4K Face Off: Criterion vs Kino

MGM has made a few United Artists features available to more than one home video company at a time, and as a result, both The Criterion Collection and Kino Lorber Incorporated have released two-platter 4K Blu-ray presentations of a couple of excellent films. The movies may be the same, but the presentations have substantial differences.

We reviewed Criterion’s standard Blu-ray release of Billy Wilder’s brilliantly conceived and gloriously amusing 1959 comedy, Some Like It Hot, in Dec 18. The standard Blu-ray platter that comes with the 4K platter in the 4K release (UPC#71551531-1717, $50) is the same platter as that previous release, but the presentation on the 4K platter is much improved. While the earlier version looked terrific, it seems grainy and even speckled from time to time in comparison to the ultra-smooth and impeccable 4K image. The incredible outfits designed for top-billed Marilyn Monroe (who was apparently pregnant for a while during the shoot, not just enhancing her bust but, as Criterion’s 4K image makes clear, imbuing her with an ethereal glow), combined with the exceptional black-and-white cinematography by Charles Lang, Jr., is not just eye-popping on the 4K presentation, it is utterly transporting. Pauline Kael used to title her film review book compilations with sexual double entendres (‘I Lost It All at the Movies,’ etc.), but the 4K disc is an actual and palpable synthesis of sex and film, perfectly rhythmed to synchronize its discoveries and unrestrained humor, perfectly integrated to weave light and darkness, and perfectly textured to transform its collected visual and aural signifiers into a rapture of ideas, personalities, and human vulnerability.

The standard BD is monophonic, and the 4K BD defaults to the mono track, but there is also a 5.1-channel DTS track that gives the music—the film is set during Prohibition and many of the tunes are from that time; Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are musicians who must pretend to be women and join a female band to hide from mobsters that want to do them in; and hence, the film is at least partially a musical, with Monroe singing several choice songs—just enough of an added dimensionality to enhance the film’s presence without distortion or distraction.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1. There are optional English subtitles, and the Howard Suber commentary is carried over from the standard BD to the 4K presentation. Also featured on the standard BD is a rewarding collection of other supplements, including a trailer; a 19-minute piece on costume designer Orry-Kelly; a 9-minute audio-only interview with Monroe; a 31-minute interview with Curtis from 2001; a 10-minute interview with Lemmon from a 1988 French TV program; 56 minutes of Wilder appearing on The Dick Cavett Show; a 2006 retrospective documentary running 26 minutes; a 2001 retrospective documentary running 20 minutes; and a 12-minute retrospective segment from 2001 about the all-girl band in the film.

The Kino Kino Studio Classics 4K UltraHD Blu-ray release (UPC#738329257477, $40) is sharper than Criterion’s standard BD and a little brighter than even the 4K presentation, but when you toggle back and forth between the two 4K images, it becomes almost unwatchable after the satisfaction the Criterion presentation delivers. The Kino image is not as smooth and you quickly become distracted by the grain and other extremely minor flaws, only because those flaws are not present on the other disc.

The Kino presentation defaults to the 5.1 DTS track, and comes with optional English subtitles. Suber recorded the commentary used on the Criterion disc quite a while ago, and Some Like It Hot scholarship has advanced since then. Kino supplies the film with two superb talks. One features Wilder biographer Joseph McBride, who does everything from clearing up the misconceptions surrounding the creation of the movie’s famous final line with a definitive summary of the events leading to its placement, to identifying many of the bit players and explaining how they were chosen for the film. He discusses the documented one night stand between Curtis and Monroe (they both got aroused by their make out scene and continued later in the day) and shares other anecdotes about what went on during the shoot. He goes into detail about the film’s technical achievements as well, while also going over Wilder’s background and how the director drew from his knowledge of films, journalism and other experiences to piece together the feature.

On the other commentary, the son of co-screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond’s, Paul Diamond, shares a track with two contemporary screenwriters, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, focusing a great deal on the story’s brilliant structure, but also sharing their own memories of how they reacted to the movie when they first saw it in their childhood (Monroe made a lasting impact) or, in Diamond’s case, his handful of memories from being at the beach during that part of the shoot. They dissect the pairing of Curtis, whose character simply finds the ruse convenient, and Lemmon, whose character rather comically starts to embrace the switch, to point out how Wilder often confounds expectations, such as having Lemmon be the first of the two to put the moves on Monroe’s character. “Here’s a choice. Look. He had Lemmon go for it. This is a great entrée, but he had the comedian instead of your leading man. That would have been a studio note. You know, ‘Why you having the second banana?’” “Because later we have to root for Tony Curtis to get her, so why don’t we see that he’s the good guy? But he goes to the comedian and it’s all of this kind of diagonal choices, diagonal writing choices I call them, that just make it more interesting.” “Because [Curtis’s character] is still detached.” “Yeah, he’s still holding back.” “Just want to get out of town, dump this rig and make for better and better places.”

Indeed, studio notes are often the bane of screenwriters. “You’d also get, ‘Why does it have to be in period?’ as indeed these guys did get. That was one early note and the answer was very simple. If you put guys in contemporary clothing, Fifties clothing at that point, they would have looked like guys in dresses. If you put them into the unfamiliar clothing of a generation before, then everybody looks odd, so they don’t stand out.”

And intercut with their talk are some terrific, separate recollections about shooting the film from Curtis and Lemmon, speaking in detail about various scenes and recalling the atmosphere on the shoot. Curtis is very sweet while sharing his memories of Monroe and ponders how one could not become aroused when kissing her. He also declares flat out his anger at reporters who took his facetious answer to a stupid question out of context to claim he had compared kissing her to kissing Hitler.

The second platter in the Kino set is a standard BD, but it does not contain the movie, just another large collection of supplementary features, including a trailer, the 31-minute Curtis interview, the 26-minute and 20-minute retrospectives and the 12-minute piece about the band that are also on the Criterion disc, along with a 21-minute montage of memorabilia and clips, all of which originally appeared on the MGM Special Edition DVD (Jan 03). Also featured is a lovely 2-minute funeral tribute Wilder made to Diamond and 21 minutes of an interview with Wilder by Volker Schlondorff about shooting different moments in the film and in particular about the challenges of working with Monroe.

We reviewed the Criterion Blu-ray release of Norman Jewison’s 1967 In the Heat of the Night in Mar 19 and we were very impressed with the freshness of the colors and the relative stability of Haskell Wexler’s location cinematography and its natural but pervasive grain. The presentation on the 4K platter in Criterion’s 4K release (UPC#715515313117, $50), which also comes with the older BD platter, is a stunning improvement. The grain is gone. The delicacy and tentativeness of the low light situations remains, but the image is smooth and sharp, and hues are intricately defined. The improved image makes the already engaging drama even more immediate and engrossing. Sidney Poitier is a Philadelphia cop waiting one night in a train station in a small Mississippi town to catch a connection after visiting his mother when a local cop (played by Warren Oates, who really doesn’t get his due at the end) drags him down to the station because there has just been a murder. Rod Steiger is the police chief. Famously, the film was about how Poitier’s character, a model of perfection, steps in to solve the crime, but the reality of the film is that Poitier’s character is extremely flawed. He’s young and comes with his own prejudices and presumptions, while Steiger’s character, although quick to use anger as a shield, is more mature and in some ways, more open minded. The film runs 110 minutes. The story advances systematically for a while—Hal Ashby was the editor—and then begins to fragment a little as the self confidence of Poitier’s character is chipped apart. Indeed, there are actually a couple of minor points that don’t really make much sense regarding the mystery’s resolution, but the presence of every character is so brought to life by the 4K presentation that the movie’s atmosphere, the wonderful performances, the basic profile of what it is like to be black in a white environment, and the tension of the mystery story create an enthralling entertainment made all the more enduring by the legacies of the movie stars playing the parts.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1.Although the film defaults to mono, there is a very nice 5.1-channel DTS track that is understated—the audio is centered most of the time—but still pleasingly dimensional at certain moments.The commentary that was included on the standard BD, featuring Jewison, Wexler, Steiger and costar Lee Grant, is also featured on the 4K platter.The standard platter also comes with a trailer, a 21-minute retrospective documentary, a 13-minute piece on the Quincy Jones music, a 13-minute interview with Jewison from 2018; a 2018 interview with Grant running 15 minutes; an 8-minute interview with Poitier from 2006; and an 18-minute examination of Poitier’s groundbreaking career.

In this instance, nothing is lost on the Kino MGM KL Studio Classics two-platter 4K UltraHD Blu-ray (UPC#738329258474, $40). Both the picture and the 5.1 DTS track seem interchangeable with the Criterion 4K release. Kino’s disc has the Jewison et al. commentary, as well, which originated on MGM’s DVD release (May 01), but they have also created an excellent second commentary, featuring Sixties film enthusiasts Nathaniel Thompson and Steve Mitchell, along with Robert Mirisch, nephew (actually, half-nephew, it’s complicated) of producer Walter Mirisch, which was recorded just a few days after Poitier passed away. Mirisch, working for the Mirisch production company, was involved with the production and was also on the set at times, so he has plenty of stories and insights to share, which are effectively augmented with insightful and constant critical analysis of the film by Thompson and Mitchell. They explore the contributions of the cast and the crew, delve into how monumental the film’s premise was at the time (including the outpouring of good will from the industry during and after it won the Best Picture Oscar), and delineate the film’s careful construction. On the wildly different acting methods of Poitier and Steiger, for example: “The contrast in styles work so perfectly hand to glove to the contrast in characters.”

The second platter included in the set is a standard Blu-ray that doesn’t have the main film, but does have two very special features, the continuation of Poitier’s detective character in standard crime adventures, the 1970 “They Call Me Mister Tibbs!” and the 1971 The Organization. Both films were based upon novels by the author of the source novel for In the Heat of the Night, John Ball, but transport Poitier’s character from Philadelphia to San Francisco (Thompson and Mitchell speak briefly about the films in their Heat of the Night commentary, and suggest that San Francisco became a hot location for cop movies after Bullitt—and indeed, both films have car chase sequences that owe their design and music entirely to the Peter Yeats film; they also note that while Poitier’s character is pointedly single in Heat of the Night, he now has a wife and two children, suggesting that he has not been single for at least a decade). Both films have reasonably strong monophonic audio tracks and both are accompanied by optional English subtitles.

Gordon Douglas directed They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, a standard procedural that at least attempts to give Poitier’s character an inner life. Not only is one of the primary suspects in the murder of a prostitute a longtime friend of Poitier’s character, but Poitier’s character slaps his own son several times during a scene about family discipline. That scene is absolutely cringey, but it makes him a flawed human, just as he was for more refined reasons (and another impulsive slap) in the first film. Running 109 minutes, the movie has several action scenes, a lot of urban atmosphere, and a terrific cast, including Barbara McNair as his wife, Martin Landau as the primary suspect (an urban preacher involved in politics, suggesting that an African-American should probably have been cast in the part), Anthony Zerbe going over-the-top Steiger-style as another primary suspect (a pimp and drug dealer, but he sells it believably), Edward Asner wearing a Rod Taylor hairpiece, and Beverly Todd. Still, even with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and flashes of nudity during the opening murder, it feels like a telefilm. Thanks to Poitier’s presence and his ability to sell the forensic discoveries, the movie is watchable, but it is no more than a pale and even painful shadow of its predecessor. Hues are fresh, but the image is often rather grainy and there is a speckle now and then, as well. Jones supplies another cool musical score.

Directed by Don Medford, The Organization is a more superficial thriller—the family scenes are simply obligatory and suddenly the son is squeaky clean (he had great potential in the previous movie), but it is also more entertaining. Poitier is just the hero (superhero, really), without emotional conflict or anger issues, but he has such superstar charisma that whether he is interrogating suspects, chasing after bad guys on foot and in cars, or aiming and shooting his gun, he is too gorgeous and too good at his craft not to hold a viewer in complete cinematic bliss. A group of vigilantes steal a very large amount of drugs from a corporate headquarters, but the next day, one of the company’s executives is found murdered in the room where the bags were lifted. Panicking, they robbers contact Poitier’s character, pleading with him to help them in return for information no one else knows about the killing, and he goes along with it. As mobsters start identifying and killing the vigilantes, Poitier’s character gets closer to identifying who is running the operation. Ultimately, the story has a few holes, but running 108 minutes, it keeps pushing forward with revelations, terrific San Francisco locations (including BART while it was under construction), action and star power. McNair returns as Poitier’s wife, and a young Raul Julia has a terrific part as one of the vigilantes, with Sheree North, Graham Jarvis, Ron O’Neal, Allen Garfield and Gerald S. O'Loughlin. The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and the image is sharper and smoother most of the time in comparison to They Call Me Mr. Tibbs. The colors are very fresh. The music is by Gil Mellé, but does not sound like a downgrade and includes a few very pleasing jazz riffs.

Also featured on the platter are trailers for all three films; the 21-minute retrospective documentary; the 13-minute Jones documentary; and a 7-minute appreciation of the breakthrough cinematic social awareness In the Heat of the Night facilitated.

Getting high on 4K

The latest scientific methods for investigating an unknown pathogen…a half-century ago…are methodically displayed in the 1971 Robert Wise Universal Picture thriller based upon the novel by medical writer Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain. We cannot speak for ourselves, but we were reliably assured by friends, who were definitely in a position to know at the time, that the film is a total trip if you watch it when you are high. A satellite designed to capture microscopic life forms in space (ostensibly for ‘research,’ but, anticipating Alien, the government may also be looking for handy bio-weapons) crashes in the American Southwest near a sparsely populated desert town and is unknowingly opened by the town’s doctor so that, at the beginning of the movie, the entire town is dead except for a little baby that won’t stop crying and an elderly man. The assembled team retrieves the unit and the two survivors and brings them to an elaborately constructed underground facility designed specifically to investigate whatever it would be that the satellite had returned.

Better known examples of motion picture directors casting and shooting their stars in their own image include Jack Nicholson coming across as Stanley Kubrick in The Shining and Robert Montgomery appearing extra portly in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith (and, more recently, Michael Fassbender in Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag). There are many other examples, of course, but we never would have expected Robert Wise, a paragon of movie director virtue, to do the same thing and yet there are not one but two central actors in Andromeda Strain that are wearing Wise’s glasses and sporting his haircut, Arthur Hill and especially David Wayne. Yes, the film has TV stars rather than movie stars, but that was a Universal thing at the time to hold down costs. Hill’s character is the leader of the group spearheading the investigation and Morse is a fellow scientist. Kate Reid delivers a memorable performance as, well, Thelma from Scooby-Doo 30 years older (and also wearing Wise’s glasses), playing a scientist who has a medical secret of her own that endangers the project (Paula Kelly is also featured). The youngest principal cast member, i.e., the hunky guy, is played by James Olsen, who is nibbling at middle age himself (with a receding hairline) as the doctor attempting to reverse diagnose why the two survivors didn’t catch the bug. He gets to do the brilliantly thrilling beat-the-clock-before-the-self-destruct-bomb-goes-off at the climax, which former editor Wise staged so well that it is just as hold-your-breath-and-scream gripping today as it was when the film was first projected in marijuana-wafting theaters.

Running 132 minutes, it was Wise who was perhaps the only director who could have turned the material into a hit. Still part of the first act, there is a lengthy sequence where the characters, in their descent to the lab, must go through five elaborate stages of sterilization so as not to further contaminate the pathogen. For Crichton, who was at the top of his game, this was the point of the story, as was all of the other computer-aided microscopy and data analysis—to demonstrate how something such as an alien lifeform ought to be researched, while dressing it up with thriller tropes to keep the reader engaged. Wise does not mess with Crichton’s formula, and he doesn’t have to, because the display of technology, however antiquated the monochrome computer screens look or how limited the electron imaging is, has an accuracy that can still be accepted and not laughed off. A few years later, in Star Trek The Motion Picture, Wise caught heat (although he has since been forgiven) for taking his sweet time getting things underway in the film so that the process itself could be savored, and yes, indeed, it has become readily apparent that Star Trek TMP was essentially a remake of Andromeda Strain, with a different venue.

The film’s enduring entertainment is on full display with Universal and Arrow Video’s 4K Blu-ray (UPC#760137175728, $50). The quality of the picture is solid and hues are fresh, so that however antiquated the film’s science is or will become, the dynamics of Wise’s presentation supersede any technical shortcomings. Arrow also has a standard Blu-ray (UPC#760137252788, $40), which still looks terrific, although the image is inherently grainier, which can impact a viewer’s emotional or subliminal response to the creative visuals and eventual excitements, even with artificial chemical encouragements. On both presentations, the monophonic audio is solid and well worth amplifying, since the film’s sound design plays an important role in its thrills. There are optional English subtitles.

Both releases come with the same set of supplements, including a complete copy of the shooting script in PDF format that is available through computer access, as well as a very readable copy of the script that can be stepped through on a regular TV, including a text addendum that features some of the ‘text’ props in the film. Also featured is a trailer; three TV commercials; 3 radio commercials; a great collection of memorabilia and production photos in still frame; a very enjoyable 28-minute piece by Kim Newman on contagion movies and how Andromeda Strain fits into the genre (“I love the fact that the world nearly ends because of a paper jam in a printer.”); a terrific 30-minute retrospective documentary from 2001 that includes interviews with Wise, Crichton and others; and an excellent 13-minute interview with Crichton about his career and how he came to write the novel. Film expert Bryan Reesman supplies a good commentary track, going into the backgrounds of the cast and crew members, going over Crichton’s biography, delving into the history of the film’s production and touching on the science Crichton was exploring. He also shares relevant stories about his own personal life, surveys films about contagious diseases, and explains the science behind various scenes.

Who will buy this wonderful Blu-ray?

2001: A Space Odyssey, Once upon a Time in the West, Rosemary’s Baby, and Petulia, not to mention the less likely but still more deserving Bullitt and Night of the Living Dead, all failed to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar of 1968 when the Columbia Pictures production directed by Carol Reed, Oliver!, won.Heck, it also beat Franco Zeffirelli’s magnificent Romeo and Juliet, and a much better musical, Funny Girl, both of which had at least made it to the final five.It was definitely a finger-in-your-throat gag moment when it won, and was not softened by the Oscars broadcast, which was laden with promotions for the film above and beyond promotions for the other movies. The film uses spare excerpts from the Charles Dickens story about an orphan, played quite sweetly by Mark Lester, falling in with a gang of child thieves in London to create an abridged plot that frantically advances from one major story moment to the next, and then stretches out the running time to a daunting 153 minutes with endless songs and dances. Oliver Reed (Carol’s nephew) invigorates the film as the principal villain, while never having to sing, and Shani Wallis is appealing as the emotionally torn female lead. As the other villain, Ron Moody has way too much screen time, facilitated by his involvement in so many of the musical numbers. Although he sings a lot of notes, they all feel like the same note over and over again. There is no real attempt to turn the material into a film. Reed lifts much of the atmosphere and even guidance for the performances from David Lean’s 1948 non-musical adaptation, and then shoots the songs and the dances as if he were recording a stage production. Sure, a couple of the numbers have a very large or wide setting, expanding what could be done on an actual stage, but it is never liberated from the confines of the stagecraft. When a number in Funny Girl shifts to a helicopter shot, it raises the song’s emotional impact through cinematic means. When the flower ladies, tradesmen and so on begin dancing on the outdoor street in Oliver!, it amplifies the song, but not to a point of transcendence. At least, not until Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film as a 4K UltraHD Blu-ray (UPC#043396640900, $31).

You know the disc is fantastic even before the first image appears, because when the Overture plays over a blank screen, the 7.1-channel TrueHD sound delivers a spine-tingling bass, while spreading the rest of the music to the far corners of your viewing environment. The bass and the wonderful directional effects are sustained throughout the film. The images, when they finally begin to unroll, are smooth and clear, with finely detailed hues. You’ll never see a sky so blue. Reed’s character’s dog is a revelation with the detail provided by the disc—is that actual mange?—it’s probably one of the best movie dogs ever because it isn’t acting like an earnest brat. True, Reed the director spends an inordinate amount of time trying to stage uplifting musical numbers in dreary, dank, open sewage settings and other depressing locales, but the story is about persevering in such environments anyway, so it isn’t entirely out of synch in the way the film has felt in the past on home video, when the transfer was part of the problem and not part of the solution. While the movie never completely gels, it looks and sounds so nice on the disc that you immediately appreciate the musical numbers as the most elaborate stage productions possible. If you love just the idea of musical numbers, and are perfectly happy with a token, familiar story that can string them together, the disc is wonderful, because that it is what it delivers, flawlessly. And so, okay, maybe the movie was more deserving than Night of the Living Dead, at least.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. There is also an Intermission and Entr’acte, and Exit music. There is an alternate 5.1-channel French audio track (with French songs!—it makes it worth watching the movie at least a dozen more times), an alternate Spanish audio track (with English songs), and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles. Also featured are three trailers, a minute-long clip of co-star Jack Wild’s screen test, a badly faded 8-minute production featurette with lots of great behind-the-scenes footage, a terrific 15-minute retrospective interview with Lester (he has a wonderful story about using room service at his hotel to get Matchbox cars during the Oscars), a nice 13-minute retrospective interview with Moody; a 5-minute piece on the real places in London where the film is set and what they look like in contemporary, gentrified times (as of 2007), a 36-minute karaoke section, a 13-minute instruction to aid a viewer imitating the dance moves in a couple of numbers (opening with a warning: “Any and all users of this program assume themselves all risk of injury…”), and a 10-minute combination sing and dance along clip.

Film historian and Dickens expert Steven C. Smith supplies an excellent commentary track, going over everything from how Dickens came to write the story to begin with, to how it was adapted as a stage musical, to a survey of the many film versions of the book (although he neglects to mention the Walt Disney cartoon puppy version), as well as a detailed history of the stage musical and the movie’s production, including how Reed the director worked with different members of the cast and crew, going over how the film was received, and sharing what he believes to be its artistic strengths. “Oliver Reed was a rather wild spirit in real life, with a fondness for drink and for scaring people with his silent glare. He was really born to play Bill Sykes. Now listen to the soundtrack and you’ll hear in the underscoring a song that the character of Bill Sykes sings in the stage version of Oliver!. It’s called My Name. Well, leaving that song out of the movie makes sense, because this Bill Sykes has no music in his soul, setting him further apart from the other characters. Using the song in the underscoring gives it a special purpose in the movie as an ominous reminder of how dangerous Bill Sykes can be.”

The 4K of Cherbourg

The Criterion Collection issued Jacques Demy’s unique 1964 song film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, twice previously on Blu-ray, first in their multi-platter set, The Essential Jacques Demy (Aug 14), and then with the same platter as a free-standing BD release (Jun 17). Although the presentation was a decent improvement over earlier DVD releases, it still left something to be desired. The image was rather grainy and deep colors were slightly unstable. There was clearly room for improvement.

The BD platter has been released by Criterion yet again, as part of the new two-platter 4K Blu-ray (UPC#715515313018, $50), but fortunately, the 4K presentation is an entirely fresh picture transfer and is substantially better. It is not perfect—the image is soft at times, and Demy’s pastels still seem to lack the intensity they deserve—but it is a great improvement over the old BD, as anyone who obtains the disc will immediately be able to determine. Running 92 minutes, the film, in which the dialog is delivered entirely through song, is not just a unique accomplishment in technique—it’s not an opera, but it’s not an operetta, either—but an amazing piece of sorcery that turns a rather banal romantic story, about young love eclipsed by fate and maturation, into a profound experience. Because the simplistic story is literally underscored by the music, narrative is lifted to an in-between state of character drama and abstract aesthetic while the viewer, unable to anchor onto something solid, allows the film’s emotions to converge with interior emotions the film has liberated, and to soar. In the past, the flaws in the colors were the only thing holding back the film’s magic, and now, during many passages, all of the close-ups and the entire final act, Demy’s wizardry is unleashed.

The remastered 5.0-channel Dolby Digital sound, which is the default track on the 4K release, seems to be identical to the previous BD and captures the clarity of both the vocals and the instrumentals in sharp detail. The film is sung in French and is accompanied by optional English subtitles.

The standard BD also has a number of supplements including an 11-minute interview with Demy and composer Michel Legrand; a 24-minute segment on Demy and the French New Wave; a 54-minute retrospective documentary; a 27-minute audio-only interview with Legrand; an 11-minute interview with star Catherine Deneuve; a 6-minute piece about the previous restoration; and a trailer.

Who wouldn’t?

A teenager falls in love with a woman jilted by his older brother in Girl with a Suitcase (La Ragazza con la Valigia), a Radiance Films Blu-ray (UPC#760137177517, $40), and since the jilted woman is played by Claudia Cardinale, who wouldn’t? Letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1, Tino Santoni’s black-and-white cinematography is uncluttered and spare, and Radiance’s image transfer is stunningly gorgeous, which not only adds to the impact of the film as a whole, but is one more reason why the viewer fully understands the teenager’s attraction to Cardinale’s character. Jacques Perrin plays the boy, and Gian Maria Volonte costars. Directed by Valerio Zurlini, the film is set in Northern Italy, most of it around Parma and on a palatial estate, although there is a sequence at a beach town. The film runs a full 121 minutes, but is essentially just an exploration of the two principal characters, using the changes in location to break up and shift their conversations and complications. The performances are superb. While you can call the film a romance, and Perrin’s character is unquestionably in love, the narrative really isn’t so much about their connection with one another as it is about how their proximity and interaction reveal what is inside of them. If the picture transfer were any less compelling, the film would be dull, but the vivid, immediate presence of the characters, and especially of Cardinale, is all that the BD requires to keep a viewer not just entertained, but utterly transfixed from beginning to end.

While the cinematography is the film’s most striking technical asset, one cannot discount the strong and clear monophonic sound, and particularly the musical score which, long before such compilations became common place, is made up entirely of existing recordings of classical and pop music, including Tequila, a passage from Aida (the name of Cardinale’s character), and Dimitri Tiomkin’s wonderful trumpet piece from Rio Bravo that inspired Ennio Morricone’s music in Fistful of Dollars. The film is in Italian with optional English subtitles and comes with a good 14-minute analysis of post-War Italian films that highlight weak-willed men and strong-willed women, and then deconstructs the experiences of Cardinale’s character in that regard; an informative 17-minute overview of Zurlini’s career; a 17-minute interview with screenwriter Piero de Bernardi, who shares his memories of his early career and working on the film; and a very good 20-minute interview with assistant director Piero Schivazappa, who recalls different events during the production and what it was like working with Zurlini, as well as offering an incisive appreciation of the film (“Girl with a Suitcase came out in the spring of 1961, the year of La Dolce Vita, of Rocco and His Brothers. It seemed a light film, a love story, but it’s a film which, seen years later, has extraordinary depth. The reason is the undercurrent of bitterness.”).

Thesis, antithesis, synthesis

The basic concepts of editing are fully present in literature, but the integration of images and sound are what bring film editing the closest to an artificial representation of the human experience. Surprisingly, it has taken more than a century to approach an understanding of why editing in film works, but since we do not know entirely why humans blink, we still do not understand film editing completely. A spellbinding documentary about movie editing, The Cinema Within, has been released on DVD by Unicorn Stencil and First Run Features (UPC#720229918428, $20), combining a primer of how editing began in the first silent