DVDs, 4/1.

This was the week that Criterion introduced its new line of DVDs. Published under the Eclipse banner, the company offers a series of auteur-oriented boxed sets, in the $70 dollar region, beginning with Early Bergman, a gathering of five of the director's earliest films. Announced as the next box is a sampling of Louis Malle's documentaries. Costs for the boxes are kept at a minimum by the absence of extras.

Included in Early Bergman: Torment (1944), the first appearance of the Bergman sensibility on the big screen, via this debut screenplay, directed by Bergman mentor Alf Sjöberg; Crisis (1946), Bergman's actual first directorial work and a "city versus country" tale; Port of Call (1948), his fifth film as the double duty writer-director, this one an early examination of female psychology; Thirst (1949), which he directed only, concerns the collapse of a marriage during a journey in a manner that may remind viewers of Rossellini; and To Joy (1949), about young love among artists, which has one of the most famous cutaway inserts in film history.

Updated through 4/3.

Throughout his decades-long career, Bergman has gone in and out of fashion, and though he just directed a movie a few years ago (Saraband, which revealed that Bergman is still able to shock), he may be slightly unfashionable right now. Criterion is going against the grain by using his films to debut a new line. However, they are all Janus Films holdings, which forms the foundation of the Criterion Collection, so such a collection is certainly easier to put together than most.

It appears that Criterion didn't send out much in the way of screeners. One of the first to publicize the set was Harry Knowles, who appears not to have sample the box, either, though he plugs them, writing, "I've never had the opportunity to experience these early Ingmar Bergman films. I've loved his famous work and more modern work, but never these titles.... Important works from an incredibly important film artist."

Gary Tooze at DVD Beaver deems these early films "the hidden treasures of a European cinema on the cusp of a golden age," and finds that Torment, Crisis and To Joy "look the best although still show some very infrequent damage... mostly in the form of light scratches or speckles. Thirst has some minor issues with flickering contrast."

In other art film news, Alain Resnais's Muriel (aka Muriel, ou Le temps d'un retour; 1963) comes to DVD via Koch Lorber. Less brazenly "cinematic" than his two previous features, and his first in color, Muriel actually anticipates his latest stage of films, concentrating on the romantic interactions of a closed set of characters. There is, however, a political component. The Algerian war haunts the characters, and the script is credited to Jean Cayrol, one of Resnais's collaborators on Night and Fog. The fact that the film is in color may have diminished its achievement in the eyes of contemporaneous reviewers, but today it retains its power.

Dave Kehr's enthusiastic and detailed review in the New York Times asserts that the film's reasonably traditional surface "proves to be only a thin veneer of rationality applied to the chaotic and contradictory jumble of memories and emotions that are, for [Resnais], the essence of human consciousness. The title itself opens the first gap: Muriel is not a presence in this film named after her, but instead a conspicuous absence."

Glenn Erickson at DVD Talk is equally enthusiastic, writing that Muriel is Resnais's "most accessible and perhaps most subtle art film about time-shifting consciousness," adding that the film "will be every bit as perplexing to some viewers, as it uses an eccentric anti-narrative editing style to emphasize the lack of progress in its characters' lives."

But most enthusiastic is Christopher Long, writing for DVD Beaver: "I'm so excited to see Muriel made available on a Region 1 DVD that I hate to point out the flaws in the transfer." But point he must. "Unfortunately, the image is very soft in places," and the "color palette also seems a bit washed out, especially the reds. I don't if this is attributable to the source material or the transfer." Long adds that the only extra on the disc is "a short interview (13 min.) with Francois Thomas, author of L'atelier d'Alain Resnais. His lucid, if all too brief, analysis of the film is very enlightening, particularly his contention that 'high brow' Resnais drew heavily on comic books as an inspiration for the film's design, especially with its overlapping audio edits."

Update: Glenn Kenny has a terrific piece in Premiere on Eclipse; he talks with Criterion's Peter Becker as well.

Update, 4/3: "It's time for Criterion to cut loose and take some chances," writes Dave Kehr in the New York Times. "Which is exactly what it hasn't done with this cautious initial offering [from Eclipse].... This release already seems out of date, a slightly musty holdover from days of repertory programming long gone by. For admirers of Mr Bergman's work, though, it is an excellent opportunity to watch as he develops from a promising newcomer to a deeply, if sometimes excessively, personal filmmaker."

Posted by dwhudson at April 1, 2007 4:40 AM