Boy, blogging sure is difficult. Or rather, staying up to do stuff like blogging after Dee Dee goes to bed sure is difficult. So here is a lameass review I wrote recently for the local arts and culture magazine
Versus. It was intended to be more of an actual review but apparently I was in a wanktastic mood that day.
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Every DVD collector can recall the first time they got burned. When a title for which they’d already shelled out their hard-earned cash gets re-released in short order with new packaging, lots of bonus features, and often a longer version of the film. I not-so-fondly recall getting the news that the Criterion Collection would be issuing a no-holds-barred special edition of
Rushmore mere hours after I’d broken the shrinkwrap on the bare-bones Disney DVD release (bought on day of release, no less). Most collectors don’t necessarily mind making the upgrade from a cheap studio disc to a Criterion special edition; when Criterion releases a new edition of a title they’ve already released, well…
The Criterion brand is something rather magical. A small company that pretty much created the special edition disc back in 1984 when they released their laserdisc versions of
Citizen Kane and
King Kong, they’re one of the only labels that can boast that many collectors will buy their product strictly because they released it. The Criterion brand denotes not only a quality film (they release mostly classics, foreign and Hollywood), but care taken in the presentation of the film and disc. Criterion also grasped early on that collector geeks are obsessed with catalogue numbers. Barring a few early laserdisc releases, each Criterion has featured a number – more or less the release sequence -on the spine, ensuring that their more obsessive customers will probably shell out for a film they may not ordinarily touch with a ten-foot pole in order to bridge a numerical gap on their shelves.
But here’s the thing – they’re expensive. Even in the States, where they originate, the SRP for the cheapest, lower-frills discs is $29.95. So when you’re talking an upgrade, there’s more than a few bucks at stake.
Some of the re-releases are eminently forgiveable: Criterion lost the rights to
The 400 Blows, and when it re-appeared they included it in a this-is-how-the-pros-do-it box set with Truffaut’s other Antoine Doinel films. But often, as with the revamp of Cocteau’s
Beauty and the Beast, re-issued because better film elements become available, rebuying can have the air of a why-didn’t-you-get-it-right-the first-time grumble.
The latest Criterion upgrades are Akira Kurosawa’s samurai black comedies
Yojimbo (1961) and
Sanjuro (1962). The original releases were bare-bones, with only trailers as bonus material. Now both movies get commentaries by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince, a man with a funny voice but good God he knows his stuff. Too many commentaries are delivered by people who have a fairly limited perspective on the material at hand, but Prince gives you historical perspective (both in terms of the film’s production and the Japanese historical setting), production tidbits, actor career summaries, and scholarly analysis. Prince was included on the track for Criterion’s recent must-have upgrade of Kurosawa’s
Seven Samurai (1954) and some earlier releases. I hope they keep using the guy for future projects.
Both discs feature 30+ minute documentaries on their production. It’s become commonplace so see this kind of in-depth work done on every piece of nonsense to come out of the contemporary Hollywood crapper, but on films of this vintage it’s fascinating, especially since few Westerners are much aware of the lives of the people who made these masterpieces.
So, it would be easy to recommend the new discs on the basis of extras alone… to devotees, anyway. Criterion have also created new transfers for both films, as the old ones were not anamorphic, meaning they really show their age now that widescreen TVs are slowly becoming commonplace. I’m rarely one for A and B comparisons, but there really is no comparison here. In every regard the new transfers are breathtaking, with great contrasts and a richness to the black and white cinematography that yielded new pleasures in films that I know like the back of my hand. The subtitle translations have been re-done and are considerably more elegant; the presentation of
Yojimbo is also the first time I’ve seen it with English opening credits – and I’ve seen this film on three different video formats and numerous theatrical prints.
About the films little remains to be said. Both are landmarks in the careers of Kurosawa and his star, Toshiro Mifune. Mifune’s portrayal of the slovenly, swaggering samurai changed the course of his career forever, changing him from a talented player of most every kind of character to a succession of more solemn Yojimbo/Sanjuro variants. What’s most surprising about this turn of events is that he is so aggressively physical in these films – Prince claims he takes out ten opponents in ten seconds during one of the swordplay sequences, and he does so convincingly – but what defined the rest of his career was the aloofness and patience of the character, which often rendered his roles a bit lifeless. It’s a very odd turn of events since what makes this character so effective is that his distance and quietness is rendered more threatening and effective here by how ruthless and efficient a killer he is when the time comes.
Kurosawa and Mifune would only work twice more after these films. First came
High and Low, a masterpiece, and sure to be Criterion re-vamp in the near future (I say this wih no tongue-in-cheek: the current disc is non-anamorphic, with no commentary or extras to speak of). Their final collaboration was the uneven but effective melodrama
Red Beard (1965); it’s an anamorphic disc with commentary so it should be a safe purchase.
After
Red Beard, Mifune took a quick succession of high-paying roles in low quality film and television productions to make up the money he lost staying on board during
Red Beard's unprecedented 2-year shoot. Apparently Kurosawa believed the work he did was of such poor quality that it detracted from what they had achieved together and the pair never worked together again, in spite of Mifune living another 32 years. Still, what they did achieve is one of the towering actor-director pairings in cinema history, with these two films near the pinnacle of their art. The new discs serve their legacy admirably.
Still, there is the price. $39.95 U.S. suggested retail price each. Up from $29.95 for the earlier editions. The question ultimately is, how much of a geek are you?
