Things passed along

James Stewart passed away in 1997, the same year that DVDs were introduced in America, but he had already made a commentary track for one of his films, because a decade earlier he had recorded a talk with film historian Paul Lindenschmidt for the MCA/Universal Home Video laser disc release of Anthony Mann’s 1950 western, Winchester ’73 (Feb 87), and now The Criterion Collection has obtained the talk for the Universal and Criterion two-platter 4K Blu-ray (UPC#715515308410, $50). The film was a breakthrough part for Stewart not just tonally, removing the comedic trappings from his westerns for his first of many collaborations with Mann, but because Stewart scored the first ‘profit percentage’ clause in a movie star’s contract, and cleaned up when the film became a big hit.

The breakthrough for Mann was the discovery that, as he had with his film noir features, he could make a western with A-list actors and still sustain an adult sensibility in its drama, something that had been elbowing its way into genre films during and especially after World War II. Heroes could be conflicted or obsessed in their journeys and audiences were not repelled. Stewart’s character has a beef with Steve McNally’s character and intends to kill him, a situation that is only acerbated when the two compete in a marksmanship contest and McNally unfairly runs off with the prize—the gun of the title.

The irony of the film’s legacy is that while Stewart earned more from it than any film star had ever earned from a film up to that point, there are lengthy stretches in the 93-minute film that he does not appear, since the film’s plot follows—although not obsessively—the journey that the gun takes when various characters relieve other characters of its possession. As the gun passes hands from one character to another within the narrative, the film becomes a veritable ammo belt of character actors and future Hollywood stars, each bursting in talent and appeal for a moment before giving way to the next. Both Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson (as an Indian chief) have small speaking parts. Will Geer, Jay C. Flippen, John McIntire, Steve Brodie (who is especially charismatic for a background part), John Alexander and James Best are just a few of the marvelous supporting players. Billed third, Dan Duryea doesn’t even show up until the film’s final half hour, but he delivers his all when he does. Millard Mitchell has almost as much screen time as Stewart, playing, in effect, his sidekick, so that their conversations can move the story forward. Shelly Winters has a nicely composed part as the love interest, getting passed around almost as much as the rifle, with Charles Drake as her initial fiancé.

The depiction of Native Americans in the film is moderately problematic for today’s viewers, although there are other movies that are a lot worse in this regard. They are used primarily as an action component. Lip service is given (by Hudson) to how they have been mistreated—and, indeed, massacred—by settlers, but they are presented as a threat, spoken of derogatorily and make for a lengthy and exciting battle sequence. The other action scenes are all well staged, except for the finale, which is flamboyant, with Stewart’s character chasing McNally’s character up one of Mann’s cliff faces, but feels contrived when these two expert shots suddenly begin missing one another with great regularity until the time comes to finish things up. Nevertheless, the film is rewarding because the action is secondary to the panoply of characters whose lives and psychologies Mann manages to explore with such fine detail along the way.

The squared full screen black-and-white picture is crisp and spotless. Even the standard Blu-ray that comes in the set looks terrific (even the LD looked great), although it is the 4K presentation that is easily preferable for the intricate textures it brings out in both the faces and the landscapes. The monophonic sound is clear, and there are optional English subtitles. On both platters, the film starts up where it left off if playback is interrupted, but on the standard BD, the special features appearing only on that platter do not. Included in those features is a trailer, a very good 18-minute piece that specifically addresses the depiction of indigenous Americans in American films, and an enjoyable 47-minute piece specifically about the films Mann and Stewart made together in the Fifties. In his commentary, Stewart says that the Lux Radio Theatre people refused to adapt the film, because the script had too many pages without dialog, but he was probably thinking of another film since Lux did indeed do the film with Stewart in a 1951 episode (Lux kept the series going until television killed it in 1955). That version, hosted by William Dieterle and co-starring McNally and Julia Adams (who fills in those gaps effectively by narrating the story, as well), which runs 61 minutes, is also included on the disc.

The 1986 commentary, which Criterion misidentifies in its menu as having been recorded in 1989 (and Lindenschmidt was billed as Lindenschmid on the LD—the correct spelling is ambiguous), appears on both platters. At the time, Criterion had done a couple of commentaries on LDs, and one or two others had also appeared, all featuring academic experts on the films at hand, but Stewart was the first significant filmmaker to participate in such a talk, the first to spend the entire time as a movie unfolds sharing memories about its making. They were trailblazers, and as such, they approach the task with caution and uncertainty. Lindenschmidt reads prepared questions at first and Stewart answers them as best as he can, but they gradually shift into a more conversational talk as the film progresses and they get comfortable, so that by the final third of the film, they really start picking up on what is happening on the screen and riffing about the people, objects and situations they see. While often diverging into other topics, they discuss the cast members as they appear, reflect upon the action and its production challenges within individual scenes, and go over related matters, such as the personality of the horse Stewart always used in films, and the well-worn ‘lucky hat’ that he wore in every western (he met both the horse and the hat for the first time making Winchester ’73), which he claims was a challenge to dry clean after the film was over. They also talk about Stewart’s career, his family and how his earlier Oscar ended up in his father’s hardware store. “A lot of people saw it. He’d take it out of the window every once in a while when he wanted to show he had some new line of hardware or something, he’d take it out, but he put it over the knife counter.” At the very end, Stewart also acknowledges his groundbreaking effort in what is now a common occurrence, creating a second audio track for a film’s home video release as an embellishment for fans. “This laser thing is fascinating.”

Four Kurosawas in 4K

The Criterion Collection’s previous Blu-ray release of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (Oct 11) looked really good for the most part, but there was still a lingering sense here and there that the squared, full screen black-and-white film was an older Japanese movie. Criterion’s new three-platter 4K Blu-ray release (UPC#715515305211, $60), while not radically improved, is just cleaned up enough and sharpened enough that it doesn’t feel like an old movie. Every once in a while, there will be a well-lit shot that is startling for how crisp and clean it looks, and generally, when you toggle back and forth between the two images, the older BD looks the same in other sequences, but just not quite as detailed. Running a healthy 208 minutes, the film is continually invigorated by the 4K presentation, and what was already a wonderful, spirited tale of adventure (in fear of a bandit raid after their harvest, some villagers travel to a town to persuade several former warriors to return with them and prevent the bandits from attacking) becomes even more engrossing and satisfying, particularly as the samurai spell out with charts exactly what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. The film’s methodical narrative becomes even more gripping in 4K, and the characters, including the lead samurai played by Takashi Shimura and the eager outsider played by Toshiro Mifune, become more distinctive and developed, because you catch every psychological nuance.

As with the previous release, the film has a stereophonic track that widens its music slightly and gives the film a more dimensional and enveloping feel, although the actual music recording is still clearly older, and even the dialog is raspy at times. The original monophonic audio is also available. Nevertheless, the soundtrack distortions are barely noticeable most of the time, and if you aren’t distracted by the wonderful characters and the engaging plot, then you are distracted by the fantastic looking picture. The film is in Japanese and is supported by optional English subtitles. Both the 4K platter and the standard BD platter have two commentary tracks. One is a complete talk by film historian Michael Jeck and the other has sequential talks, each lasting around 40 minutes, by five additional and highly respected Japanese film experts, Tony Rayns, Donald Richie, Stephen Prince, Joan Mellen and David Desser. Both the standard BD platter that contains the film and the second standard BD platter that holds more special features are identical to the previous release. Included on the special features platter are four trailers, a small collection of memorabilia in still frame, a 49-minute Japanese retrospective production documentary, a 55-minute American documentary about the film and Japanese samurai features in general, and an extensive 116-minute interview with Kurosawa from 1993 talking about his life and career.

Criterion always releases Yojimbo and Sanjuro at the same time, most recently before now as separate single-platter Blu-rays (Apr 10), and we always end up watching them together, inevitably going with the more popular and famous 1961 Yojimbo first before segueing into the 1962 Sanjuro. Heck, they used to appear as a double bill in revival houses, and we watched them in that order then, as well. Both movies, after all, star Mifune as, apparently, the same character, and the second one was indeed produced to capitalize on the popularity of the first one. But this time, we got smart, and so, apparently, has Criterion. Criterion has released the two films as 4K Blu-rays in a single four-platter set, Yojimbo / Sanjuro (UPC#715515306614, $80), recognizing that the one goes with the other like love and marriage, or a sword and its sheath. But this time, we watched Sanjuro first.

We always, previously, recognized that Sanjuro was great entertainment, absolutely, but there was always a little, tiny bit of a letdown watching it after the thrills of Yojimbo. Without having seen the two films in more than a decade, we could put on Sanjuro and sample its pleasures without prejudice, and we were indeed rewarded for having done so. Mifune’s character, who wanders the land, is sleeping in an abandoned building when he overhears a group of young men worried that they have uncovered corruption in the local government. He recognizes immediately, however, that they have identified the wrong individual as the one who is corrupt, and from there he must play nursemaid when the villains arrive to assassinate the kids. The film is completely transfixing as Mifune’s character navigates the conspiracies and continually protects the young men from making the wrong decisions, and it has exciting moments with sword confrontations and killings, but it also has a great deal of humor, and while you are aware of the humor when you watch it after Yojimbo, your attention has still been misdirected by the emphasis on confrontation and swordfights in the other film. Without that subliminal blockage, the 95-minute film truly becomes funny as all get out, filled with exquisitely timed character humor and even a touch of slapstick here and there. The female characters that Mifune’s character helps to rescue, especially, might seem like secondary figures, the way they are in Yojimbo, but without such preconceived notions, they are not only the soul of the movie, but, consistently, the comical highpoint, contrasting everything about how women see the world to how men see it. The film is an absolute joy, right up to its gloriously bloody punchline.

It may also have helped that the transfer on the 4K platter is gorgeous. Criterion has included those same two Blu-rays we reviewed before—neither one of the black-and-white films, letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1, starts up where it left off if playback is terminated on the standard BD platters, although the 4K platters do—and the early transfer of Sanjuro, while it may have seemed fine at the time, has weak contrasts where details are completely lost in the shadows, and a generally soft, even hazy image, while the 4K is sharper than Mifune’s sword. Every frame is not only finely detailed, but delivers solid blacks, pristine whites, and every carefully measured level of grey between the two. The image looks so good you just can’t help but sit back and let Kurosawa captivate you with his compelling story, his carefully defined characters, his intriguing blocking, his intricate environments, his dazzling action and his wonderful humor. If you’re sharing the films with a friend, it is definitely worthwhile to show them in reverse order. Nobody has ever said Sanjuro isn’t a prequel to Yojimbo, anyway.

Yojimbo opens with humor, but also with the sort of violence that does not happen in Sanjuro until the end, and much of the 111-minute film is a serious drama with limited opportunities for chuckling (two rival families control a town to the detriment of the regular townspeople, and so Mifune’s character plays the families against each other until they destroy themselves). Mifune’s character is also less irreverent in Yojimbo than he is in Sanjuro, even when he is taunting the villains. As it turns out, both movies derive most of their entertainment from the cerebral games Mifune’s character plays on those villains, but the emotional perspective taken by the viewer is different because of how Yojimbo begins. The action is more exhilarating, and thus the film’s excitements seem more visceral. In any case, it is an enormously entertaining film because of the strength of the story, the thrills of the action and the wonderfully magnetic performance by Mifune in its center.

And again, exactly like Sanjuro, the 4K presentation is a substantial im­provement over the standard Blu-ray (which as we mentioned is identical to the previous release). Not only are details and textures clearer, but the basic sharpness and uninhibited presentation of the image accentuates both the film’s artistry and its entertainment.

As with Seven Samurai, both films have their original three-channel stereo audio tracks, although both default to mono, so the stereo must be selected. Again, the distinctive effects are limited to occasional surges in the musical score, but their presence still adds to the transporting experience the movies provide (especially Yojimbo), and this time, on both films, the dialog is clear and solid. The films are in Japanese with optional English subtitles. The 4K platters carry over the informative Prince commentaries that also appear on the standard BDs. The standard BDs also carry over their retrospective documentaries, Sanjuro’s running 35 minutes and Yojimbo’s running 45 minutes, along with trailers and great collections of production photos in still frame.

Kurosawa’s phantasmagorical 1990 Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is available in a two-platter 4K Blu-ray from Warner Bros. and Criterion (UPC#715515285919, $50). The second platter, a standard Blu-ray, was released previously (UPC#715515188715, $40). Running 120 minutes, the film is a collection of eight fantasy vignettes. In the first two, a young boy encounters spirits, and in the third, a mountain climber encounters a spirit. Following those, an army officer meets the ghosts of his unit at the entrance of a tunnel he has passed through. In the next, a traveler, who becomes a consistent figure in the remaining pieces, visits an art exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh paintings, and then finds himself within the brightly colored worlds of the paintings, encountering Van Gogh himself, who is notably played by Martin Scorsese. After that, the traveler witnesses atomic explosions surrounding Mt. Fuji and speaks to characters who understand that mankind has polluted the world. In the next piece, the traveler encounters a demon on a hillside, who shows him other demons that are suffering. In the memorable finale, the traveler meets an elderly man in a bucolic streamside village filled with watermills (an old man lives in a watermill in The Seven Samurai, too), and learns that the village’s contentment comes from its lack of technological accoutrements. The mills also look like film reels. As a whole, the film’s message appears to be that nature wants humans to back off, and so the irony here is that there is no better way to absorb that message, and become transfixed by Kurosawa’s artistry, than with an advanced piece of human technology, the 4K Blu-ray, to deliver it.

The film has a simple, two-channel stereophonic soundtrack, but even on the standard Blu-ray, the DTS sound is incredible, with both music and effects not only distinctively separated, but brought forth with a crystalline purity that rivals the stream running the mills. The colors on the standard BD are bright but over saturated at times, although in the case of the Mt. Fuji segment, that actually works to the film’s advantage, since the images of the mountain on fire are meant to be expressionistic. But when it comes to blades of grass, brushstrokes, the costumes the spirits are wearing, and the waterwheel village, the solid hues are still bright on the 4K presentation, and their crispness is more captivating.

Along with a trailer, the standard BD platter has a nice 17-minute interview with production manager Teruyo Nogami about her work with Kurosawa and how they staged various effects in the film; an interesting 16-minute interview with assistant director Takashi Koizumi, who tries to explain the autobiographical connections for Kurosawa in each segment; and a spellbinding 52-minute testimonial to Kurosawa’s artistry and insight to his techniques by a number of famous filmmakers, from Bernardo Bertolucci to John Woo (and Clint Eastwood talks about the first time he saw Yojimbo, in the Fifties!).

An exceptional production documentary that runs 151 minutes deliberately mixes behind-the-scenes footage, interviews (including a sit-down talk with Kurosawa about the film and his other movies), storyboards and finished footage to create kind of an adventure film into the world of Dreams. You see Kurosawa at the mercy of the weather and the clouds, and you see how some of the film’s magical yet practical special effects were achieved (including shooting a continuous 16-minute shot with 10-minute film reels). It is the way that the different aspects to the shoot are all blended together that make it so fascinating, embellished as well by the eight completely different settings and filmmaking challenges. The documentary also contains descriptions and drawings of the ‘dreams’ that did not make it into the final film (the script for one that almost made it is included in the jacket insert, although it is a good thing Kurosawa decided against it).

Prince provides another excellent commentary track that is present on both platters, deconstructing the meanings of each segment, both from a literal standpoint and in connection with Kurosawa’s own past, while at the same time describing how the segments were staged and how the film resonates as an exploration of life. “Kurosawa’s way of working is a little bit unusual because it departs from a long tradition in cinema of relating dreams to the workings of the unconscious mind. Many filmmakers have explored dream worlds. Indeed, there seems to be an analogous connection between cinema and dreaming. The difference is that Kurosawa stays within the boundaries of real life visual and temporal experience, whereas most other filmmakers exploring dreams have not. They show strange, irrational things abruptly happening, create odd visual transitions, transform characters and objects in unexpected ways, and use composition and editing to undermine the reality of time and space, and to emphasize instead the irrational. That style seems to more closely resemble our experience of dreaming, where odd juxtapositions become normal and where time and space are slippery and deceptive. It’s curious, then, that Kurosawa calls these episodes, ‘dreams,’ because for me, at least, they don’t feel very dreamlike. They seem quite rooted in real time and space, and don’t have the strange, subjective quality that dreams do. What he’s really given us, I think, are a set of dramas that explore things that are a great concern to him.”

Eastwood’s Juror

The story is entirely different and scenes involving the deliberations take up much less than half the film, but Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 has the same premise (one juror is unsure of what the verdict in a murder trial should be and raises doubts with his fellow jurors) and the same entertainment dynamic as 12 Angry Men, and it is just as engrossing. What could well be Eastwood’s final feature, the 2024 Warner Bros. production has been released on Blu-ray by Warner (UPC#883929835188, $35) and it is expertly directed, so that it carries you along even if you’ve read more about the specific premise and even if the drama is more about anxiety than justice. The methodical sense of discovery is still there thanks to the film’s pacing, its casting and the clarity of its narrative advancement. Nicholas Hoult is the holdout juror, Toni Collette is the aggressive prosecutor, Zoey Deutch is the very pregnant wife of Hoult’s character, J.K. Simmons is a fellow juror and Keifer Sutherland, who has clearly turned a corner in his career, is a lawyer not involved directly in the case but there to lend advice nevertheless. Running 114 minutes, the presentation is smooth and glossy, aided greatly by the quality of the color transfer, which is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1. The film opens with the image of Deutch’s character wearing a blindfold like the statue in front of the courthouse, carrying you along as much with the lovely immediacy of its images as with the comfortable familiarity of its characters, and it concludes, quite unnervingly, with the sudden sounds of cicadas—the first time you hear them in the film, which is mostly set in the late fall and winter, in Atlanta—made all the more compelling thanks to the disc’s smoothly detailed and crisply defined Dolby Atmos sound. There is an audio track that describes the action in American (“Denise hands the bailiff a piece of paper, containing the verdict, who carries it to the bench and passes it to the judge. Removing her spectacles, the judge’s brow knits slightly as she gazes down at the paper.”), another track that describes the action in British (“Denise hands bailiff Wood the document. Wood in turn hands it to the judge. Judges Stewart removes her glasses and reads the document.”), alternate French, Spanish and Italian audio tracks and optional English, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch subtitles. The picture on Warner’s DVD (UPC#883929835256, $30) is substantially softer, and makes the drama less involving. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is also less stimulating. Along with the American audio track that describes the action, there is an alternate Spanish audio track and optional English and Spanish subtitles.

Demi mondo

Whenever a genre film manages to weather critical antagonism and achieve honors and awards, it is a cause for celebration. Coralie Fargeat’s 2024 The Substance, released on DVD by MUBI (UPC#850069757007, $30), is a cross between Seconds, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Cinderella and Blood Feast, with a few others thrown in as well, and concludes with a veritable fire hose of blood shooting every which way. Demi Moore plays an actress who loses her job as an exercise show host because of her age. While what her character does to compensate has been well publicized, it is still best left for discovery. Running 141 minutes, the film is methodical and easy to follow. Plot points are literally spelled out for the viewer with words on the screen, repeatedly. Margaret Qualley co-stars as the younger upstart who replaces her. There is lots and lots of nudity, along with totally gross and oozing gore, but the film is also a celebration of Moore, and every Hollywood actress who has ever lived past her thirtieth birthday, since Moore and her character are meant to be emotionally interchangeable in the viewer’s eye. The film is simple and utterly absurd, presented as an exaggerated satire—Dennis Quaid has a clownish role as a production executive, often shot with fisheye close-ups—and basic special effects showcase, which begins with moderate realism, but advances so that the climactic events are so outlandish they become less a perfunctory end to the plot and much more a lambasting of how society values aging in women. It is kind of an ‘okay, if this is what you want, here it is’ in-your-face scream that underscores how Hollywood’s representation of real life is not so much idealized as it is a reflection of the truths everyone otherwise tries to keep suppressed.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 2.35:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback. The image transfer is super. Colors are bright and slick, and the image is solid. The 5.1-channel Dolby Digital sound is aggressive and sharp. There is an audio track that describes the action (“Elisabeth reaches for the note, but pulls her hand back quickly. Shaking, she raises her hand again and studies her index finger, now discolored and aged. Flexing her hand, she gawks at the slightly grey and heavily wrinkled skin extending up her finger and ending in a bedraggled nail bed. The marred finger stands in stark contrast to the otherwise healthy skin and nails on the rest of her hand.”), alternate French, Spanish and German audio tracks, optional English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Turkish subtitles, and a surprisingly good 2-minute plug for the film by Fargeat. “I really hope the viewers’ experience will stay with them, first as a cinematic experience, but that will also make them think about everything that is around us. It seems to me that the power of cinema is like a cathartic medium. At the same time, you can have a very fun and entertaining experience. It makes you reflect on our own human condition.”

Getting ahead through diligence

The 1997 Dutch Best Foreign Film Oscar winner, Character, has been released on Blu-ray by Sony Pictures Classics (UPC#043396633438, $27). Directed by Mike van Diem, the film runs 125 minutes and is utterly absorbing from beginning to end. It is a period film (set in Rotterdam, it was shot in a number of locations in The Netherlands and Belgium) taking place mostly in the Twenties, and is framed as a murder investigation so that a young man who has just become a lawyer, played by Fedja van Huêt, can explain why he has been accused of killing a prominent and wealthy bailiff played by Jan Decleir. The disc is promoted on its jacket cover as ‘Dickensian’ and that is the essence of its appeal, as Huêt’s character proceeds to tell his life story to the cops—how his impoverished mother was not married, how he studied and worked his way into clerking at a financial law firm (it is his ambition that gives the movie its captivating momentum) and why he ended up confronting Decleir’s character shortly before the man’s corpse was discovered brutally beaten and stabbed. The period details may be dreary, but they are beautifully presented nevertheless. The film also offers snippets of history (Huêt’s character attends labor meetings) mixed with a fascinating portrait of several characters who steadfastly refuse to show their emotions, even when doing so is to their detriment, so that it becomes entirely understandable that those emotions would eventually explode.

The film is in Dutch. The disc has no menu, so the optional English subtitles, which default to an ‘off’ position, must be manually activated. The picture is framed with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1. As we implied, much of the film is grey, brown and dour, but the image transfer is captivating and highly satisfying. The 5.1-channel DTS sound has a subtle but pleasing dimensionality.

Bank robbery

A taut 1988 German bank robbery and hostage thriller, The Cat (Die Katze), has been released on Blu-ray by Radiance (UPC#760137172840, $40). The robbers, one of whom is directing everything outside of the bank, create the hostage situation on purpose, as a distraction, in order to carry out a more devious plan. Set in Düsseldorf, the film runs 118 minutes and is taken up entirely by the daylong event. The steadily engrossing tale was directed by Dominik Graf and stars Götz George, Gudrun Landgrebe and Joachim Kemmer.

The picture is letterboxed with an aspect ratio of about 1.9:1. While the image is grainy at times, that is conceptual, adding to the movie’s you-are-there atmosphere.