This October the prestigious DVD restorative company, The Criterion Collection, broke its usual mold of offering expensive but excruciatingly detailed revisions of classic yet oft forgotten films by releasing a package of stripped down versions of classic films in a reasonably priced packaged titled “Essential Arthouse Volume I.”
The set was touted as being six black and white foreign films that were semi-accessible (but not mainstream enough to be universally scorned by true buffs) and able to save you the time and money of toiling away at film school, since it was essentially film school packaged in a box. The good news to those who actually purchased and watched the “Essential Art House” collection and found themselves craving more is that Criterion is planning a release of a second addition this month on February 10, consisting of films from such household names Truffaut, Fellini and Kurosawa to more art-house exclusive directors such as Marcel Camus.
The 400 Blows
Francois Truffaut’s legendary debut film examines the plight of the Paris’ Alienated youth by way of Truffaut’s autobiographical alter-ego Antoine Doinel (the great Jean-Pierre Léaud). The young dreamer living with his well-meaning stepfather and narcissistic mother is misunderstood by every adult in his life, only to run away and turn to an ill-fated life of crime. The picture was one of the first narrative driven films of French New Wave, which would later abandon nearly all its linear qualities and resort to the off-the-rails craziness of overt and oftentimes nonsensical political statements. Although ‘400 blows’ is a masterpiece of simplistic storytelling, its true legacy would be its place as the catalyst behind all those fromage-heavy freeze-frame endings.
Black Orpheus
The Marcel Camus film, set against the boogie-ing madness of Carnival, is a retelling of the ancient Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice set in 1960 Rio de Janeiro. Criterion lucked out big-time by including this in their Essential Art-House II, since it is sure to experience a surge in popularity after it was revealed by uber-popular president-elect Barack Obama to one of his favorite films. It follows a foolish young womanizer named Orpheus who begins an affair with a woman despite the recent engagement to his chronically enraged girlfriend. As one would expect, things don’t turn out to well for the pair of star-crossed lovers, and a chubby “death” guy in a ridiculously unscary Spider Man costume causes lots of problems, but what we are left with is an innovative soundtrack by bossanova legend Antonio Carlos Jobim.
Pygmalion
The 1938 film based off the George Bernard Shaw play exist as a relic of a time when cockney accents were more than just poorly imitated speech patterns in acting classes the world round, but were visible evidence of English class distinction and were something to be actually ashamed of. When a prominent English speech coach (Leslie Howard) makes a bet with a college that he can turn a mere street flower peddler cum guttersnipe (Wendy Hiller) into a woman passable as a Duchess, he finds himself not only succeeding in the transformation but falling in love with the woman of lower-class standing (but it’s not a big deal since she learned how to talk like she is sophisticated and to never mention her humble roots). The movie is credited with giving comfort to the mothers of all those ivy-league boys who bring home the dreaded public school girl over Thanksgiving break.
La Strada
Federico Fellini’s devastating portrait of a young woman (his perennially clownish-looking wife Giulietta Masina) sold into slavery for an ill-tempered and abusive carnival strongman (Anthony Quinn), stands out among the many classics created by the legendary film director, and also went on to win the 1956 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. The picture was responsible for putting Fellini on the map internationally and its sad and raw Neo-realist narrative actually made perfect sense; a quality that soon became a rarity for a film from the Italian grandmaster who would go on to make surrealist, Jungian fantasies that most Americans couldn’t tolerate and hang with. Zumpanoooo!!!
Ikiru
Considered by some to be the best film made by the Japanese grandmaster Akira Kurosawa, which can be viewed as a fairly dubious claim since every film by Kurosawa is tagged “Considered by someone to be the greatest film by Kurosawa,” the film follows a spineless and sniveling bureaucrat who is diagnosed with stomach cancer and given less than a year to live. With his remaining days he transforms from a joyless, cowardly curmudgeon and sap to an optimistic philanthropist, leaving everyone around him shocked. Despite the opportunity to divulge in over-the-top sentiments, it doesn’t and ends up being a Japanese classic with the potential to be enjoyed by non-cinemaphiles, a distinction most are found lacking.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
The long, self-indulgent 1943 British war film, which tells the story of long career of the original pompous-ass, Colonel Blimp, through a series of flashbacks to multiple time periods, including two wars and a Boer War. The film was highly controversial due to its sympathetic portrayal of a German officer during War World II. Winston Churchill has extremely opposed to the project and attempted multiple times to get the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger production shut down. Despite its innovative use of technicolor, fans and critics alike found nothing to praise upon the films release, but over 60 years of revisionism later, the film is considered a masterpiece.
More February Criterion DVD releases soon.
