Robert Altman's film of Richard Hooker's anarchic novel, adapted by Ring Lardner Jr., inspired a clutch of satirical anti-establishment movies that would come to define the mood and tone of nihilist '70s cinema. Obviously serving as a Vietnam allegory, the Korean War–set story involved an arena we hadn't much seen before — the battlefield hospital. The mobile surgical unit that forms the odd letters of the movie's title was a refreshingly different milieu, and one ripe for close examination. Espousing a hippie-dippy love-in philosophy more suitable for 1969 than 1950 (the film's time frame), principal characters Hawkeye Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and Trapper John (Elliott Gould), brilliant surgeons both, are also a couple of lovable basket cases, spending a lot of time harassing the brass above them and the nurses below them. In Altman's structureless world view, the shambolic panoply unfolds around us, a bacchanalian revelry spiced up with a few spurting arteries. The result is oddly chaotic and mesmerizing, most notable now for its unusual sound design; overlapping dialogue and the communal babble pitched at a level that is realistic and unsettling. Fox's new DVD does the Army proud with its two-disc presentation and battalion of extras.

A commentary from Altman himself, and no less than three documentaries that between them manage to be informative, anecdotal and fun. A 30th anniversary cast reunion brings the players together again. This new restoration, presented for the first time in widescreen on home video, is the only way to truly enjoy the quirky goings-on. At the same time, Fox has released a three-disc set of the M*A*S*H television series which premiered in 1972. Destined to run 11 years, (the show emotionally closed in 1983), these early episodes are eye-opening in how different the show was from its source. Featuring the entire first season, here Hawkeye (Alan Alda) and Trapper (Wayne Rogers) are not merely a couple of acid-heads, but angry and sarcastic doctors plucked from their backgrounds to participate in an ugly war they have no time for. Adapted for television by Larry Gelbart, some of these shows are very serious and resonant. In their righteous liberal anger, Hawkeye and Trapper make mistakes — often misunderstanding the culture surrounding them, both militarily and locally. While the show casts our heroes always in a positive light, their antics have consequences and their behavior is often seen as cruel. This was tricky stuff for TV and the results are accordingly impressive. Fox has seen fit to include nothing in the way of extras, (not even an audio commentary with our own Gene Reynolds, who directed the pilot, as well as being the series producer), but it's more than worth picking up just the same. One choice Fox does give the viewer however, is the option to delete the laugh track. You can make up your own mind whether to titter, giggle or guffaw ... or not.

The Sopranos
The Complete First Season (1999)
The Complete Second Season (2000)
Various directors

Waste management and psychotherapy become strange bedfellows as a stressed-out New Jersey mob boss deals with pressures of work, his domineering mother, his wife and kids as well as the mob family he heads.

Tony Sopranos' (James Gandolfini) lifestyle has spun him into a depression which causes him to seek the help from therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). During the course of therapy sessions, Dr. Melfi becomes a confidante to Tony and helps him face the issues of manipulating mother and his unethical professional life.

Fortunately, we're provided with a wealth of behind-the-scenes info on this groundbreaking HBO television series in new special edition DVDs of the first and second seasons. The Complete First Season features an audio commentary on the pilot by writer/producer/director David Chase and director Peter Bogdanovich as well as a 77-minute interview with Chase conducted by Bogdanovich. Chase discusses the creation of the series and how The Sopranos was a movie idea that turned into a television series. He also shares insights on how the characters evolved from the pilot to the series and how they interact with each other. The 77-minute discussion is a must see. Chase goes over how he planned out series and how "happy accidents" help shaped the series making this story of mob life one that anyone could relate to. Also included in the four DVD box set are two behind-the-scenes featurettes — Meet Tony Soprano and Meet the Family, production notes, and more.

The Complete Second Season proves to be just as fresh and tantalizing as the first. Along with the season's 13 episodes, this DVD box set features four episodes with director audio commentaries. Director Tim Van Patten talks on an audio commentary on "Commendatori." Since the episode was shot in both Italy and New York, Van Patten's comments on the production logistics for a television show are particularly interesting. Director Henry J. Bronchtein goes over some of the intricate staging on his episode "From Here to Eternity." For "The Knight in White Satin," director Allen Coulter, who received a DGA nomination for this episode, discusses the shooting of the opening sequence and goes into great depth on shooting techniques and working with actors. Also nominated for a DGA Award for directing a Sopranos episode, this one, John Patterson's audio commentary on "Funhouse" details the dynamics between the characters of Tony and Livia and the preparation for the shoot. Rounding out the second season extras are two featurettes.

A struggling, unsuccessful Hollywood actor returns to his small hometown. He's surprised to be greeted as if he's a celebrity. That's the setup for the heartwarming indie film, Dogtown, written and directed by George Hickenlooper. The film was one of the first successes of the DGA's "Director's Finder Series" whereby a low-budget film that hasn't found distribution is screened at the DGA for studio executives, independent distributors and ancillary-market buyers. The DVD release of his film is in perfect keeping with the spirit of low-budget indie filmmaking. There's a ten-minute handheld videotaped behind-the-scenes doc featuring interviews with Hickenlooper and lead actress Karen Black. The audio commentary features Hickenlooper, cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau and one of the film's producers, Ben Morgenthau. Hickenlooper reveals that his film is something of an homage to Russian playwright Nikolai Gogol's The Inspector General and talks in great detail with Kramer Morgenthau about their decisions on the color palettes for not only this film, but also their later collaboration, The Big Brass Ring. Talking about the difficulties of finding distribution for the film, Hickenlooper says, "Independent films that have made it to theatrical distribution generally have some kind of ironic or postmodern element in them that makes a tasty morsel for a perceived impatient audience. Distribution and acquisitions people really only want to put out what they consider to be edgy, sexy ironic movies. Dogtown is a very gentle movie." Fortunately, the Director's Finder Series and DVD are enabling a number of these smaller, gentler films a way to find an audience.

It's possible Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), owner and proprietor of a small English countryside hotel called Fawlty Towers, could be a likeable fellow if he weren't so manic, quick to jump to the wrong conclusion, and thoroughly rude. This hilarious British sitcom chronicling the many trials and tribulations of Basil aired for years on PBS and has been restored for DVD. The end result is startling; it's as if you're seeing the shows for the first time. The discs also feature interviews with the cast and audio commentaries by the directors John Howard Davies and Bob Spiers. There's some gaps in the commentaries, as if the directors are waiting for the point in the episode they want to talk about, but when they do talk there's a wealth of information about the shows themselves and directing British sitcoms. Davies had also directed the first four episodes of the original Monty Python's Flying Circus and said that many of the flats used to depict the interiors of Fawlty Towers had to be built much larger than normal to accommodate Cleese's height — he's 6'5". The episodes were filled with physical comedy making it particularly difficult to film within a tight schedule. Spiers talks about the precise inspections he likes to do of the sets prior to shooting, positioning many of the furnishings himself because he knows when he wants something moved an inch and a half, and not two. There's also a number of outtakes that are as funny as the shows themselves. In one, Cleese slams a door and the entire theater flat wall begins to shake. Staying completely in character, Cleese reacts, then begins examining the walls like a doctor who's thumping a patient's chest with his fingers. According to the directors, the show was scheduled to run 29-1/2 minutes but when shot, typically 33 or 34 minutes. Since it was broadcast on BBC 2 it didn't matter, and unlike the States, they could go a bit over.

World Cinema Roundup

First we go to France for one of cinema's finest accomplishments, Les Enfants Du Paradis (Children of Paradise, 1945), directed by Marcel Carne. A product of the school of "poetic realism," Les Enfants is the summa of the genre; a towering tale of the teeming streets of 1820's Paris which fuses theatre and crime with a love story that intertwines real characters and fictional ones. Attempting to define the city as an object of adoration utilizing a surrealist's touch, Carne's opus is a fresco of outlandish proportions. Shot during the tail end of the German occupation, the production endured innumerable challenges and the director's lavish overspending. When it was finally released in March 1945, it was spread over two parts: the first, The Boulevard of Crime and the second, The Man in White. At the time, the film was the most expensive in French history. The Criterion Collection's equally lavish two-disc DVD contains a pretty booklet with liner notes by Peter Cowie, who one wishes had done an audio commentary. Historian Brian Stonehill provides one for disc one, which he recorded in 1990. It's extremely informative, although the pace of recitation inclines to make the listener nervous, wondering if Mr. Stonehill has another appointment for which he is late. On the second disc, Charles Affron is the pinch hitter and he delivers his duties with appropriate solemnity. Terry Gilliam offers his views in a "video introduction," which finds the expansive genius in sprightly-reverence mode. Moving south, we find ourselves in Italy and the fabulous world of Federico Fellini.

The maestro's masterpiece 8-1/2 (1963) is unveiled on DVD in a glorious two-disc package. The film, one of the finest ever about the trials and tribulations of filmmaking, unfolds in a startling transfer, causing the lustrous images to leap from the screen. It's the kind of film you find yourself glued to no matter what — its eerie dreamscape quality at once disturbing and reassuring simultaneously. The commentary by Gideon Bachmann, a friend of Fellini's, is wonderful, full of insightful, witty and very observant comments — light of tone, his words are resonant and profound. He shares the track with NYU professor Antonio Monda who is scholarly and very Italian. Also deftly sprinkled throughout are readings from a memoir, The Two Hundred Days of 8-1/2, written by Deena Boyer who was asked by Fellini to publish a chronicle of the film. These on-set reminiscences, coupled with Bachmann's poignant thoughts are pure gold. Terry Gilliam appears in a video segment to rhapsodize eloquently on the film's enormous influence, and a detailed booklet further illustrates the dazzling baroque power of the movie's cornucopia. The second disc has more delights; a 52-minute faux documentary by Fellini entitled A Director's Notebook, filmed in 1969 and intended for American television — and a real documentary on Fellini's regular collaborator, composer Nino Rota which is terrific, as footage on his life and work is in short supply. Evidently this doc appears to emanate from the Czech Republic and is in a mixture of German and Italian, but it's hard to tell as I couldn't find the subtitles on my copy!

Sticking with Fellini, Home Vision Entertainment has issued a lovely disc of the little seen Spirits of the Dead (1969), a.k.a. L'Histories Extraordinaires, or in the UK, Toby Dammit. It's an anthology consisting of three strange tales by Edgar Allan Poe, each from a different director. Fellini's is called Toby Dammit and it stars Terence Stamp as an insane movie star apparently on his way to Hell. Jane Fonda appears in Roger Vadim's effort Metzengerstein and Brigitte Bardot graces William Wilson directed by Louis Malle.

You may deem it odd to find Roger Vadim in such august company, but he was quite an artist in his own way — particularly in his choice of costumes for his then spouse, Ms Fonda. A real curio, this DVD is highly recommended despite its dearth of ancillary items.

We also have two new releases from the master of Italian horror, Dario Argento. Suspiria and Opera receive the royal DVD multi-disc Special Edition treatment courtesy of Anchor Bay. The widescreen transfers are beautiful, capturing the stylistic camera flourishes and blood red terror that are Argento's trademark. There are squirms aplenty, and each Special Edition features a plethora of extras. Suspiria features a 52-minute documentary on 25th anniversary of the film, and Opera contains Conducting Dario Argento's Opera, a 36-minute documentary. Plus there's stills, posters, TV and trailer spots and music to round out these entries into nightmarish situations.

And finally, although we do not often review documentaries specifically, we feel we can't overlook HBO Home Video's definitive release of the mammoth production The World at War (1974). This 26-part series, made by Britain's Thames Television, places before us in unstinting detail, the relentless history of World War II. Each episode is 50 minutes long, and devoted to a separate piece of the interlocking puzzle. With titles like A New Germany, Banzai!, Stalingrad, Wolf Pack, and Home Fires, the segments viewed in chronology document a devastating disaster, the scale of which is still unbelievable to this day. The narration, performed by Sir Laurence Olivier, shot through with his trademark whimsy of nuance, is a model of its form. Produced by Sir Jeremy Isaacs, the series took three years to assemble ('71–'74) and is a master class of archival reconstruction. Many leading personalities on all sides of the conflict were still alive, and able to do in-camera interviews. The use of "talking heads" is minimal — the vivid footage is allowed to speak for itself. A magnificent score by Carl Davis binds the whole tour-de-force together.

As well as all the episodes, HBO's five-disc box set also features a stand-alone documentary, The Making of the World at War, and six other subsequent WWII documentaries produced by the Thames team. Secretary to Hitler, From War to Peace, Warrior, The Third Reich, The Two Deaths of Adolf Hitler and The Final Solution. These all aired later in the '70s and are narrated by Eric Porter. In addition, Jeremy Isaacs' video introduces each part of the original show with personal reminiscences. At this juncture in our own tortured history, with a nation struggling to come to terms with recent events, the lessons to be learned from this century's greatest calamity are more timely and pertinent than ever before.

Table of Contents     Top of Page