Julianisms

These past two months have been deliriously satisfying: I’d finally managed to find some spare time to settle down in the evenings in (relative) peace to view some of my poor, neglected DVDs.

I’ve been meaning to watch some of these films for ages now. Many are legends of the cinema - I had only previously heard or read about them.

In no fixed order, my viewing list consisted of:

1.  Harakiri by Masaki Kobayashi
2.  12 Angry Men by Sidney Lumet
3.  Annie Hall and Mighty Aphrodite by Woody Allen
4.  Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet
5.  Rebecca by Alfred Hitchcock
6.  La Double Vie De Veronique by Krzysztof Kieslowski
7.  The Pornographers by Shohei Imamura
8.  Rififi by Jules Dassin
9.  Ivan the Terrible, Parts I & II by Sergei M. Eisenstein
10. Bonnie and Clyde by Arthur Penn
11. La Grande Illusion by Jean Renoir
12. Branded To Kill by Seijun Suzuki
13. Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu
14. Naked Lunch by David Cronenberg
15. Onibaba by Kaneto Shindo
16. The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo

Two films in particular stand out for me.

It is Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri that moves me the most with its surprisingly scathing denouncement of the bushido code of honour. Much of the narrative is told in flashback, similar to Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. The pacing is expertly handled by Kobayashi (Harakiri never feels draggy for it’s 2.5 hour running time) and the lead character is wonderfully acted by the great Tatsuya Nakadai - what a man!

Many film enthusiasts rate Harakiri as one of the top 2 or 3 samurai films to come out of Japan. After having watched it thrice already, I find it hard to refute that assessment.

My other pick has to be Sydney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, a story about a jury of men who have to decide on whether to send a suspected murderer to the gallows. Before they can reach that decision, they will have to wrestle among themselves over issues of personal prejudices, racial discrimination, and the unresolved ambiguities in key eyewitness testimonies.

Other “overdue” films I plan to finish watching soon: The Third Man by Carol Reed, The Philadelphia Story by George Cukor, Young Mr. Lincoln by John Ford, and the entire series of The Decalogue by Krzysztof Kieslowski (it consists of ten one-hour films, each representing one of the Ten Commandments within a loosely threaded storyline set in modern Poland).

But the ultimate high point of my self-declared film revival was the timely arrival of my latest DVD order from Amazon on September 12, 2006. Woohoo!

Behold, The Criterion Collection re-issue of what is possibly that most essential of all Japanese epics, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. If there is any one film that can surpass Harakiri, it must surely be this one - Seven Samurai is the Tiger Woods of all samurai films. It is, simply put, peerless in its class and genre.

Click on the thumbnails below to popup a larger image for each picture.  

It’s a beauty, ain’t it? The previous Criterion release of this film was a single-disc edition that was a staple in the DVD library of many film enthusiasts. This re-issue trumps that earlier release by a significant margin. For starters, the film and supplements are now spread out over three DVDs, which features two exhaustive commentaries plus a host of other goodies including this exquisite 60-page booklet of selected essays and interviews.

That evening, I quickly wolfed down my dinner and plopped down in front of the TV.

Spent a few minutes drooling over the beautiful packaging and admiring the gorgeous artwork before inserting the first disc into the DVD player. I then spent the next 207 minutes gawking at the stunningly remastered DVD picture quality while dutifully taking in every word of the the brand new 5-person commentary track.

Sheer.Cinematic.Heaven.

I’m gushing, of course, but Seven Samurai does that to me every time. This is my fifth viewing of this film in as many years and it is probably my best so far. Like fine wine, some movies just get better with age and repeated viewings.

As far as DVD special editions go, only the three Lord of the Rings Extended DVD Editions (reviewed here, here, and here) and the Criterion 3-disc boxset release of Brazil (reviewed here) deserve to be mentioned in the same breath. In my humble opinion, of course (which is very humble indeed).

The new commentary is just the start of many good things in this exceptional DVD boxset: there are still hours of material to go through and I promise you, by the time I’m finished with all three DVD platters, I’ll be a walking encyclopedia on Seven Samurai.

Now that is one education I am really looking forward to.

Related information and links:
If you’re looking for the best DVD collection of definitive motion pictures classics on the planet, you should start at the Criterion Collection. Wikipedia has some good background info on the company.

For DVD reviews, there are few better resources than The DVD Journal: all articles and reviews are expertly written by people who clearly love the cinema and DVD technology: this is what they have to say about the Criterion re-issue of Seven Samurai.

For a more technical discourse about the AV quality of the Seven Samurai DVD, try this review by DVD Beaver instead.

Lastly, in case you didn’t know, IMDb.com has (almost) everything you could ever possibly want to find out about any movie in the history of movies.

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