Criterion discoveries
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Eclipse Series 38: Masaki Kobayashi Against the System (The Thick-Walled Room, I Will Buy You, Black River, The Inheritance) (Criterion Collection)
One of the most important filmmakers to emerge from Japan's cinematic golden age, Masaki Kobayashi is best remembered today for his 1959 epic The Human Condition, but that is just one of the blistering films he made in a career dedicated to criticizing his country's rigid social and political orders. He first found his voice—rebellious, angry, engaged—in the fifties, following his life-altering experiences as a soldier in World War II; the four films collected here, made in the same period as The Human Condition, reflect Kobayashi's coming into his own as an artist. He fought to get these powerful dramas made at a studio more oriented at the time toward quiet family melodramas; they are unforgettable pictures of a postwar Japan troubled by identity crises and moral corruption on scales both intimate and institutional.FOUR-DVD SET INCLUDES:
THE THICK-WALLED ROOM (1953
- 110 minutes
- Black & White
- Monaural
- In Japanese with English subtitles
- 1.33:1 aspect ratio)
Even early on in his directing career, Kobayashi didn't shy away from controversy. Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and-file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted from the diaries of real prisoners. Because of its potentially inflammatory content, the film was shelved for three years before being released.
I WILL BUY YOU (1956
- 112 minutes
- Black & White
- Monaural
- In Japanese with English subtitles
- 1.33:1 aspect ratio)
Kobayashi's pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry is unlike any other sports film ever made. An excoriation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled business, it follows the sharklike maneuvers of a scout dead set on signing a promising athlete to the team the Toyo Flowers.
BLACK RIVER (1957
- 110 minutes
- Black & White
- Monaural
- In Japanese with English subtitles
- 1.33:1 aspect ratio)
Perhaps Kobayashi's most sordid film, Black River is an exposé of the rampant corruption on and around U.S. military bases following World War II. Kobayashi spirals out from the story of a love triangle that develops between a good-natured student, his innocent girlfriend, and a coldhearted petty criminal (The Human Condition's Tatsuya Nakadai, in his first major role) to diagnose a social disease that had Japan slowly succumbing to lawlessness, devolving into gangsterism, violence, and prostitution.
THE INHERITANCE (1962
- 108 minutes
- Black & White
- Monaural
- In Japanese with English subtitles
- 2.40:1 aspect ratio)
On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues. A bevy of lawyers and associates then begin machinations to procure the money for themselves, enlisting the aid of impostors and blackmail. Yet all are outwitted by the cunning of the man's secretary (The Makioka Sisters' Keiko Kishi), in this entertaining condemnation of unchecked greed. Directed by: Masaki Kobayashi Actors: Masaki Kobayashi, Keiko Kishi, Tatsuya Nakadai, Category:
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Wild Strawberries (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Traveling to accept an honorary degree, Professor Isak Borg—masterfully played by veteran director Victor Sjöström (The Phantom Carriage)—is forced to face his past, come to terms with his faults, and make peace with the inevitability of his approaching death. Through flashbacks and fantasies, dreams and nightmares, Wild Strawberries dramatizes one man’s remarkable voyage of self-discovery. This richly humane masterpiece, full of iconic imagery, is a treasure from the golden age of art-house cinema and one of the films that catapulted Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) to international acclaim. Directed by: Ingmar Bergman Actors: Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Category:
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Marketa Lazarova (Criterion Collection)
In its home country, František Vlácil’s Marketa Lazarová has been hailed as the greatest Czech film ever made; for many U.S. viewers, it will be a revelation. Based on a novel by Vladislav Vancura, this stirring and poetic depiction of a feud between two rival medieval clans is a fierce, epic, and meticulously designed evocation of the clashes between Christianity and paganism, humankind and nature, love and violence. Vlácil’s approach was to re-create the textures and mentalities of a long-ago way of life, rather than to make a conventional historical drama, and the result is dazzling. With its inventive widescreen cinematography, editing, and sound design, Marketa Lazarová is an experimental action film. Directed by: Frantisek Vlacil Actors: Josef Kemr, Magda Vasaryova, Nada Hejna, Ivan Paluch, Vlastimil Harapes, Category:
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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Criterion Collection)
Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes), is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history (1902 to 1942) only to see the world change irrevocably before his eyes. Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes) and Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus) provide unforgettable support, he as a German enemy turned lifelong friend of Blimp’s and she as young women of three consecutive generations—a socially committed governess, a sweet-souled war nurse, and a modern-thinking army driver—who inspire him. Colonel Blimp is both moving and slyly satirical, an incomparable film about war, love, aging, and obsolescence shot in gorgeous Technicolor.Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's first Technicolor masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), transcends its narrow wartime propaganda to portray in warm-hearted detail the life and loves of one extraordinary man. The film's clever narrative structure first presents us with the imposingly rotund General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey in his greatest screen performance), a blustering old duffer who seems the epitome of stuffy, outmoded values. But traveling backwards 40 years we see a different man altogether: the young and dashing officer "Sugar" Candy. Through a series of affecting relationships with three women (all played to perfection by Deborah Kerr) and his touching lifelong friendship with a German officer (Anton Wallbrook), we see Candy's life unfold and come to understand how difficult it is for him to adapt his sense of military honor to modern notions of "total war." Notoriously, this is the film that Winston Churchill tried to have banned, and indeed its sympathetic portrayal of a German officer was contentious in 1943, though one suspects that Churchill's own blimpishness was a factor too. --Mark Walker Directed by: Michael PowellEmeric Pressburger Actors: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, Category:
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Monsieur Verdoux (Criterion Collection)
Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the indefatigable Martha Raye, in a hilarious performance). This deeply philosophical and wildly entertaining film is a work of true sophistication, both for the moral questions it dares to ask and the way it deconstructs its megastar’s loveable on-screen persona.This blistering little black comedy was well ahead of its time when released in 1947. Originally, Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his drama about a French mass murderer named Landru, but Chaplin was hesitant to act for another director, and used the idea himself. He plays a dapper gent named Henri Verdoux (who assumes a number of identities), a civilized monster who marries wealthy women, then murders them (as we meet him, he's gathering roses as an incinerator ominously bellows smoke in the background) and collects their money to support his real family. The Little Tramp is now a distant memory, though this was the first film not to feature Chaplin's beloved creation. Verdoux is largely viciously clever until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares returns years later as the mistress of a munitions manufacturer. Ultimately, Chaplin breaks character (much as he did in The Great Dictator) to preach to the masses, declaring that against the machines of war that grip the planet, humble killer Verdoux is "an amateur by comparison." --David Kronke Directed by: Charlie Chaplin Actors: Charlie Chaplin, Category:
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Gate of Hell (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
A winner of Academy Awards for best foreign-language film and best costume design, GATE OF HELL is a visually sumptuous, psychologically penetrating work from Teinosuke Kinugasa (A Page of Madness). In the midst of epic, violent intrigue in twelfth-century Japan, an imperial warrior falls for a lady-in-waiting; even after he discovers she is married, he goes to extreme lengths to win her love. Kinugasa's film is an unforgettable, tragic story of obsession and unrequited passion that was an early triumph of color cinematography in Japan. Directed by: Teinosuke Kinugasa Actors: Kazuo Hasegawa, Machiko Kyo, Yataro Kurokawa, Category:
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A Man Escaped (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
With the simplest of concepts and sparest of techniques, Robert Bresson (Au hasard Balthazar) made one of the most suspenseful jailbreak films of all time in A Man Escaped. Based on the memoirs of an imprisoned French resistance leader, this unbelievably taut and methodical marvel follows the fictional Fontaine’s single-minded pursuit of freedom, detailing the planning and carrying out of his escape with gripping precision. But Bresson’s film is not merely process-minded—it’s a work of intense spirituality and humanity."This story is true," reads the opening statement of A Man Escaped. "I give it as it is, without embellishment." Based on the memoir by Andre Devigny, a member of the French Resistance imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Gestapo during the German occupation, Bresson (himself at one time a German POW) transforms Devigny's daring escape into an ascetic film of documentary detail. Kept in a tiny stone cell with a high window and a thick wooden door, the prisoner (renamed Fontaine in the film) makes himself intimate with his world--every surface of his room, every sound reverberating through the hall, and every detail of the prison's layout that he can absorb in brief sojourns from his cell. Bresson magnifies every detail with insistent close-ups and detailed examinations of every step of Fontaine's plan, from constructing and hiding ropes and hooks to painstakingly carving out an exit in the heavy cell door, and provides a sort of Greek chorus of fellow prisoners. This is Bresson's first film to feature a completely nonprofessional cast drilled to master precise movements and deliver lines without dramatic inflection. The effect is a drama where the slightest gesture carries the weight of a confession. Bresson's films are not for everybody, and this austere picture hardly carries the visceral punch of The Great Escape, but it's a drama of profound power, with a gripping climax that's as absorbing and tense as any high-energy action film. --Sean Axmaker Directed by: Robert Bresson Actors: Francois Leterrier, Category:
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Badlands (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Badlands announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven). His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as a springboard for an oblique teenage romance, lovingly and idiosyncratically enacted by Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now) and Sissy Spacek (Carrie). The film also introduced many of the elements that would earn Malick his passionate following: the enigmatic approach to narrative and character, the unusual use of voice-over, the juxtaposition of human violence with natural beauty, the poetic investigation of American dreams and nightmares. This debut has spawned countless imitations, but none have equaled its strange sublimity.Still one of American cinema's most powerful, daring filmmaking debuts, Terrence Malick's Badlands is a quirky, visionary psychological and social enigma masquerading as a simple lovers-on-the-lam flick. Inspired by the 1958 murders in the cold, stark badlands of South Dakota by Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, the film's plot, on the surface, is similar to that of other killing-couple films, like Bonnie and Clyde and Gun Crazy. Martin Sheen, in an understated, sophisticated performance, plays the strange James Dean-like social outcast who falls in love with the naïve Sissy Spacek--and then kills her father when he comes between them. The two flee like animals to the wilderness, until the police arrive and the killing spree begins.What sets the film apart from others of its genre is Malick's complicated approach. Gorgeous, impenetrable images contrast sharply with Spacek's nostalgically artless narration, serving as ironic counterpoints, blurring concrete meaning, and stressing that nothing this horrific is simple. Malick observes, rather than analyzes, the couple in a manner as detached and apathetic as the couple's shocking actions. No judgment or definitive motivations are offered, though Malick's empathy often leans toward his senseless protagonists, rather than the star-struck society that makes killers famous. Compared with the interchangeable uniform cops who hunt them and the film's other nameless characters stuck in suburban banality, the couple are presented like tarnished, warped and frustrated results of squelched individuality.
Badlands, on one level, views America's suffocating homogeneity and, conversely, its continued obsession with celebrities (individuals considered different but adored) as hypocritical. Ambiguous and bold, the movie hints that society may be as guilty as the killers. --Dave McCoy Directed by: Terrence Malick Actors: Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates, Roman Bieri, Alan Vint, Category:
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Monsieur Verdoux (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Charlie Chaplin plays shockingly against type in his most controversial film, a brilliant and bleak black comedy about money, marriage, and murder. Chaplin is a twentieth-century Bluebeard, an enigmatic family man who goes to extreme lengths to support his wife and child, attempting to bump off a series of wealthy widows (including one played by the indefatigable Martha Raye, in a hilarious performance). This deeply philosophical and wildly entertaining film is a work of true sophistication, both for the moral questions it dares to ask and the way it deconstructs its megastar’s loveable on-screen persona.This blistering little black comedy was well ahead of its time when released in 1947. Originally, Orson Welles had wanted Chaplin to star in his drama about a French mass murderer named Landru, but Chaplin was hesitant to act for another director, and used the idea himself. He plays a dapper gent named Henri Verdoux (who assumes a number of identities), a civilized monster who marries wealthy women, then murders them (as we meet him, he's gathering roses as an incinerator ominously bellows smoke in the background) and collects their money to support his real family. The Little Tramp is now a distant memory, though this was the first film not to feature Chaplin's beloved creation. Verdoux is largely viciously clever until it gets too heavy-handed, as evidenced when a woman he spares returns years later as the mistress of a munitions manufacturer. Ultimately, Chaplin breaks character (much as he did in The Great Dictator) to preach to the masses, declaring that against the machines of war that grip the planet, humble killer Verdoux is "an amateur by comparison." --David Kronke Directed by: Charles Chaplin Actors: Charlie Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan, Robert Lewis, Audrey Betz, Category:
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The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Considered by many to be the finest British film ever made, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Red Shoes), is a stirring masterpiece like no other. Roger Livesey dynamically embodies outmoded English militarism as the indelible General Clive Candy, who barely survives four decades of tumultuous British history (1902 to 1942) only to see the world change irrevocably before his eyes. Anton Walbrook (The Red Shoes) and Deborah Kerr (Black Narcissus) provide unforgettable support, he as a German enemy turned lifelong friend of Blimp’s and she as young women of three consecutive generations—a socially committed governess, a sweet-souled war nurse, and a modern-thinking army driver—who inspire him. Colonel Blimp is both moving and slyly satirical, an incomparable film about war, love, aging, and obsolescence shot in gorgeous Technicolor.Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's first Technicolor masterpiece, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), transcends its narrow wartime propaganda to portray in warm-hearted detail the life and loves of one extraordinary man. The film's clever narrative structure first presents us with the imposingly rotund General Clive Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey in his greatest screen performance), a blustering old duffer who seems the epitome of stuffy, outmoded values. But traveling backwards 40 years we see a different man altogether: the young and dashing officer "Sugar" Candy. Through a series of affecting relationships with three women (all played to perfection by Deborah Kerr) and his touching lifelong friendship with a German officer (Anton Wallbrook), we see Candy's life unfold and come to understand how difficult it is for him to adapt his sense of military honor to modern notions of "total war." Notoriously, this is the film that Winston Churchill tried to have banned, and indeed its sympathetic portrayal of a German officer was contentious in 1943, though one suspects that Churchill's own blimpishness was a factor too. --Mark Walker Directed by: Michael PowellEmeric Pressburger Actors: Roger Livesey, Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr, Category:
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Lord of the Flies (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
In the hands of the renowned experimental theater director Peter Brook, William Golding’s legendary novel on the primitivism lurking beneath civilization becomes a film as raw and ragged as the lost boys at its center. Taking an innovative documentary-like approach, Brook shot LORD OF THE FLIES with an off-the-cuff naturalism, seeming to record a spontaneous eruption of its characters’ ids. The result is a rattling masterpiece, as provocative as its source material.In this classic 1963 adaptation of William Golding's novel, a planeload of schoolboys is stranded on a tropical island. They've got food and water; all that's left is to peacefully govern themselves until they're rescued. "After all," says choir leader Jack, "We're English. We're the best in the world at everything!" Unfortunately, living peacefully is not as easy as it seems. Though Ralph is named chief, Jack and the choristers quickly form a clique of their own, using the ever-effective political promise of fun rather than responsibility to draw converts. Director Peter Brook draws some excellent performances out of his young cast; the moment when Ralph realizes that even if he blows the conch for a meeting people might not come is an excruciating one. Well acted and faithfully executed, Lord of the Flies is as compelling today as when first released. --Ali Davis Directed by: Peter Brook Actors: James Aubrey, Tom Chapin, Hugh Edwards, Roger Elwin, Tom Gamany, Category:
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The Blob (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
A cult classic of gooey greatness, The Blob follows the havoc wreaked on a small town by an outer-space monster with neither soul nor vertebrae, with Steve McQueen (The Great Escape) playing the rebel teen who tries to warn the residents about the jellylike invader. Strong performances and ingenious special effects help The Blob transcend the schlock sci-fi and youth delinquency genres from which it originates. Made outside of Hollywood by a maverick film distributor and a crew whose credits mostly comprised religious and educational shorts, The Blob helped launch the careers of McQueen and composer Burt Bacharach, whose bouncy title song is just one of this film’s many unexpected pleasures. Directed by: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. Actors: Steve McQueen, Category:
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Medium Cool (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Days of Heaven) decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. His debut feature, MEDIUM COOL, plunges us into that moment. With its mix of scripted fiction and seat-of-the-pants documentary technique, this story of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Jackie Brown’s Robert Forster) is a visceral, lasting cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, MEDIUM COOL is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.Medium Cool is an almost impossible oddity: director Haskel Wexler wanted to shoot a fictional, narrative film wherein actors mingled with real people in an uncontrolled social environment. With that in mind, he began filming a movie about racial tensions in Chicago during the weeks prior to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, on the assumption that there would be a riot there. Then he brought his cast, crew, and camera to the scene of the proposed mayhem, and waited. . . and lo and behold, civil disorder broke out. It's intensely strange to see actors, playing characters, interacting in a real-life situation with real cops and real hippies fighting and running about. This is made stranger still by the story, about a reporter covering the growing unrest in the black ghettos of the city who discovers that the FBI may be in cahoots with his network. In preparing his script, Wexler assumed that the riot would be racial, but in fact it turned out that most of the rioters were white, so the final scenes seem to interrupt the narrative and make the film an odd pastiche and a commentary on the lack of connection between politics and life. Perhaps more of a curiosity than a wholly successful film, Medium Cool is still worth seeing for its striking footage and unprecedented combination of the real and the imaginary. --James DiGiovanna Directed by: Haskell Wexler Actors: Robert Forster, Category:
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Ministry of Fear (Criterion Collection)
Suffused with dread and paranoia, this Fritz Lang (M) adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene (The Third Man) is a plunge into the eerie shadows of a world turned upside down by war. En route to London after being released from a mental institution, Stephen Neale (The Lost Weekend’s Ray Milland) stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister underworld with possible Nazi connections. Lang was among the most illustrious of the European émigré filmmakers working in Hollywood during World War II, and Ministry of Fear is one of his finest American productions, an unpredictable thriller with style to spare.Though not as well known or praised as some of director Fritz Lang's other film noir efforts like The Big Heat (1953) or The Woman in the Window (1944), his 1944 thriller Ministry of Fear remains a visually striking and frequently taut blend of noir tropes and wartime espionage drama. Based on the novel by Graham Greene, the picture stars Ray Milland as a man, newly released from an asylum, who becomes embroiled in a plot by Nazi agents in England to deliver Allied military plans into the hands of the enemy. He soon finds himself the quarry of both the Axis and British police, with only comely Austrian refugee Marjorie Reynolds (Holiday Inn) to help him. Aided immeasurably by Henry Sharp's cinematography, which steeps the action in an almost supernatural layer of white fog, and Victor Young's suspenseful score, Ministry of Fear works best at depicting the mounting layers of threats, all seemingly unrelated, that weave around Milland, underscoring his questionable mental state and Lang's ability to tap into the psychological elements of noir. Once the disparate threads come together, the film becomes a bit more standard-issue thriller material, due in part to associate producer Seton I. Miller's script, which sands down the emotional complexities of Greene's source material (much to the dismay of the author, who disavowed the final product). But Lang completists and noir aficionados should appreciate this lesser effort from the director, especially with so much to recommend it, from Milland, one year away from his Oscar win for The Lost Weekend, and Dan Duryea's alarming turn as a duplicitous tailor with a pair of lethal shears, to Criterion's crisp 2K digital restoration. The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD are supplemented by a 17-minute interview with Lang scholar Joe McElhaney, who discusses the film's production, its relation to other works by the director, and its comparison to Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, among other topics. An original theatrical trailer and liner notes by Glenn Kenney round out the extras. --Paul Gaita Directed by: Fritz Lang Actors: Ray Milland, Category:
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3:10 to Yuma (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
In this beautifully shot and acted, psychologically complex western, Van Heflin (Shane) is a mild-mannered cattle rancher who takes on the task of shepherding a captured outlaw, played with cucumber-cool charisma by Glenn Ford (The Big Heat), to the train that will take him to prison. This apparently simple plan turns into a nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game that will test each man’s particular brand of honor. Based on a story by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), 3:10 TO YUMA is a thrilling, humane action movie, directed by the supremely talented studio filmmaker Delmer Daves (Jubal) with intense feeling and precision.Struggling rancher and family man Van Heflin sneaks captured outlaw Glenn Ford out from under the eyes of his gang and nervously awaits the prison train in this tight, taut Western in the High Noon tradition. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard story, this tense Western thriller is boiled down to its essential elements: a charming and cunning criminal, an initially reluctant hero whose courage and resolution hardens along the way, and a waiting game that pits them in a battle of wills and wits. Glenn Ford practically steals the film in one of his best performances ever: calm, cool, and confident, he's a ruthless killer with polite manners and an honorable streak. Director Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow) sets it all in a harsh, parched frontier of empty landscapes, deserted towns, and dust, creating a brittle quiet that threatens to snap into violence at any moment. --Sean Axmaker Directed by: Delmer Daves Actors: Van Heflin, Glenn Ford, Category:
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Jubal (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
A trio of exceptional performances from Glenn Ford (3:10 to Yuma), Ernest Borgnine (Marty), and Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront) form the center of JUBAL, an overlooked Hollywood treasure from genre master Delmer Daves (3:10 to Yuma). In this Shakespearean tale of jealousy and betrayal, Ford is an honorable itinerant cattleman, befriended and hired by Borgnine’s bighearted ranch owner despite his unwillingness to talk about his past. When the new hand becomes the target of the flirtatious attentions of the owner’s bored wife (Valerie French) and is entrusted by the boss with a foreman’s responsibilities, his presence at the ranch starts to rankle his shifty fellow cowhand, played by Steiger. The resulting emotional showdown imparts unparalleled psychology intensity to this western, a vivid melodrama featuring expressive location photography in Technicolor and CinemaScope.Despite incorporating elements of Shakespeare's Othello, Delmer Daves's CinemaScope Jubal is the first and least of three Westerns the director made with star Glenn Ford. Although not up to the measure of 3:10 to Yuma and the boldly original (and sadly neglected) Cowboy, it's still a well-above-average Western by a man whose sturdy sense of drama and pictorial ecstasies qualify him as a solid genre filmmaker. Ford plays a drifter who is rescued, then hired as ramrod, by rancher Ernest Borgnine, thereby stimulating the erotic interest of Borgnine's sexy young wife (Valerie French) and the Iago-like resentment of the former top hand (Rod Steiger). A range war and the persecution of a religious sect whose wagon train is camped on Borgnine's land complicate matters beyond the Shakespearean premise. The solid supporting cast includes Noah Beery Jr., Charles Bronson, and Felicia Farr, who would contribute a memorable interlude to 3:10 to Yuma. --Richard T. Jameson Directed by: Delmer Daves Actors: Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Valerie French, Category:
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Ministry of Fear (Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]
Suffused with dread and paranoia, this Fritz Lang (M) adaptation of a novel by Graham Greene (The Third Man) is a plunge into the eerie shadows of a world turned upside down by war. En route to London after being released from a mental institution, Stephen Neale (The Lost Weekend’s Ray Milland) stops at a seemingly innocent village fair, after which he finds himself caught in the web of a sinister underworld with possible Nazi connections. Lang was among the most illustrious of the European émigré filmmakers working in Hollywood during World War II, and Ministry of Fear is one of his finest American productions, an unpredictable thriller with style to spare.Though not as well known or praised as some of director Fritz Lang's other film noir efforts like The Big Heat (1953) or The Woman in the Window (1944), his 1944 thriller Ministry of Fear remains a visually striking and frequently taut blend of noir tropes and wartime espionage drama. Based on the novel by Graham Greene, the picture stars Ray Milland as a man, newly released from an asylum, who becomes embroiled in a plot by Nazi agents in England to deliver Allied military plans into the hands of the enemy. He soon finds himself the quarry of both the Axis and British police, with only comely Austrian refugee Marjorie Reynolds (Holiday Inn) to help him. Aided immeasurably by Henry Sharp's cinematography, which steeps the action in an almost supernatural layer of white fog, and Victor Young's suspenseful score, Ministry of Fear works best at depicting the mounting layers of threats, all seemingly unrelated, that weave around Milland, underscoring his questionable mental state and Lang's ability to tap into the psychological elements of noir. Once the disparate threads come together, the film becomes a bit more standard-issue thriller material, due in part to associate producer Seton I. Miller's script, which sands down the emotional complexities of Greene's source material (much to the dismay of the author, who disavowed the final product). But Lang completists and noir aficionados should appreciate this lesser effort from the director, especially with so much to recommend it, from Milland, one year away from his Oscar win for The Lost Weekend, and Dan Duryea's alarming turn as a duplicitous tailor with a pair of lethal shears, to Criterion's crisp 2K digital restoration. The Criterion Blu-ray and DVD are supplemented by a 17-minute interview with Lang scholar Joe McElhaney, who discusses the film's production, its relation to other works by the director, and its comparison to Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers, among other topics. An original theatrical trailer and liner notes by Glenn Kenney round out the extras. --Paul Gaita Directed by: Fritz Lang Actors: Ray Milland, Marjorie Reynolds, Carl Esmond, Hillary Brooke, Percy Waram, Category:
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Medium Cool (Criterion Collection)
It’s 1968, and the whole world is watching. With the U.S. in social upheaval, famed cinematographer Haskell Wexler (Days of Heaven) decided to make a film about what the hell was going on. His debut feature, MEDIUM COOL, plunges us into that moment. With its mix of scripted fiction and seat-of-the-pants documentary technique, this story of the working world and romantic life of a television cameraman (Jackie Brown’s Robert Forster) is a visceral, lasting cinematic snapshot of the era, climaxing with an extended sequence shot right in the middle of the riots surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. An inventive commentary on the pleasures and dangers of wielding a camera, MEDIUM COOL is as prescient a political film as Hollywood has ever produced.Medium Cool is an almost impossible oddity: director Haskel Wexler wanted to shoot a fictional, narrative film wherein actors mingled with real people in an uncontrolled social environment. With that in mind, he began filming a movie about racial tensions in Chicago during the weeks prior to the 1968 Democratic National Convention, on the assumption that there would be a riot there. Then he brought his cast, crew, and camera to the scene of the proposed mayhem, and waited. . . and lo and behold, civil disorder broke out. It's intensely strange to see actors, playing characters, interacting in a real-life situation with real cops and real hippies fighting and running about. This is made stranger still by the story, about a reporter covering the growing unrest in the black ghettos of the city who discovers that the FBI may be in cahoots with his network. In preparing his script, Wexler assumed that the riot would be racial, but in fact it turned out that most of the rioters were white, so the final scenes seem to interrupt the narrative and make the film an odd pastiche and a commentary on the lack of connection between politics and life. Perhaps more of a curiosity than a wholly successful film, Medium Cool is still worth seeing for its striking footage and unprecedented combination of the real and the imaginary. --James DiGiovanna Directed by: Haskell Wexler Actors: Robert Forster, Category:
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3:10 to Yuma (Criterion Collection)
In this beautifully shot and acted, psychologically complex western, Van Heflin (Shane) is a mild-mannered cattle rancher who takes on the task of shepherding a captured outlaw, played with cucumber-cool charisma by Glenn Ford (The Big Heat), to the train that will take him to prison. This apparently simple plan turns into a nerve-racking cat-and-mouse game that will test each man’s particular brand of honor. Based on a story by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty), 3:10 TO YUMA is a thrilling, humane action movie, directed by the supremely talented studio filmmaker Delmer Daves (Jubal) with intense feeling and precision.Struggling rancher and family man Van Heflin sneaks captured outlaw Glenn Ford out from under the eyes of his gang and nervously awaits the prison train in this tight, taut Western in the High Noon tradition. Adapted from an Elmore Leonard story, this tense Western thriller is boiled down to its essential elements: a charming and cunning criminal, an initially reluctant hero whose courage and resolution hardens along the way, and a waiting game that pits them in a battle of wills and wits. Glenn Ford practically steals the film in one of his best performances ever: calm, cool, and confident, he's a ruthless killer with polite manners and an honorable streak. Director Delmer Daves (Broken Arrow) sets it all in a harsh, parched frontier of empty landscapes, deserted towns, and dust, creating a brittle quiet that threatens to snap into violence at any moment. --Sean Axmaker Directed by: Delmer Daves Actors: Van Heflin, Glenn Ford, Category:
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Jubal (Criterion Collection)
A trio of exceptional performances from Glenn Ford (3:10 to Yuma), Ernest Borgnine (Marty), and Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront) form the center of JUBAL, an overlooked Hollywood treasure from genre master Delmer Daves (3:10 to Yuma). In this Shakespearean tale of jealousy and betrayal, Ford is an honorable itinerant cattleman, befriended and hired by Borgnine’s bighearted ranch owner despite his unwillingness to talk about his past. When the new hand becomes the target of the flirtatious attentions of the owner’s bored wife (Valerie French) and is entrusted by the boss with a foreman’s responsibilities, his presence at the ranch starts to rankle his shifty fellow cowhand, played by Steiger. The resulting emotional showdown imparts unparalleled psychology intensity to this western, a vivid melodrama featuring expressive location photography in Technicolor and CinemaScope.Despite incorporating elements of Shakespeare's Othello, Delmer Daves's CinemaScope Jubal is the first and least of three Westerns the director made with star Glenn Ford. Although not up to the measure of 3:10 to Yuma and the boldly original (and sadly neglected) Cowboy, it's still a well-above-average Western by a man whose sturdy sense of drama and pictorial ecstasies qualify him as a solid genre filmmaker. Ford plays a drifter who is rescued, then hired as ramrod, by rancher Ernest Borgnine, thereby stimulating the erotic interest of Borgnine's sexy young wife (Valerie French) and the Iago-like resentment of the former top hand (Rod Steiger). A range war and the persecution of a religious sect whose wagon train is camped on Borgnine's land complicate matters beyond the Shakespearean premise. The solid supporting cast includes Noah Beery Jr., Charles Bronson, and Felicia Farr, who would contribute a memorable interlude to 3:10 to Yuma. --Richard T. Jameson Directed by: Delmer Daves Actors: Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Valerie French, Category:
