Thursday, December 01, 2005
lingering questions
Suits run the world, and as far as most Suits are concerned, a widget is still and ever only a widget, so it doesn't surprise me that it's taken a long time for some classic and cult films to be released on DVD. But still, I remain mystified by the absence of certain films on video.
Take Gambit, for example. A heist film starring Shirley MacLaine and Michael Caine, both of whom I seem to recall having done some decent work. It won a number of Oscars for art direction, costuming, and sound. Won a trio of Golden Globes in the musical/comedy category for best picture, best actor, and best actress. And it features a stunningly clever twist that I've never seen duplicated in a film before or since. I could write a whole entry on this film alone, but suffice to say that after Rififi and Topkapi, I consider this to be one of the best heist films ever made, and I'm something of a connoisseur when it comes to them. Available on DVD? Anywhere in the world? Nope.
Same deal with $, aka Dollars. It received a critical drubbing at the time of its release, but I believe that it's something of a misunderstood gem of a caper film. But regardless of what I think, it starred Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn, not exactly small names on the marquee. It just seems silly that I can buy Dick Tracy and Bird On A Wire on DVD, but not this.
Or perhaps a better known example: The African Queen. You know, the one with Bogart and Bacall. You could certainly make the case that it was one of Bogart's best films, and the best of the Bogart/Bacall collaborations. Available on DVD? Yes.
In the UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, and Germany.
Allow me to repeat: Germany. So basically, everywhere in Europe, nowhere in the US. That also means that no NTSC copy exists, since all those countries use PAL. And no, I have no idea why, other than the fact that distribution rights are split between foreign and domestic, and often times different companies distribute a movie in different regions. Apparently whoever has the European rights figured it would be worth their while to release the film. To add insult to injury, the UK release even features a commentary by the cinematographer. Not only do we have no extras, we have no movie.
There are more. The Friends of Eddie Coyle, widely viewed as a classic '70s noir starring Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, and Richard Jordan. Or Assault On A Queen, starring Frank Sinatra with a script by Rod Serling. It's another heist movie, but in this one they use a German U-Boat to steal from the Queen Mary. You cannot tell me that Frank Sinatra with a U-Boat isn't one of the best ideas in film history. Mitchum was also in The Yakuza along with Brian Keith and Ken Takakura. The film was directed by Sydney Pollack from a script by Paul Schrader (whose love of Japan later led him to write/direct the biopic Mishima). Aside from the individuals involved, it's also a superior thriller with some great action sequences -- the sword fight towards the end could have been a rough prototype for the fight in the House of Blue Leaves in Kill Bill -- and a refreshingly straight take on daily Japanese life that was mercifully free of the usual Orientalist fetishes.
(On The Yakuza, at least, there's some good news -- according to chats with with studio reps, they've got a DVD in the pipe, but it's been pushed back a couple of times and is now scheduled for sometime in 2006.)
Speaking of Kill Bill, Tarantino waxed long and frequently to every movie magazine and site that would listen about how he was crafting the ultimate DVD set for the films containing the original theatrical versions, the uncut Japanese versions, an entirely new edit merging the two films and adding additional material, and a bunch of extras. Nearly two years later and we've got nothing but the barebones editions in America; I've sworn that if nothing is announced by the end of this year, I'm just going to order the Japanese discs and exchange rate be damned. Likewise a special edition of Blade Runner has been missing in action for years. Supposedly a truly luxe set was being assembled with all the many and varied cuts of the film, including a long-fabled new cut by Ridley Scott that included some of the mythical deleted footage -- unfortunately, it appears to have run afoul of legal entaglements and petty personal issues.
And don't even get me started on Asian films in the US. I can only assume that the widget mentality still applies, and because their widgets don't look exactly like our widgets, the Suits feel the need to cut and sand them into shape, usually removing whatever it was that made them interesting in the first place. Miramax was particularly egregious about this, buying the rights to scores of classic Hong Kong films and then sitting on them for years while they attempted to transform them into something "commercial." Remember Hero, with Jet Li? Nominated for an Academy Award in 2002, but not released in America until 2004, and only then because Tarantino goaded them into doing it. Surprise, it ended up becoming a minor hit. Of course, just to pour some more salt into the wound, if anyone in America dared to market an import DVD for one of the films that Miramax owned the rights to -- but weren't releasing and showed no intention of releasing, because they couldn't see how to market it -- they were then threatened with a lawsuit. Even when the film was released on DVD, Miramax often wouldn't make the original version available because someone might, you know, prefer it to their mangled take. Pointless and vindictive, as the rest of us just started ordering from Hong Kong and saved a few bucks in the process.
Of course, Miramax is now defunct, but the mentality still holds. The version of Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle released on DVD in America by Sony Classics is rated R and still edited. Bizzarely enough, you can buy the uncut version in the same packaging, with the same extras, distributed by the same company -- from Korea.
Still haven't figured out why Juzo Itami's films aren't readily available on DVD: Tampopo and the two Taxing Woman movies are certifiable classics of foreign cinema with a metric ton of awards between them -- not to mention being incredibly funny -- and yet only Tampopo was ever released on DVD in the States, and has long since gone out of print. Itami was treated pretty shabbily even in his own country, and only recently was a boxed set of his films released in Japan (a hugely, massively expensive boxed set I should add).
Shifting gears, Cocksucker Blues probably warrants a mention as well, the infamous 1972 Rolling Stones documentary by Robert Frank. Unfortunately, in this case it isn't the Suits but the Stones themselves who are preventing its release, apparently not pleased that Frank inculded scenes of orgies, drug use, and people behaving like -- well, like how you generally expect rock stars behave. By court order, Frank is allowed to screen the movie once a year, but if you can't make it to one of his showings it can be found elsewhere.
Which brings me to a note of hope after all the rambling, and that's the nascent underground of digital film preservationists ripping these movies from VHS or LD and trading them online. George Lucas will never let you see the original Star Wars trilogy ever again, but you can locate quite nice DVDs of the movies with letterboxing, surround, full-motion menus, and extras without much trouble. The out of print Criterion Salo DVD may go for a couple hundred bucks on eBay, but again, is out there for those who are interested. And Monster Squad probably isn't at the top of any company's list, but props to whoever released it in digital format a while back (look, I rather liked the film and I'm a Shane Black completist). I've even seen a few places online selling custom DVDs of obscure, foreign horror films whose legitimate ownership has been lost in a maze of shadowy investors and shell companies that calls to mind Lovecraft's non-Euclidean geometries. Some of these folks do it for the money, some for the props, some just to share a movie they like, but increasingly it seems like the real, ground-level history of film with its ugly ducklings and failures, its nostalgia and macabre fascinations, may be in their hands.