Scenes From a Mall
DAWN OF THE DEAD
The first thing I learned from Anchor Bay's new disc of DAWN OF THE DEAD was that cult director George Romero doesn't really care about the zombie genre all that much. He probably doesn't need to. But it is odd that the man who has thrown so many geeky fans into paroxysms of ecstasy with his trilogy of zombie films, plus THE CRAZIES (the medical nightmare film that inspired 28 DAYS LATER), isn't particularly emotionally invested in the genre.
Romero, then making commercials for his Pittsburg ad agency, famously made NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD as a cunning means of breaking into the movie business, perceiving, as many had before and after, that an inexpensively made horror film could make a tidy profit on the drive-in circuit. I'm sure he is proud of the film, and he should be, and he is intellectually and emotionally attached to some of his other horror films, such as MARTIN, but he doesn't really care about the zombie genre per se.
We know this because he turned his first sequel to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD into a comedy. One could argue successfully that the first film was itself a comedy, and that comedy and horror are tones that are inextricably linked. But still, instead of heightening the thrills and suspense, as an ordinary director might, Romero instead relished in taking the opportunity, 11 years after its predecessor, to turn DAWN OF THE DEAD into a bleak report on American consumerist society at the dawn of the Reagan era.
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For many years, DAWN OF THE DEAD was the best zombie film, and may still be. It's the best for the simple reason that it isn't "just" a zombie film. As the four lone survivors — traffic reporter and chopper pilot David Emge, TV station emp Gaylen Ross, and SWAT guys Ken Foree and Scott Reiniger — seize, take over, and barricade themselves in a shopping mall, they are so insulated and safe that they soon revert back to their old societal ways, dining out and playing games, but with the hollowness of their activities haunting them, as they know that out there society has fallen apart. But their idyll is squelched not by their own boredom, but by an invading gang of motorcycle scum (co-lead by special effects guy Tom Savini), who make sport with the slow-moving zombies, and with their barbarism bring down the miniature civilization that the foursome have created. Romero is as obsessed by motorcycle gangs as John Milius.
DAWN OF THE DEAD is in color, of course, and in general has a lighter tone than the first film (the zombies themselves are often comical), and the last scene even offers a meager ray of hope that the world can overcome the zombie epidemic. DAWN remains not only one of the best zombie movies, but one of the best sequels ever, with Romero rethinking and in some ways undermining the essence of what made the first film a cult hit. He rethought it even further in DAY OF THE DEAD, a treatise on the horrors of militarism, and according to the disc, he may even do a fourth film.
Despite the fact that Anchor Bay is releasing a three-disc set of the movie later in 2004, this solo DiviMax pressing made to coincide with the remake is a fine production. The anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is excellent, reportedly a vast improvement over previous DVDs and even the theatrical release print, which was apparently too dark. This transfer is so good you can see how bad a formula they used on the blood for the film. Audio options include DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 5.1, 2.0, and 2.0 mono.
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Significantly, the disc has an array of pretty good extras, which may be just a forecast of the three disc set to come, leading off with a new commentary track with featuring Romero, his wife Chris (who was an assistant director on the film), and special effects-make up artist Tom Savini, all moderated by Anchor Bay DVD Producer Perry Martin. It's a fine, informative track, though probably old news to the die-hard fans. The only reaction I had to the track was that Romero's wife seemed to be a drag on the proceedings, contracting her husband, putting him down occasionally, and generally sounding unsupportive.
After the commentary track, the rest of the material on the disc consists of trailers and pix: two anamorphically presented theatrical trailers, three TV spots, and nine radio spots, which play over a still from the film. There is also a gallery of posters, ads, and publicity photos from the film, followed by a characteristically detailed Anchor Bay bio of Romero, and finally a faux "preview" of a comic book version of the film. And there are reputedly two Easter eggs on the disc, which I didn't bother to look for because I don't believe in Easter eggs.
An animated, musical menu offers 24-chapter scene selection. DAWN OF THE DEAD: DIVIMAX SPECIAL EDITION was released on March 9, 2004, and comes in a keep case for $19.95.
Husbands and Wives
SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE
There are two Ingmar Bergmans. There is the dour, self-searching Swede of dark images, such as a scythe-wielding Death leading a conga line of celebratants, or playing chess with a knight. And then there is the reality-seeking Swede who relentlessly peers into the heart of human relationships. There aren't a lot of comedies in the old guy, though he has made some. But the point is that though Bergman is most famous for the vivid images of THE SEVENTH SEAL, in fact he is more frequently the realistic "relationship" Bergman, in a sense the first "dogme" director, especially in his career-saving mini-series SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE.
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I've never seen the long version of the film (though I think it was shown on PBS some time in the late '70s). Originally, Bergman made SCENES as a six part series for Scandinavian television (after finding it difficult to raise funding for some film projects). The shows were condensed to an approximately three-hour film for export, and that's what most people saw. The Criterion Collection, in its infinite wisdom, has release SCENES in both formats, the six hour show, and the three hour movie. Film students can marvel at the dexterity with which Bergman confronted the challenge of reducing his masterwork, and fans of the film can wallow in the glorious excess of the full story.
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SCENES is an examination of two people whom Bergman dubs "emotional illiterates." They are college prof Johan (Erland Josephson, who from this point on took over from Max Von Sydow as Bergman's on screen double), and Marianne (Liv Ullmann), a divorce lawyer. The six "scenes" drop in on them at various stages of their relationship. The work starts with the couple being interviewed by a newspaper reporter on their "perfect" marriage. When the story is published it is the cause for hilarity with Johan and Marianne, and another couple as they dine (the wife played by Bergman reg Bibi Andersson). The couple ends up fighting viciously, and later in the night, Marianne tells Johan that she is pregnant. Later she has an abortion. It's clear that these events are the seeds of their later rupture.
Episode two (perhaps the most brilliant of the six one hour eps) follows the couple in the course of one day, waking up, going to work, meeting for a play, and talking afterwards. In the third scene, Johan dumps his wife for a young chick named Paula, and it is a brutal break up, Johan appearing truly horrible. In Four, the couple, broken up, have a reunion over dinner in Marianne's house. In the most brutal of the episodes, scene five has the pair meeting in Johan's office to sign the divorce papers and having a vicious fight. Finally, in scene six, comes the rather surprising, but all too human ending.
Strindberg was a major influence on Bergman, and it is most apparent in SCENE's seesaw scenes of confession, reconciliation, hesitancy, and obfuscation. Johan is a rat, but no self-aware male can avoid identifying with him. Marianne is self-deluded, but over the six episodes finds a measure of strength. What I find amazing is that Bergman can truly make art out of these intimate conversations. You don't necessarily remember them in detail later, as you would dialogue from a Shakespeare or Shaw play, but while you are listening to them, they have depths, layers, and mysterious eddies. Josephson and Ullmann are, almost needless to say, brilliant, as Bergman's camera bores in on them.
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Criterion, drawing upon the Janus collection of films once again, goes easy on the extras to concentrate instead on the bulky work itself and its wrenching photography by Sven Nykvist, who shot the film in 16mm. Both versions come full frame (1.33:1), with monaural Swedish 1.0 audio and optional English subtitles, and each disc bears but one supplement. The first disc features a 15-minute TV interview from 1986 with Bergman. Disc two offers a new 24-minute interview with leads Josephson and Ullmann. Finally, disc three contains a new 15 minute video interview with Bergman scholar Peter Cowie who charts the variations between the two versions of the film, the differences amounting to the deletion of Johan and Marianne's kids, the subplot about the abortion, and a scene between Marianne and her recently widowed mother. The whole package comes in a triple-DVD keep-case, and hit the street on March 16th for $49.95.
Shadows and Fog
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Here's a version of THE TEN COMMANDMENTS you never saw, and I am not referring to Cecil B. DeMille's weird two-partish silent 1923 film, which starred Richard Dix and Rod La Rocque. I'm talking about the 1956 version, which Paramount has just released on a two-disc set, packaged like the tablets Moses brought down from the Mount, one atop the other.
Everyone knows that Charlton Heston plays Moses. And many of us also know that Yul Brynner, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, Edward G. Robinson, Nina Foch, a pre-Bo John Derek, and Anne Baxter also appeared in the film. But as we learn from the informative audio commentary track on the film by Katherine Orrison (who wrote a book about the making of the film), the cast of the movie could have been wholly different.
I'm assuming that you have seen and perhaps even loved the film here, but imagine if you will that instead of Nina Foch playing the princess, it was Jayne Meadows (she didn't want to leave New York). Also imagine if you will that William Holden was Rameses, not Brynner. Further imagine that instead of Anne Baxter, you saw Katharine Hepburn in the role of Moses's Egyptian lover (she didn't look good in the diaphanous drapery). Don't concern yourself with Flora Robson in the Judith Anderson role because you probably don't know who either of them is. But do try to visualize Jack Palance in the Robinson role. No, I can't either. Most surprising, Clint Walker, of later TV western fame, was originally slated to be Joshua (he's still in the film, as a spear-carrier). Finally, the big news is that Charlton Heston was not DeMille's first choice. William Boyd was. Yes, Hopalong Cassidy. The golden haired horse opera star. That was DeMille's idea of Moses, the bringer of the Law to the people of earth.
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But then, this is a muscular, sexy Moses. A man with needs. The sort of bare-chested hunk who creates a tizzy at the local watering hole when he shows up and seven daughters all want to be his seven brides. Once you get past the idea that there is something vulgarly sacrilegious about the whole enterprise, there is a lot of campy fun in the film, from Price's fruity villain, to the lush colors (beautifully transferred onto this Paramount set), and the stolid earnestness of Heston, in his first biblical epic, a genre with which he will forever be coupled. As French critic Michel Mourlet once wrote: "Charlton Heston is an axiom. By himself alone he constitutes a tragedy, and his presence is any film whatsoever suffices to create beauty. The contained violence expressed by the somber phosphorescence of his eyes, his eagle's profile, the haughty arch of his eyebrows, his prominent cheekbones, the bitter and hard curve of his mouth, the fabulous power of his torso; this what he possesses and what not even the worst director can degrade"(I got this quote from Raymond Durgnat's exquisitely dense book FILMS AND FEELINGS).
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Paramount's "Special Collector's Edition" offers THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in a superb widescreen transfer (1.78:1), enhanced for widescreen TVs, and with both Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby 2.0 Surround audio options. Besides Orrison's devoted chat (she never fails to use the honorific when refereeing to the men who made the movie), there is also a 37-minute documentary on the making of the film (which is divided up into six parts to make it sound bigger on the box), some newsreel footage from the premiere, two trailers, and a ten-minute promotional film featuring DeMille. The DVD set made its debut on the street March 9th, and retails for $19.99.
Crimes and Misdemeanors
CROUPIER
I thought CROUPIER was a popular film. When it first came out in 1998, it was fairly popular, I thought, and did go on to make $6 million dollars, which surely must have made this film profitable. Everyone I knew loved it and talked about it all the time. Star Clive Owen was even touted as a new Bond.
But then it never came out on DVD in the States (Atlantis Alliance released a pan-and-scan version in Canada), though you could rent it from Netflix. Fortunately, Image Entertainment has rectified that absence with this (non-anamorphic) widescreen transfer of Mike Hodges's (GET CARTER) delicious heist film, from a script by Paul Mayersberg.
Seeing it again finally I realize that there are deep mysteries to the film, which I attribute now to Mayersberg's unobtrusively dense screenplay. For one thing, Owen's Jack Manfred is not all that nice a guy, as much as we would like to admire him for his looks and his competence at the gaming table. After all, he is the son of a huckster, and an aspiring writer, and we all know that there is something bogus and con mannish about novel writing. He doesn't seem to be too shaken up when his girlfriend Marion (the delightful Gina McKee) dies. Instead, he slips right into a liaison with a fellow dealer (Kate Hardie), whom he earlier slept with.
And the heist scheme of the film, involving a mysterious high-rolling customer (Alex Kingston, who went on to ER) is strangely distant to the meaning and thrust of the film. The tone all comes from Jack, who doesn't express his emotions. His voice over narration does that for him (breaking one of the cardinal McKee rules, by the way).
CROUPIER bears multiple viewings, which make it even more mysterious, but such viewings are made easier now with Image's disc. Though not anamorphic, the disc does look good, and has an adequate DD 2.0 audio track. Image released CROUPIER on March 9, and it retails for $19.95.
Love and Death
DEMONLOVER
My ecstatic review of this weird and sexy film was already published here. It's nice now to have it on disc, but I wish that I could give a thorough account of it. The disc is advertised as featuring an audio commentary track by director Olivier Assayas, and a video Q&A with him a making of featurette, a feature about the soundtrack, cast interview, trailers, and most intriguing of all, "bonus" Hellfire Club footage.
Unfortunately, none of this material was available on the early check disc supplied to reviewers. This is especially problematic because the film on offer is the uncut director's cut and it would be useful to verify what has been restored to the film. Looking to the running times provides ambiguous information (DEMONLOVER'S originally running time is stated as 129 minutes on IMDB, and the film on the disc runs 116 minutes). Aside from a little thrusting, and a few more shots of the Hellfire Club I'm not sure what the differences are.
The uncut disc of DEMONLOVER, from Palm Pictures, hit the street on March 16th, and retails for $24.95.
DVD AUDIO COMMENTARY QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From the Anchor Bay DiviMax edition of DAWN OF THE DEAD: Interviewer Perry Martin: "What's the best part of making a movie?" George Romero: "Watching it."
NEXT TIME: Numerous STAR TREKs, ROSWELL, THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND, and more!
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