There’s no better barometer of the sheer eclecticism of the Criterion Collection than our releases for July: from the hand gestures of the world’s most “talkative” primate to Laurence Olivier’s Shakespearean monologues, from the urban center of Taipei to the idyllic countryside of Kent, we offer up this month a truly universal language.
We’d also like to take a moment to direct your attention to Greencine.com, one of many terrific websites supporting Criterion and a self-proclaimed “film addict’s film site.” Greencine both rents and sells a wide array of DVDs, and when you stop by, you’ll see that there’s much more: featured articles on foreign and classic movies and revivals, such as that of Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows; exclusive interviews with directors; and even a section of “primers,” which provide historical and analytical background for genres and film movements (sure there’s “French New Wave” and “German Expressionism,” but there’s also one titled “Zombies”). And currently they’re running an ongoing sale on Criterion titles, which are up to 30 percent off across the board. Check them out, as well as our July titles below. As always, happy viewing.
Kevin Macdonald is the grandson of the filmmaker Emeric Pressburger (A Canterbury Tale, The Red Shoes). Macdonald’s directorial credits include 2000’s Academy Award–winning One Day in September, about the killing of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and 2003’s Touching the Void, which tells the story of two climbers’ disastrous attempt to scale the Siula Grande, in the Andes, in 1985.
1. Gimme Shelter
Perhaps my favorite documentary. In its thematic consistency and sense of narrative it works almost like an ancient myth, but with the added bonus of utter spontaneity—and Mick Jagger in a ridiculously long scarf.
2. I Know Where I’m Going!
My wife fell for me when she realized that my grandfather wrote this one. Some of that romantic spirit must have been genetic, she hoped.
3. Murmur of the Heart
I don’t quite understand how this film does what it does—make you understand the powerful, quasi-incestuous relationship between mother and son, without making it seem the least bit abnormal or reprehensible—but that’s what I love about it. That and the jazz soundtrack and the semipsychotic older twin brothers.
4. The Lady Eve
All the brilliance and laughter of any Sturges film, but with romance too.
5. The Wages of Fear
Desperate men who will do anything to earn a buck. It’s the tensest film I know.
6. The Complete “Mr. Arkadin”
A film that could have been as good as The Third Man—if Welles had had a bit more money and a more charismatic leading man. But the unpolished nature of the endeavor gives it a certain mystique.
7. Walkabout
The best British film of the 1970s. I love the symbolism and camera work.
8. Fanny and Alexander
I love to luxuriate in this film and imagine what it would be like to be part of this extraordinary extended family. A great double bill with The Royal Tenenbaums!
9. The Battle of Algiers
The way that Gillo Pontecorvo makes his political points without resorting to propaganda —while always being truthful to the characters—is utterly brilliant. It’s a true-life thriller that doesn’t resort to a single cliché. The music is also unequaled in film.
10. I vitelloni
My favorite Fellini—maybe because it’s one of his most modest and endearing. The depiction of friendship always touches me.
Congratulations to Stephen Hoppe, the grand-prize winner of our June Dazed and Confused contest, in which we challenged readers to guess various songs from the Dazed soundtrack based on snatches of lyrics. Hoppe will receive an original poster for the film, signed by Richard Linklater and the poster’s designer, Frank Kozik. The runners-up, who will each receive a Criterion DVD of their choice, were Gloria Alvear, Todd Arneson, Greg Emley, and Keith O’Neill.
Kicking and Screaming
Seduced and Abandoned
Eric Rohmer's Six Moral Tales
STREET DATE: 7/11
We’re very proud to introduce to the collection our first Taiwanese filmmaker, Edward Yang. The Taiwanese film industry was so fragmented and run-down at the time of Yi Yi’s production that there was no real pool of experienced actors to draw from. Yang found Jonathan Chang, who plays Yi Yi’s most precocious and iconic character, Yang-Yang, while holding an acting workshop. The script called for a ten-year-old boy, but the casting director insisted that Yang take a look at Chang, who was only seven. It turned out he was even more perfect for the role than they at first imagined: just as little Yang-Yang is something of a neophyte technophile (recording the world around him with the snap of a camera), Chang became a bit of a filmmaking natural during the shoot, saying where he thought cameras and lights should be placed and telling the sound recordist that certain takes were no good because of extraneous off-camera noise.
STREET DATE: 7/11
Having mastered a vocabulary of more than two thousand words in American Sign Language, Koko later moved on to a whole new form of communication: video dating. Though for years Koko maintained a close emotional bond with her longtime companion Michael—as evidenced in this fascinating 1978 documentary—the two remained strictly platonic until Michael’s death, in 2000. The search for the perfect mate has continued, though, and the folks at the Gorilla Foundation turned to this surprising new avenue in the early nineties. Various male gorillas were shown to Koko on tape, and she picked out Ndume, a ten-year-old silverback. The two have been getting along wonderfully for fifteen years, although they have yet to mate. It’s hoped that the tropical climate and a support group of female gorillas at the foundation’s soon-to-be-completed Maui Ape Preserve will produce a true love connection.
STREET DATE: 7/25
“I knew literally nothing ’bout acting,” says John Sweet in his piece “The Making of A Canterbury Tale,” reprinted in the DVD release’s accompanying booklet. But that didn’t stop Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger from casting the Minnesota native in a lead role, as United States Army Sergeant Bob Johnson, in their beloved classic A Canterbury Tale. Sweet had previously only acted in high school and in a six-week run of a Maxwell Anderson play in London, sponsored by the Red Cross and starring military personnel. Army policy mandated that American movie stars (Burgess Meredith and Tyrone Power were two names originally sought for the role) could not be cast while they were serving their country, so at the age of twenty-seven, Sweet found himself playing a major role in a large-scale British production, opposite Dennis Price and Sheila Sim (later to become Lady Richard Attenborough). Sweet’s “Aw, shucks” regionalism must have done the trick: A Canterbury Tale was Emeric Pressburger’s personal favorite of all of his films.
STREET DATE:
MOVED TO 8/1
One of Sergeant John Sweet’s most pleasurable memories of shooting A Canterbury Tale was seeing Laurence Olivier walking the corridors of London’s Denham Studios between takes for Henry V. Just as Sweet was starring in his first film, Olivier was having his own groundbreaking moment a soundstage away: Henry V was his directorial debut and effectively the beginning of a new kind of on-screen Shakespeare, one that Olivier had been honing onstage for years. “When I was playing Romeo,” Olivier remembers in the 1966 BBC interview special Great Acting: Laurence Olivier, “I was carrying a torch. I was trying to sell realism in Shakespeare. I believed in it with my whole soul.” Now, with his three remarkable Bard adaptations—Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III—available together on DVD, you can chart the course of a legacy that made Shakespeare tangible and human rather than lofty and unattainable. Though Olivier stresses that he strove for “earthiness” in his performances, he also notes that one of his primary influences for his hobbling, paranoiac King Richard was none other than that wretched, snarling cartoon character the Big Bad Wolf.
In that 1966 BBC interview special Great Acting, Laurence Olivier says, “Noël Coward probably was the first man who took hold of me and made me think. He made me use my silly little brain.” The legendary playwright influenced not only the greatest actor of the twentieth century but also drama as we know it. To see his eloquence translated to the screen, take another look at David Lean’s devastatingly romantic Brief Encounter, from 1945, adapted from Coward’s play Still Life. Before Lean was swept away by dramatic widescreen vistas, he incisively zeroed in on the doomed, chance love affair between a housewife (Celia Johnson) and a married doctor (Trevor Howard). Intimate and romantic, it remains one of Lean’s triumphs.
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