The Criterion Collection
June 08, film June 22nd, 2008
By Roger Beebe, June 2008
I get nervous when I start to sing the praises of any corporation (like, oh, the Mac that I can’t live without now), but there are cases where such praise is due. For cinephiles, one corporation that tends to have due praise heaped upon it is Criterion.
Not only have they released hundreds of significant films in beautifully restored editions, but they’ve also pioneered many of the practices that we now take for granted. Way back in the laserdisc days, Criterion was already giving letterboxing a big push—perhaps most notably with their 1987 release of Blade Runner—and were it not for their sustained effort, we might still be living in a pan-and-scan world, missing out on as much as 45 percent of the original image. They were similarly influential in the mainstreaming of special editions with commentary tracks, alternate takes, theatrical trailers, etc., which is mostly a blessing, except when these riches are wasted on films like the Keanu Reeves’ fright-fest Constantine (available in a two-disc special edition—get yours now!).
These accomplishments are well documented, and the Criterion Collection (as their DVD imprint is known) does get its share of the credit. However, what seems less trumpeted about their efforts is the way they champion certain directors and attempt to gain them admittance to the cinematic pantheon. When they started releasing DVDs, they did start with the already canonized (Jean Renoir, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Fellini), but they quickly moved on to less obvious choices whose works they felt passionate about (e.g., Nicholas Roeg, David Cronenberg, Seijun Suzuki). I’d like to thank them here for all their hard work by aiding them in their efforts, shining a little extra light on three of those lesser-known directors who seem typical of the work that’s nearest and dearest to them.
Sam(uel) Fuller
Fuller may almost be a canonical figure at this point. He was championed by the critics of the Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s and ‘60s (including Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol) and in 1968 was included in the second highest category in Andrew Sarris’s influential The American Cinema (alongside Frank Capra, Otto Preminger, and Nicholas Ray). Still, Fuller’s an unlikely member of that canon—a tough-as-nails WWII vet who cranked out rough-edged pictures as fast as he could find funding for them. Criterion has released three of his controversial classics, each of which ran afoul of censors here or abroad. Pickup on South Street, the first chronologically and probably the least transgressive of the three, was censored at the script stage and then later at the final edit, for a frisking scene that got a little too frisky. Both Shock Corridor (1963)—a harrowing view of the inside of a mental ward, a kind of fictional counterpart to Fred Wiseman’s Titicut Follies—and The Naked Kiss (1964)—a melodrama about small-town deviancy—were denied UK cinema certification and couldn’t be screened there until the 1990s. Criterion has also just released three of his early films on their new “Eclipse” label, which they’ve started as a way of featuring lesser-known films in slightly scaled-back editions. Each of these films is worth watching for the Fuller completist, but none is quite the equal of the three they’ve released under the Criterion imprint.
Jean-Pierre Melville
In some ways, Melville and Fuller are kindred spirits. Like Fuller, Melville was a WWII vet (going underground as part of the Résistance); also like Fuller, Melville was, for a time at least, a hero to the directors of the French New Wave. But while Fuller and Melville also share a penchant for tough guy protagonists, their filmmaking styles couldn’t be more different. Where Fuller’s filmmaking tends to teeter on the edge of losing control, Melville orchestrates his films like a master thief organizing a caper. There’s an admirable coldness to his films that verges on austerity at times. Melville is perhaps best known for his crime films, and three of those—Le cercle rouge, Le samouraï, and Bob le flambeur—are among the films Criterion has released. Le samouraï is probably the most remarkable of the three, with a trench-coated Alain Delon walking almost wordlessly through his two hours on screen. Criterion has also released a pair of his other films—his early Cocteau adaptation, Les enfants terribles, as well as his recently re-released WWII tale, Army of Shadows. This last film made a number of year-end 10-best lists in 2006, the year of its re-release, and there are a couple of amazing scenes in that film—including the most intense shaving scene in the history of cinema—that really do represent the best of what Melville has to offer.
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Teshigahara’s films come from a universe of their own. The films are strange, but not in the strange-for-strange’s sake that can sometimes mark (or mar) David Lynch’s films. Teshigahara’s films may be closer in spirit to the writings of Samuel Beckett. His films demand to be read as allegorical fables, but not in any simple way where the allegory exhausts the richness of the image. Criterion released three of his films—all collaborations with renowned Japanese novelist Kobo Abe—as a box set, and each is a knockout. The Face of Another is an art-house Face/Off, where a burn victim gets an experimental life-like mask that transforms his world in more ways than he could have imagined. It’s shot in largely white aspectic glass environments with a precise cinematography that lands us somewhere between Bergman’s Persona and Lucas’s THX 1138. Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes both exchange the urban setting of The Face… for more rural locations. Pitfall is a puzzle of a film—a mystery that slowly takes shape for the eyes of the ghosts (yes, literally ghosts) who watch it. It reminds me of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s description of his novel The Erasers: the story of a bullet that takes 24-hours to arrive at its destination. Woman in the Dunes is perhaps the best known of Teshigahar’s films. It’s a haunting (although no ghosts this time) existentialist fable about a wanderer cruelly trapped in a sand pit in the middle of the desert. (Yes, it’s as strange as it sounds. Perhaps more so.) Criterion has also released Teshigahara’s film on architect Antonio Gaudi, which is a lovely meditation on the spaces of Gaudi’s buildings.
Each of these filmmakers is well worth discovering if you haven’t already done so, and collectively they give you a sense of Criterion’s worthy but unstated curatorial project. So tell Criterion thanks for everything, and wander a little further off the path with them as your able guide. You won’t be disappointed.
As a final note, I should alert all fans of Pier-Paolo Pasolini that Criterion will finally be reissuing their 17th DVD release, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, in August on the 10th anniversary of its original release. It’s been long out of print, and for those of you who’ve been waiting for years to see it—well, it’ll prove to be worth the wait.
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The Criterion Collection
June 08, film June 22nd, 2008
By Roger Beebe, June 2008
I get nervous when I start to sing the praises of any corporation (like, oh, the Mac that I can’t live without now), but there are cases where such praise is due. For cinephiles, one corporation that tends to have due praise heaped upon it is Criterion.
Not only have they released hundreds of significant films in beautifully restored editions, but they’ve also pioneered many of the practices that we now take for granted. Way back in the laserdisc days, Criterion was already giving letterboxing a big push—perhaps most notably with their 1987 release of Blade Runner—and were it not for their sustained effort, we might still be living in a pan-and-scan world, missing out on as much as 45 percent of the original image. They were similarly influential in the mainstreaming of special editions with commentary tracks, alternate takes, theatrical trailers, etc., which is mostly a blessing, except when these riches are wasted on films like the Keanu Reeves’ fright-fest Constantine (available in a two-disc special edition—get yours now!).
These accomplishments are well documented, and the Criterion Collection (as their DVD imprint is known) does get its share of the credit. However, what seems less trumpeted about their efforts is the way they champion certain directors and attempt to gain them admittance to the cinematic pantheon. When they started releasing DVDs, they did start with the already canonized (Jean Renoir, Kurosawa, Hitchcock, Fellini), but they quickly moved on to less obvious choices whose works they felt passionate about (e.g., Nicholas Roeg, David Cronenberg, Seijun Suzuki). I’d like to thank them here for all their hard work by aiding them in their efforts, shining a little extra light on three of those lesser-known directors who seem typical of the work that’s nearest and dearest to them.
Sam(uel) Fuller
Fuller may almost be a canonical figure at this point. He was championed by the critics of the Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s and ‘60s (including Godard, Truffaut, and Chabrol) and in 1968 was included in the second highest category in Andrew Sarris’s influential The American Cinema (alongside Frank Capra, Otto Preminger, and Nicholas Ray). Still, Fuller’s an unlikely member of that canon—a tough-as-nails WWII vet who cranked out rough-edged pictures as fast as he could find funding for them. Criterion has released three of his controversial classics, each of which ran afoul of censors here or abroad. Pickup on South Street, the first chronologically and probably the least transgressive of the three, was censored at the script stage and then later at the final edit, for a frisking scene that got a little too frisky. Both Shock Corridor (1963)—a harrowing view of the inside of a mental ward, a kind of fictional counterpart to Fred Wiseman’s Titicut Follies—and The Naked Kiss (1964)—a melodrama about small-town deviancy—were denied UK cinema certification and couldn’t be screened there until the 1990s. Criterion has also just released three of his early films on their new “Eclipse” label, which they’ve started as a way of featuring lesser-known films in slightly scaled-back editions. Each of these films is worth watching for the Fuller completist, but none is quite the equal of the three they’ve released under the Criterion imprint.
Jean-Pierre Melville
In some ways, Melville and Fuller are kindred spirits. Like Fuller, Melville was a WWII vet (going underground as part of the Résistance); also like Fuller, Melville was, for a time at least, a hero to the directors of the French New Wave. But while Fuller and Melville also share a penchant for tough guy protagonists, their filmmaking styles couldn’t be more different. Where Fuller’s filmmaking tends to teeter on the edge of losing control, Melville orchestrates his films like a master thief organizing a caper. There’s an admirable coldness to his films that verges on austerity at times. Melville is perhaps best known for his crime films, and three of those—Le cercle rouge, Le samouraï, and Bob le flambeur—are among the films Criterion has released. Le samouraï is probably the most remarkable of the three, with a trench-coated Alain Delon walking almost wordlessly through his two hours on screen. Criterion has also released a pair of his other films—his early Cocteau adaptation, Les enfants terribles, as well as his recently re-released WWII tale, Army of Shadows. This last film made a number of year-end 10-best lists in 2006, the year of its re-release, and there are a couple of amazing scenes in that film—including the most intense shaving scene in the history of cinema—that really do represent the best of what Melville has to offer.
Hiroshi Teshigahara
Teshigahara’s films come from a universe of their own. The films are strange, but not in the strange-for-strange’s sake that can sometimes mark (or mar) David Lynch’s films. Teshigahara’s films may be closer in spirit to the writings of Samuel Beckett. His films demand to be read as allegorical fables, but not in any simple way where the allegory exhausts the richness of the image. Criterion released three of his films—all collaborations with renowned Japanese novelist Kobo Abe—as a box set, and each is a knockout. The Face of Another is an art-house Face/Off, where a burn victim gets an experimental life-like mask that transforms his world in more ways than he could have imagined. It’s shot in largely white aspectic glass environments with a precise cinematography that lands us somewhere between Bergman’s Persona and Lucas’s THX 1138. Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes both exchange the urban setting of The Face… for more rural locations. Pitfall is a puzzle of a film—a mystery that slowly takes shape for the eyes of the ghosts (yes, literally ghosts) who watch it. It reminds me of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s description of his novel The Erasers: the story of a bullet that takes 24-hours to arrive at its destination. Woman in the Dunes is perhaps the best known of Teshigahar’s films. It’s a haunting (although no ghosts this time) existentialist fable about a wanderer cruelly trapped in a sand pit in the middle of the desert. (Yes, it’s as strange as it sounds. Perhaps more so.) Criterion has also released Teshigahara’s film on architect Antonio Gaudi, which is a lovely meditation on the spaces of Gaudi’s buildings.
Each of these filmmakers is well worth discovering if you haven’t already done so, and collectively they give you a sense of Criterion’s worthy but unstated curatorial project. So tell Criterion thanks for everything, and wander a little further off the path with them as your able guide. You won’t be disappointed.
As a final note, I should alert all fans of Pier-Paolo Pasolini that Criterion will finally be reissuing their 17th DVD release, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom, in August on the 10th anniversary of its original release. It’s been long out of print, and for those of you who’ve been waiting for years to see it—well, it’ll prove to be worth the wait.
