DVDs, 8/15.

Each week, there are the few self-evidently "important" DVDs released, and then below them a whole bunch of others, the films maudits of commercial entertainment: nostalgic revivals as studios ransack their catalog, actor- or other-themed packages, straight-to-video entries that no one has ever heard of, vids for kids and discs for exercise nuts, music junkies, smut hounds (sometimes all at once) and so forth. I'd be curious to know which end of the taste scale sells more, the two or three DVDs that everyone reviews, or the kid videos, exercise tapes, etc., that get ignored.

The self-evidently important discs this week are led by Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. This Paramount package is the studio's third iteration of the title, but you can't call it a triple dip. The first release was the 1979 version of the movie. The second was Apocalypse Now Redux, Coppola and Walter Murch's more surreal 2001 re-edit. Now, Paramount has paired them in Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier, but with the addition of an audio commentary track by Coppola and some deleted scenes, among other supplements.

Ty Burr at Entertainment Weekly struck the mainstream note by complaining that the new set's title is "a misnomer, actually, since this two-disc set doesn't include Hearts of Darkness, the essential 1991 documentary about the filming of Coppola's surreal 1979 Vietnam War epic."

At the other end of the journalistic scale is Ain't it Cool News's Moriarty, who, in his multi-DVD round-up, put AN at the top of his list: "Is there anything coming out this week that's even close to the greatness of Francis Ford Coppola's hallucinatory masterpiece? I. Think. Not." Moriarty went against conventional wisdom by adding, "I'm glad Hearts of Darkness isn't here, because that starts to bleed into this film when I watch them together. It's like they're one big movie at this point. That's why I love the option of being able to simply put on the 1979 version of the film, crank it up, and have it look better than it has ever looked in any home video format before. A marked improvement from the original release of the theatrical cut and a step up from the remastered Redux a few years later."

"Is this what Vietnam was truly like?," wonders Jon Danziger of Digitally Obsessed. "Almost certainly not, but the movie is about a whole lot more than verisimilitude, and ultimately it's a reminder that what matters is not the destination, but the journey." Danziger then reminds us yet again that the "most glaring absence is of course Hearts of Darkness, George Hickenlooper's documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now, one of the great portraits of a filmmaker at work in crisis."

Preston Jones of DVD Talk gives the most thorough account of AN and of The Complete Dossier's supplemental material. "One of the most discussed, dissected and debated films of the last 25 years, Coppola's surreal, vivid meditation on the Vietnam War is as impenetrable and masterful in 2006 as it was upon its initial release, when Coppola infamously declared his film not merely about Vietnam, but, in fact, the very celluloid incarnation of that conflict." Jones then goes on to note the differences between the extras then and now, noting that "this third release, The Complete Dossier, does not include the compound destruction footage, the theatrical trailer or the re-release trailer, so Apocalypse Now completists will want to hang onto those first two DVDs. But what is here? Plenty, all of which was lovingly assembled by producer Kim Aubry - the main objective of the supplemental material seems to be two-fold: demystify one of Hollywood's most legendarily mythic creations and also rightfully trumpet Apocalypse Now as a cinematic technological watershed, with its dense, complicated sound design and reliance upon multi-channel stereo sound." Jones is the only reviewer who attempts to explain why Hearts of Darkness isn't on the set, quoting Aubry, who appears to have written Jones after his review first appeared. Writes Aubry, "The story with inclusion of Hearts is complex and legal. When the rights situation gets straightened out (with that wonderful film), I am sure it will become available again as it must. It just couldn't happen in this time window for our set."

Warner Home Video has issued a big box of Jimmy Stewart movies, of which DVD Journal chooses to review only a couple, one of them being Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St Louis. Writer JJB concludes that "neither the film nor [Stewart's] performance rank with, say, Vertigo or It's a Wonderful Life, though Stewart "turned out to be a durable choice - the sort of Hollywood icon who could portray a historical legend.... The somber proceedings leading up to the flight itself, with its nail-biting takeoff, are offset by Wilder's mischievous sense of humor in other scenes, particularly with Lindbergh's flashbacks to his early days in aviation."

Glenn Erickson, the DVD Savant, also likes the film's "convincing period atmosphere and a true sense of the spirit of aviation," and links it to other Wilder films: "Lindbergh undergoes a personal ordeal not unlike Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend," and observes that Wilder recreates a scene he originally wrote for Hold Back the Dawn. Finally, "the telltale mirror from The Apartment makes an early appearance when an anonymous young woman in the crowd of well-wishers (Patricia Smith) offers it to Lindbergh just before he leaves."

Meanwhile, Moriarty corrects himself. "I said there was nothing even close to Apocalypse Now on the list this week. Of course, I forgot about... this exceptional collection from Criterion, six films from Eric Rohmer. This is as big a deal as when they released all the Antoine Doinel films together last year. These films aren't directly related like they're sequels to one another, but what Rohmer does is explore variations on themes and ideas over the course of many different films."

The DVD Journal chose to review two films from the box, Claire's Knee and Love in the Afternoon. Regarding Claire, DSH notes that, "In other episodes of the Moral Tales, the idea of infidelity is a fine line for the characters to walk, but perhaps because the subject matter here revolves around younger women and older men, the sexuality is staid, and the tone is lightly comic. Nonetheless, as an insight into imaginary relationships, it's unparalleled." On Love, DSH finds "the details are what sets it apart. Frederic is much like his other brethren in the 'moral' cycle - they all have a wandering eye, but are mostly moral people.... But when the film (and the cycle) concludes, it's on a brilliant emotional note that suggests that the moment this character re-enters the reality of his life, he has no choice but to be true to his character."

Jeff Ulmer of Digitally Obsessed gives a detailed summary of Rohmer's career and of the six films and the set's supplementary material, concluding that "fans should be thrilled with the wealth of supplements found in this set, which do a superb job of illuminating the many talents of this exquisite filmmaker."

Finally, Dave Kehr at the New York Times passed on Apocalypse Now to savor the Rohmer Films, harking back to a time 40 years ago when an "austere little comedy about a Roman Catholic intellectual (Jean-Louis Trintignant) struggling with the temptation represented by a sensual divorcée (Françoise Fabian) became a success on the art-house circuit. That film, My Night at Maud's, seemed to represent something new: an unabashedly conversational cinema, in which the action was largely confined to a single, snowbound apartment. The camera work had a classical invisibility, and the dialogue emerged in fully wrought phrases, impeccably enunciated by stage-trained actors who seemed never to have heard of the mumblings of the Method." Of the set as a whole, Kehr asserts that "the movies themselves, of course, remain as seductive as ever: elegant minuets of mind and matter, spirit and body, love and sex, in which language itself, by the end of the series, carries an erotic charge."

Posted by dwhudson at August 15, 2006 1:02 PM