DVDs, 2/27.

49th Parallel (aka, The Invaders) is the eighth and, chronologically, earliest film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger to be released by Criterion on DVD. As so often with Powell, the film bears certain resonances with Hitchcock, in this case, Lifeboat, which also portrays a Nazi submarine commander as a cunning, resourceful ubermensch until brought down by good old international pluck. Here, Lieutenant Hirth (Eric Portman) leads the survivors from a sinking vessel on a trek headed through the length and width of Canada, encountering along the way Laurence Olivier, Anton Walbrook, Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey, representatives of a diversity that Nazi society seeks to eradicate.

Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver finds that, in comparison to earlier home entertainment versions of the film, "the Criterion image appears to be superior - vastly better contrast, [fewer] artifacts (although some are visible), less damage and slightly more information in the frame than the PAL editions." He also finds the supplements superior, from the Bruce Eder commentary ("fabulous") to the Powell and Pressburger war-effort shorts on the Bonus Disc ("very entertaining").

Dylan Charles at DVD Verdict is slightly less enthusiastic, calling the film a "propaganda piece" with a "peculiar feel. The characters don't possess any true depth because they're there to serve a specific function," but despite "its heavy handedness, it works because of these powerful performances and because of the well-structured, continuous allegory." Eric Henderson at Slant segregates the film from other Powell wartime efforts, noting that it offers "slim to none of the trademark whimsy of the WWII films Powell and Pressburger later made under The Archers banner.... Its rhetorical power stems from its earnest plea for those watching contemporaneously to fight a political movement in order to save all human souls being possessed by it." Finally, JJB at the DVD Journal notes that "49th Parallel may mark the first notable collaboration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but it still serves as a bridge-work of sorts"; still, the "ambitious scope of the film is impossible to ignore."

"[Mikio] Naruse, whose filmmaking career extended from 1930 to 1967, and who died in 1969, is often likened to Yasujiro Ozu, his famously austere contemporary, perhaps because the men shared an interest in domestic melodrama: the naturalistic tales of lower-middle-class life the Japanese call shomingeki," writes Dave Kehr. "But Naruse was very much his own man, as When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960), the first of his films to become available on DVD in the United States, richly demonstrates."

Region 2 is luckier. The Masters of Cinema release of a first volume of collected Naruse films (reviewed extensively by logboy at Twitch) offers up three titles. Arguably his best known, or known of, film in the west (aside from Late Chrysanthemums), When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki) introduces Region 1 to a director who occupies a place, in terms of subject matter, somewhat to the left of Mizoguchi, in that his subject is Woman and her Sufferings, and, as Kehr notes, somewhere near Ozu territory, with his observations of people in natural situations and gently exploring subtle distinctions in family position, class and wealth.

For insight, one of course may always turn to Ain't It Cool News, where Harry Knowles tells us, "If you liked Memoirs of a Geisha, you really owe it to yourself to see this amazing film. This is the vastly superior film. Takamine Hideko is just one of the saddest creatures you've ever seen. She plays a Geisha that [sic] must find a husband that [sic] won't consider her past or see past it.... If you want a good cry, this is a very good cry."

Keith Uhlich at Slant offers a tad more detail. Calling it a "seminal" work and a "masterpiece," Uhlich goes on to describe the film as building "slowly, playing out against the backdrop of a polite Japanese society where few speak their mind, and Naruse's insistence on focusing on inconsequential everyday behaviors and transactions may initially seem perplexing. Yet it is all prelude to a raw, brilliantly sustained final half-hour." An otherwise "superb" transfer is "marred now and again by image warping, though typically for only a frame or two. I recall seeing these flaws when the film was projected at the Naruse retrospective, so I believe they are inherent to the source material."

DSH at the DVD Journal starts off by praising Donald Richie's "insightful" audio commentary, probably a necessity for most R1 viewers, for whom information on and access to Naruse is sparse. "To an outsider, Japanese culture and the working methods of bar madams are so foreign that the film seems more of an exposé than what's normally known as a 'chick flick,' but aligning Naruse with the feminine also points out how male-driven Japanese cinema is, what an anomaly Naruse's gift was, and how low in esteem the woman's picture is usually treated." Carrying on the woman's picture theme, Glenn Erickson, the DVD Savant over at DVD Talk, announces "Move over, Douglas Sirk: we've just seen a 'women's picture' that makes us forget all others." He goes on to add that the film is "simply a masterpiece" that "belongs to Hideko Takamine. She puts her performance into her eyes, and we care deeply what happens to her. Near the end of the show, Naruse stages a devastating confrontation between Keiko and an overworked mother. Keiko stands in a dirty yard while two kids ride a tricycle in circles around her. The potent image makes the coded social criticism of American 'women's films' seem petty."

Posted by dwhudson at February 27, 2007 6:24 AM