FOR some reason, 2008 brought a bumper crop of DVDs. Titles I had been seeking out for years suddenly appeared at my friendly local distributors, sometimes in multiple versions (and of course, I had to get both).
If the scuttlebutt among the, um, retailers were to be believed, the Beijing Olympics had something to do with it. I never managed to find out one way or another, but I did manage to bring home a virtual cornucopia of filmic delights. Come to think of it, I did get most of them before the Olympics. Go figure.
1. ?Breathless? (1959). Jean Luc Godard?s ?A Bout de Souffle,? better known by its English title, remains the touchstone of the French New Wave, and nearly half a century later has lost none of its post-modern cool. Set against a nominal French gangster plot, the doomed love affair between Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg is a mere thread for the director?s existential meditation on modern life and pop culture. I had managed to miss this film the few times it was screened at the Alliance Francaise (I think) over the years, and was dumbfounded to discover two different DVD versions within a span of weeks. The one to get is the two-disc Criterion version, with a second disc of extras including interviews and documentary essays on this landmark film.
2. ?Branded To Kill? (1967). Japanese cult director Seijun Suzuki was fired by his studio for making this, to his bosses at least, ?incomprehensible? Yakuza film. He was simply ahead of his time. Nominally the story of the third-ranking hitman in Japan, ?Branded to Kill? owes its well-deserved cult status to the filmmaker?s offbeat sense of humor, off-the-wall visual sense and surreal sense of plotting. Another one I had been waiting for for years, only to have two versions come out within weeks of each other. Unfortunately, the Criterion version of this one left out the English subs, so try to find the UK version instead.
3. ?El Topo? (1970). Said to be John Lennon?s favorite film, this psychedelic Zen Western by the Mexican filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky folds the avant garde and surrealism into the counterculture sensibilities of its era, resulting in one head trip of a movie about man?s search for enlightenment. If you get into this one, Jodorowsky?s even wilder follow-up, ?The Holy Mountain,? was also released on DVD around the same time.
4. ?Ace in the Hole? (1951). If you think the term ?media circus? is of recent coinage, you ought to see this Billy Wilder film (which was alternatively titled ?The Big Carnival.? Kirk Douglas plays a down-and-out reporter who stumbles into the biggest story of his career?a trapped miner?and schemes to delay his rescue so he can milk the story for all it?s worth, with tragic results for all concerned.
5. ?The Hustler? (1961). Arguably Paul Newman?s best role was as Fast Eddie Felson, the hotshot pool hustler in Robert Rossen?s classic film. Convinced he?s the best, Newman goes after Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), the top-ranked pool player, in a marathon 36-hour game during which he learns some hard lessons about winning and losing. (Newman plays the older, wiser Fast Eddie in the 1986 sequel ?The Color of Money,? directed by Martin Scorsese.)
6. ?Peeping Tom? (1960). Released the same year as the better-known ?Psycho,? this British film about a serial killer is in many ways more disturbing, so disturbing in fact that critics panned it mercilessly after its release. As things worked out, it is now considered a masterpiece. The central character is a psychopathic cameraman who films his victims as he murders them, making the audience complicit in his voyeurism.
7. ?Nosferatu? (1921). The first film adaptation of ?Dracula? was this silent film by the German director F.W. Murnau. When Bram Stoker?s estate refused to give him the rights, he simply renamed the titular vampire Count Orlok and went on to create this creepy masterpiece, lovingly restored in this Eureka! DVD. (The German director Werner Herzog remade the film in high camp style with Klaus Kinski as the blood-sucking count, also out on DVD. The film ?Shadow of the Vampire? is an imaginative interpretation of the making of ?Nosferatu,? worth seeking out as a companion to this film.)
8. ?The Battle of Algiers? (1965). In the light of 9/11 and Al Qaeda, Gillo Pontecorvo?s film about the Algerian uprising against their French colonial masters in the 1950s seems chillingly prescient, featuring as it does café bombings, drive-by massacres and interrogation by torture of terrorist suspects. But it?s also an intensely gripping thriller, shot in documentary style, that?s lost none of its power.
9. ?High and Low? (1963). I remember going to see this Kurosawa film as a child at the old Lion theater in Marikina (now long gone), and initially being disappointed that it wasn?t a samurai slash-?em-up. By the end of the film, however, I was totally hooked and this two-disc Criterion DVD reminded me why. A kidnapping thriller with film-noir atmospherics, two of Kurosawa?s best actors (Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuya Nakadai), and the master filmmaker?s inimitable touch.
10. ?The Manchurian Candidate? (1962). Film fans who were disappointed by the recent remake are herewith directed to the original. John Frankenheimer?s political thriller is informed in no small way by the Cold War paranoia of its era. Laurence Harvey is brainwashed by Chinese communists and unleashed on the American electorate by his scheming mother, with Frank Sinatra as the war buddy who slowly uncovers the secret. Sinatra disliked the film and bought its rights to keep it out of circulation for years.
11. ?Bob le Flambeur? (1956). Jean Pierre Melville?s film is the quintessential Euro-gangster flick. Bob the Gambler moves around in his milieu, the Parisian underworld, inhabited by pimps, prostitutes, conmen and worse. Feeling his age, Bob masterminds one last score, a casino heist, that could set him for life. If you develop a taste for French gangster films, it?s worth seeking out ?Touchez Pas Au Grisbi? by Jacques Becker, ?Classe Tous Risque? by Claude Sautet, ?Rififi? by Jules Dassin and Melville?s own ?Le Cercle Rouge? and ?Le Samourai??all on Criterion DVD.
12. ?The Apu Trilogy? (1955-58). Satyajit Ray?s celebrated trilogy of films following a young boy?s growth into adulthood is one of the most moving and life affirming human documents ever made, an influence on many filmmakers including Lino Brocka.
