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Finally, after what has seemed an endless wait, Paramount Home Video has seen fit to do justice to Sergio Leone's greatest achievement, Once Upon a Time in the West (1969). A sumptuous two-disc set, primarily produced by Paramount's international division, the film gets a scholarly treatment with major contributions by Sir Christopher Frayling, one of Britain's premier film historians as well as being Leone's official biographer. The movie, which stars Charles Bronson, Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale and Jason Robards, is a marvelous, surreal, allegorical and homagistic tribute to America's Western mythology. Partially shot in Arizona, but mostly in Almeria, Spain, Once Upon a Time encapsulates literally everything meaningful in the genre; re-imagining familiar morays with stunningly unnatural formal stylings. It almost takes place in a parallel universe or on another planet. Directors John Carpenter, John Milius, Bernardo Bertolucci and Alex Cox help adorn the audio commentary and the three entertaining separate featurettes cover the film's lengthy evolution. Along with the above-average special features comes the best-looking transfer of the movie ever seen in home video form. Leone's sprawling, abstract landscapes and compositions are positively luminous in this anamorphically enhanced, widescreen presentation, and Ennio Morricone's unforgettable score is magically brought to life by the 5.1 stereo remix. An essential addition to any collection.
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Le Cercle Rouge (1970), recently restored and reissued on the art house circuit, is now available as part of the Criterion Collection. Melville's classic crime drama featuring Alain Delon and Yves Montand defines the gritty realism of postmodern French gangsters in action, and this uncut version running 140 minutes puts the whole picture back in the frame. Spread across two discs, Criterion gives its usual value for money with 30 minutes of precious archival footage from the shoot as one of the extras. The stars and director are all included in-camera, and it's a treat as always to experience the fly-on-the-wall perspective of film history in its moment of creation. A 24-page booklet with essays by critics Michael Sragow and Chris Fujiwara is a useful accoutrement, and director John Woo provides an insightful introduction.
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Fox Home Video's "Classics" line continues with Brigham Young (1940), an account of the Mormon wagon train that crossed the country and settled in Salt Lake, Utah. After the death of the Mormons' founding father John Smith (Vincent Price), Brigham Young (Dean Jagger) leads his followers to a new land. Hounded and persecuted, the Mormon troop encounters many difficulties along the way, but ultimately survives to flourish in the northwestern desert. Director Henry Hathaway visualizes the day-to-day drudgery of the trail with detailed vignettes of the journey's minutiae, offering an unusual subjective realism. This fair but censored look at the Mormon religion is well documented by James D'Arc, curator of the Harold B. Lee library at Brigham Young University, on the movie's audio commentary. D'Arc, a Western enthusiast, renders a credible account of the film's genesis, and interpolates some fascinating aspects of the Mormons' actual journey. Brigham Young, which also stars a youthful Tyrone Power, is a superb example of the kind of social dramas that Fox specialized in under Darryl F. Zanuck's patronage, and is well worth seeking out.
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Milestone's new DVD of Photoplay Productions' epic restoration of Rupert Julian's The Phantom of the Opera (1925/1929) is a wonderful demonstration of what dedicated historians and buffs can really achieve when they put their minds to it. The legacy of silent film is in desperate straits with many original camera negatives lost to the fires of nitrate hell. Milestone's commitment to the preservation of silent movies is unquestioned, and the Phantom DVD is exceptional. Offered as a two-disc package, the original 1925 version appears on one, and the shorter, restored, slightly re-edited 1929 edition appears on the other. Starring Lon Chaney, "the man of a thousand faces," Phantom is an often extraordinary, psychedelic experience. The 1929 version includes some original technicolor sequences and has a brand-new score composed by Carl Davis. The 1925 version (which is rarely seen because of poor source materials) is scored by Jon Mirsalis. Scott MacQueen, who participated in procuring and salvaging the elements, explains everything in great detail on his commentary track which is vital to understanding how complex a process this sort of undertaking can be. The 1925 print was supplied by collector Ray Faiola, and Kevin Brownlow, David Gill and Patrick Stanbury are once again to be thanked for galloping to the rescue.
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Tokyo Story (1953) is still considered one of the best films ever made, and in its 50th anniversary year, Criterion gives it the double-disc treatment. The story of a middle-aged couple on a journey to visit their grown-up children who now reside in the throbbing hub of a recovering post-war Tokyo, carries enormous resonance as the couple struggle to reconcile their lives with their children's. Very Japanese (and elliptical) in Ozu's very specific way, Tokyo Story is just one of those artworks you can never forget after seeing it. This beautiful new disc's highlights include a two-hour documentary made in 1983 on Ozu's life called I Lived, But..., and an audio commentary by David Desser, (editor of the book Ozu's Tokyo Story), which is fascinating in its attention to every facet of a director's style. And there's a 40-minute featurette called Talking With Ozu which features (among others) director Paul Schrader, who, it may be remembered, is the author of the seminal work Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (published in 1972), which should be required reading for anyone pretending to be in the film business.
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