The Ten Commandments (1956), DeMille's final film as director, bears his unmistakable mark, all his strengths and many of his peccadilloes.  It's still a spectacular piece of filmmaking, and, as its yearly showings on network television confirm, still a crowd-pleaser.
     The new two-disc DVD from Paramount has six mini-documentaries on various facets of the film's production.  There is behind-the-scenes footage, home movies, production stills, and comments from Charlton Heston, granddaughter Cecilia DeMille Presley (who was present for the filming), composer Elmer Bernstein, and actors Eugene Mazzola (who played the Pharoah's son), and Lisa Mitchell. (It's sobering to realize that most of the leading players, even younger ones like John Derek, are now gone.  It would be nice to hear from some of the other survivors like Yvonne De Carlo and Debra Paget, however.) 
     While this background material is far from definitive, it does paint a rich portrait of DeMille and this particular production.  The rest of the story is covered quite nicely by Katherine Orrison, author of Written in Stone—Making Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, who provides a full-length commentary track. 
     The presentation includes an Overture and Intermission, and Mr. DeMille's on-camera introduction, in front of a stage curtain.  The film itself looks quite good, although I am still hopeful that some day Paramount will mount a full-scale restoration of the Technicolor epic. 

Soon to be relesased

INVADERS FROM MARS  (Image Entertainment) – There are some films that, if encountered in childhood, make a lifelong impression:  one of them is William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars (1953), a staple of local television for several decades.  The story is told from a young boy’s point of view, which makes the menace of invading aliens all the more potent, especially when the Martians overtake his mom and dad.  The new DVD from Image Entertainment offers two separate versions of the picture:  U.S. and British.
          There are two key changes in the British edition:  the addition of a seven-minute talking-head scene in Arthur Franz’s office, and the deletion of the final montage, which reveals that the whole story has been a dream.  Thus, in England, the nightmare was genuine!  (What’s more, Jimmy Hunt’s parents have not been rescued, so he’s tucked into bed by his grownup friends, scientist Franz and psychologist Helena Carter.)
          The print is far from perfect, because the original negative was subjected to so much wear over the years, but the colors are rich, and I suspect most fans will forgive the flaws.

PEPE LE MOKO  (Criterion/Home Vision) – All hail the Criterion Collection for providing still more definitive DVD editions of timeless film classics.  Pepe Le Moko is the landmark film starring French screen icon Jean Gabin as the king of the underworld in the impenetrable Casbah region of Algiers.  The cops can’t touch him, and the one policeman who patiently stays on his tail has  developed a grudging respect for him.  The arrival of a beautiful woman from the outside world seals Pepe’s fate.  The film could have been just a potboiler, but it is so beautifully shot and staged, so hauntingly performed by Gabin, and became so influential that it’s justly regarded as a classic.  The disc has a number of outstanding extra features, including a lengthy excerpt from a French television documentary about Gabin, a 1960s interview with director Duvivier, and a scene-by-scene comparison of Pepe with its equally popular American remake, Algiers, which starred Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr.  Wonderful stuff.

TROUBLE IN PARADISE (Criterion/Home Vision) – Criterion scores again with this edition of Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece.  Herbert Marshall, Miriam Hopkins, and Kay Francis star in possibly the most elegant comedy ever made, about two thieves who fall in love...until their latest “mark” gets in the way.  Peter Bogdanovich provides an eloquent and informative introduction, while other admirers (myself included) offer written statements about this cinematic gem.  Lubitsch’s biographer Scott Eyman has much more to say in his running commentary track to enhance one’s appreciation of the film and its peerless filmmaker.  As a bonus, Criterion has included a Screen Guild Playhouse radio adaptation from 1940, and a rarely-seen Lubitsch silent film from 1917, Das Fidele Gefangnis/The Merry Jail, starring Emil Jannings.  Then there is Trouble in Paradise itself, a joy to watch, especially in this flawless copy. 

THE MYSTERY OF PICASSO (Milestone) – I am grateful to the folks at Milestone Film and Video for restoring this precious film to circulation—and enabling me to see it for the first time.  In the 1950s, French filmmaker Henri Georges Clouzot (Diabolique, The Wages of Fear) asked Pablo Picasso to participate in an experiment, and create works of art on camera.  Special paper and inks were prepared so the camera could trace the evolution of each painting from the opposite side of the canvas.  Needless to say, the results are mesmerizing.  Midway through the film, Clouzot breaks the spell, so to speak, by showing us his modus operandi, and revealing Picasso at work, but this only heightens the drama.  The film’s final segment was originally shown in widescreen CinemaScope, which is preserved in this video transfer.

SECRET AGENT X-9 and JUNGLE JIM (VCI Entertainment) – Serial fans rejoice:  two rare Universal titles from the 1930s are now available for the first time on vhs and DVD, thanks to the tireless efforts of VCI.  Both were held up for years because the rights belonged to King Features Syndicate, the owner of the comic strips from which they derived.  (Secret Agent X-9 was the creation of Dashiell Hammett, while Jungle Jim was penned by Flash Gordon’s Alex Raymond.)  Fortunately, the films don’t seem to have suffered terribly from years of dormancy, and they look great.
          Both films hew to movie serial formula, and use tons of stock footage, sometimes a bit too blatantly.  X-9 has a villain whose face is never seen, some red herrings who may or may not be bad guys, a beautiful but mysterious heroine (played by Jean Rogers, who played Dale Arden to Buster Crabbe’s Flash Gordon the previous year), hidden staircases, and lots of fistfights.
          Jim is  more surprising because, while it follows the dictates of outdoor adventure, it creates genuine excitement with its wild-animal footage and some rather remarkable interaction between men and beast.  Its chapter endings are impressive, too, without the cheating that marks so many of the cliffhangers in X-9.  Both films benefit from the villainy of Henry Brandon.
          When my daughter was very young, I started showing her serials and just like kids of an earlier day, she got caught up in the curiosity of what was going to happen next.  Once a kid is exposed to the hip cynicism of today, I doubt they can shed their protective coating of cool and give in to the simplicity of a serial... whereas I, retreating from the harsh realities of the 21^st century, delight in the joys of this elemental entertainment.  For more information and listings of other serials, go to www.vcientertainment.com.
 
 
SIROCCO (Columbia/TriStar) – Humphrey Bogart is my all-time favorite actor, yet for some reason I’d never seen this 1951 movie, which Bogart’s company Santana produced for

Columbia Pictures.  I’d always read that it was a half-baked attempt to rekindle some of the ingredients that made Casablanca such a success, and that’s true.  The setting is Damascus in 1926, when the French Army is battling Syrian insurgents.  Commander Everett Sloane knows it’s a dirty job, but he wants to achieve victory; his chief of intelligence, Lee J. Cobb, insists that negotiation will save a lot of needless bloodshed.  Bogart is the cool, cocky head of the local black market, whose only allegiance is to making a buck...that is, until he meets Cobb’s beautiful mistress, Marta Toren.  Sirocco is strictly formula stuff, but it’s a perfect example of how Hollywood could take ordinary material and still make it entertaining, through sheer professional polish in the writing, staging, art direction, and casting.  Zero Mostel,  Gerald Mohr, and Nick Dennis head the colorful supporting cast, who perform well under Curtis Bernhardt’s direction.

My only complaint is that Columbia/TriStar made no effort to clean or de-speck their source material.  The film is sharp and clear, as is the soundtrack; with just a little effort, it could have looked even better.

ROMAN HOLIDAY–  William Wyler’s delightful 1953 film about a princess and her whirlwind romance with an American reporter propelled Audrey Hepburn to international stardom and earned her an Academy Award.  It’s been lovingly restored by Paramount, using digital technology to clean and refurbish the picture and sound, frame by frame.  There’s even a feature on the disc describing and illustrating the restoration process.  If you’ve never seen Roman Holiday, you’re in for a treat. If you’re revisiting it, you’re sure to be pleased with this presentation.  There is a making-of featurette that includes Hepburn’s first screen test and comments by Catherine Wyler (the filmmakers’ daughter), costar Eddie Albert, film critic Molly Haskell, and Paramount veteran A.C. Lyles.  (Hepburn’s leading man Gregory Peck is heard from in older interview footage.) The disc also includes an interesting featurette on costume designer Edith Head; it’s been seen before on other Paramount DVDs.  With this release and Sunset Blvd. Paramount has shown a commitment to its classic films that’s worthy of praise; let’s hope it leads to more vintage films on DVD.

WALT DISNEY TREASURES: Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume 1; The Complete Goofy; Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio (Disney) – I can’t, and won’t, pretend to be objective about these deluxe DVD releases, because I host and co-produce them.  I mention them here because I’m so proud of them.  Their quality is due in large part to the untiring efforts of Jeff Kurtti and his staff at Kurtti-Pellerin.  Jeff has written a number of Disney-related books, and he and I approach these videos with one thought:  to create the kind of videos we’d want to see ourselves.
      The folks at Disney have been generous in allowing us to pursue that goal, so the latest double-disc, tin-cased, limited-edition Treasures (which follow the four released last December) are intended for the diehard Disneyphile.  Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume 1, contains the same lineup of b&w cartoons as the laserdisc edition of a decade ago, but we have managed to upgrade the quality on a number of titles, use the uncensored version of Steamboat Willie, and even “windowbox” the early-talkies so that none of the action spills off the edge of the TV frame.  I am proudest of the interview I conducted with those remarkable Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston about their relationship with, and thoughts about, Mickey.
      The Complete Goofy is just that, every starring cartoon short featuring the Goof, beginning with Goofy and Wilbur from 1939.  We decided to illustrate animator Art Babbitt’s justly famous lecture about “what makes the Goof tick” from 1935, and the collection also includes a mini-biography of Goofy’s vocal creator, Pinto Colvig, and the talented guy who now does his voice, Bill Farmer.
      I confess that Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studio is my favorite of the three, because it brings together so many segments that have great meaning to me.  It was through watching Walt Disney on his weekly Disneyland TV series in the 1950s and 60s that I developed my passion for cartoons, and we have three of the landmark shows that sparked that flame:  The Story of the Animated Drawing, Tricks of Our Trade, and The Plausible Impossible.  These exceptional shows about the art and history of animation weren’t aimed at a specialized PBS-type audience, nor did they air on a cable TV channel; they were shown in prime time to an enormous, mainstream audience.  I’m sure I’m not the only kid who was mesmerized.  The 1941 feature film The Reluctant Dragon features another hero of mine, humorist Robert Benchley, taking a circuitous tour of the Disney studio. One of the animated highlights is a sequence called Baby Weems, and nonagenarian Joe Grant talks about its creation in a brief interview. 
      Response to these discs has been heartwarming, to say the least.  Other Disney fans and aficionados have confirmed what Jeff and I always felt:  we are not alone in our love of this material.  I’m happy to say that we’re already working on four more titles for next year.

SUNSHINE STATE  (Columbia/TriStar) – I believe John Sayles is one of the few real originals in American filmmaking.  I was introduced to his work years ago when his first homegrown movie Return of the Secaucus 7 became a surprise success, and I’ve been a fan ever since.
      Sayles is first and foremost a writer, and he is surely one of the most incisive and articulate filmmakers around.  That’s what makes listening to the commentary track on the DVD of his newest film, Sunshine State, so rewarding.  Edie Falco, Timothy Hutton, Angela Bassett, Mary Steenburgen, Alan King, Miguel Ferrer, Mary Alice, Bill Cobbs, Jane Alexander, and Ralph Waite head the cast of this sprawling film about a community in Florida with long-established black and white neighborhoods, and how the longtime residents deal with the encroachment of greedy developers.  Some might find the film too talky, but I revel in the characters and their dialogue, because Sayles’ writing is always so good.
      Sayles doesn’t wax philosophical on his audio track; instead, he talks about the nuts and bolts of making a movie, and all the challenges that face a director who’s working on a tight budget.  (For one scene set in a town square, he and his production designer worked out a plan ahead of time so he could turn his camera around and use the same extras in the background of the reverse shot, dressed in different clothes.)  His admiration for actors, both his stars and the people who fill the tiniest parts, is obvious.  And his pragmatism makes his discussions about setups, editing choices, and the introduction of each new character a kind of master class in filmmaking.

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD – MGM has released a stunning new DVD of the 1940 Alexander Korda classic.  There are no bells and whistles on the disc, which is too bad, considering both its history and its significance, but it’s hard to complain when a reasonably-priced disc offers such a beautiful copy of this wonderful film.
     The Thief of Bagdad is a storybook come to life, with lavish production values and eye-popping use of Technicolor.  Its special effects, which wowed audiences of the time, have long been eclipsed by computer imagery and might seem primitive to modern eyes.  But what modern films lack is the feeling of wonder and amazement that goes along with those effects.
     This is not a case of “seeing is believing.”  Quite the opposite.  This is the kind of adventure yarn that invites the viewer to cast away the shackles of reality and believe in all it has to offer.  It was made before the Age of Cynicism, and that’s what makes it so refreshing. 
      I had forgotten how much the Disney animation team relied on this film for inspiration when it made Aladdin.  The design of Jaffar and the Sultan, in particular, owe a lot to the actors and their costumes in this production.  The cast couldn’t be better:  Sabu, John Justin, June Duprez, the inimitable Conrad Veidt (as Jaffar) and the unsung Rex Ingram (as the Genie) are the ideal personification of Arabian Nights characters come to life.  Miklos Rozsa’s justly famous score adds the icing on the cake. 
      I don’t know if today’s kids could shed their postmodern mindset, or have the patience to accept the film’s expository buildup before opening its bag of tricks.  But I know that anyone who’s young at heart will find romance, adventure, and sheer joy in this beautiful film.

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP – Once again film buffs can be grateful to the Criterion Collection for setting the standard in production of classic films on DVD.  This superb film by The Archers, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, existed only in edited, faded, even black and white edited prints, for years.  It was finally restored in England in the 1980s, and that is the stunning Technicolor version presented here.
      In 1988, Martin Scorsese recorded a commentary track with his hero, Michael Powell, for the laserdisc release of Blimp, which of course is even more valuable today since Powell is no longer alive.  New to video is a 24-minute British documentary about the film with illuminating comments by film scholar Ian Christie, actor/author Stephen Fry, Emeric Pressburger’s grandson and biographer, and cinematographer Jack Cardiff (who also helped to supervise the film’s new digital transfer).  A booklet includes the late Ronald Haver’s eloquent essay about this exceptional film.
      The wonderful Roger Livesey stars as a military man who lives through three wars, and sees the civilized world of his youth fade away.  Deborah Kerr plays the three women in his life, and Anthon Walbrook is his German counterpart, a professional soldier who becomes his lifelong comrade. 
      As with most of the Powell-Pressburger movies (I Know Where I’m Going, A Matter of Life and Death/Stairway to Heaven, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes) this one embraces tradition, innovation, social commentary, and what Scorsese pinpoints as “unreality.”  It’s the kind of movie that can only be appreciated in its proper historical context, which is why these materials are so welcome.
 
TUVALU is a charmingly eccentric fairy tale from writer-director Veit Helmer.  It has the look and feel of a surreal silent film, with a stylized color palette that gives the appearance of hand-tinting.  A nearly-silent film, it tells its story in visual terms and takes place in a unique setting:  a decaying public bath building in a crumbling city.  There, a young daydreamer does his best to keep things running, and hide the operation’s problems from its blind and aged owner.  The young man falls in love with a beautiful girl who is drawn to him while swimming with her father, but an accident interrupts their reverie.  Tuvalu isn’t easy to describe, but it won me over completely.  The DVD includes a short subject from the same filmmaker.