The Last Candle

In recent months and years I’ve become an unabashed patron of Criterion and its Collection, “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.” In the United States, no distributor comes close to offering the quality and large breadth of releases provided by the American company. (Elsewhere, in the UK, Masters of Cinema Series of DVDs is very similar to the Criterion Collection.) In today’s world, a release by Criterion is very likely the best a movie fan or collector will ever get.

But let’s imagine a sad world, a lesser world — a world without Criterion. What’s a film snob to do? Watch fewer movies, probably. But we’d also have to put up with sub-standard, even offensive released of famous and classic movies.

Take this next release, for example, which is an honest-to-Abe DVD and VHS release of a real movie.

Yikes.

If you can get past the extremely gaudy color arrangement, the faked pin-up blonde, accentuated by the Cinema Sirens title and leopard-skin backdrop, and the misspelling of “psychological,” your eyes will eventually find the film’s title, Catherine Deneuve. In the upper left corner of the ugly yellow field is a single word to describe the film: “Repulsion.” Strange are the ways of the marketing department that chooses to describe the film’s obvious main character with such an ugly term, and also strange that the film’s creator, the well-known Roman Polanski, known for careful and somewhat austere productions, would create such a unsightly and tacky production.

Actually, wait. I’ve got that all wrong: The film isn’t called Catherine Deneuve: it’s Repulsion. Deneuve plays the lead. (Actress Yvonne Furneaux does play a supporting role, so the cover is not entirely misleading.)

Speaking of the lead, contrary to the implication of the Cinema Sirens art, Deneuve’s character doesn’t prance around in a pink spotted bathing suit, bad low-cut bob above her shoulders and a matching pink scarf in tow. Here’s an actual screengrab of Deneuvue’s character, Carol, from Repulsion:

That shot alone would have made a better cover for the film. After all, the expression on Carol’s face much better represents the film’s plot, tone, style and narrative: a stark, black and white psychological thriller about a young woman who is losing her grip on reality, told from the point of view of the woman, hallucinations and all. Pink bathing suit not included.

Clearly the Cinema Sirens release fails at advertising the actual content of the movie, let alone giving it respect. Fortunately, Criterion recently released Repulsion under their guidance. Here’s the art created for the new release:

Night and day. Scroll back up to the Cinema Sirens release and wonder how on earth these two covers can even represent the same movie.

On the other hand, the cover art is hardly indicative of the film’s actual presentation — the presentation of the film’s video and audio, as close to the crew’s intention (original or revised) as it can be, is most important of all. Sure, Cinema Sirens’ covers might be horribly off the mark, but who cares as long as the transfer is scratch-free? Is a world without Criterion a world with bad disc enclosures but otherwise fine film-watching?

No. Take Kurosawa’s Ran, for example, which has seen three different distributors in the last decade: Fox Lorber, Wellspring Media, who released it under a “Masterworks Edition” label, and finally Criterion.

Fox Lorber cropped the film from 1.85:1 to roughly 2.35:1, burned the subtitles onto the video itself, and provided a completely awful picture¹ (also see the one example of this edition at the UK’s DVD Times review²).

The Masterworks Edition also cropped the film, but blew it up to full-frame, cutting off the edges³, used a de-noising filter on the transfer, which blurred the picture and ruined details⁴, and punched out the colors and contrast. The Masterworks Edition is also known to having making spelling mistakes in the subtitles. (Some debate on the quality of the Masterworks Edition exists⁵. Although I haven’t seen the Masterworks Edition myself to account for its quality, these latter reviewers are in the much lesser minority of observers.)

Criterion finally provided fans with an excellent release of Ran in 2005, but in nothing less than a disaster, the company actually lost the rights earlier this year, even as a Blu-ray release was weeks away. Ran, widely considered one of the many masterpieces by the great Japanese auteur Kurosawa, might be subjected to yet another dismal release.

Most home releases are not as bad as the provided example, but they offer a look into the landscape of a cold, hard world without a respectable distributor. Some hope does exist, maybe: if Criterion did disappear, I do have some love for a VHS of John Woo’s Hard Boiled that was released by none other than Fox Lorber — or I did love it, until the tape was ruined by a VCR that was consequently sent to the garbage dump. A little respect towards great movies is not too much to ask.

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Repulsion at Criterion. Trailer included.

The Masters of Cinema Series of DVDs, a side project of the Masters of Cinema.

Cinema Sirens on the web. Quite a collection.

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Movie nights around my place happen whenever I damn well feel they should, another boon to being single, living alone, and cat-free. The evening’s choice picture varies often, thanks to Netflix and the rare Criterion sale, and the only usual interruption comes from the parking lot outside: An older man who lives in my apartment building owns an exceptionally noisy vehicle, and when he decides to make a trip to the grocery store, his beater car sounds like a cross between a motorboat and popping corn.

Last Sunday’s picture was the Allen Baron picture Blast of Silence, a little-known but confident NYC-based noir. Many shots in the film are simple but interesting side shots of the lead character walking down city streets, past many storefronts, parks, alleyways, and humble brick abodes, surrounded by the usual city of din of urban traffic, pedestrian chatter, and the occasional police or fire engine siren. If a fire engine siren had actually, say, sounded right outside my window, I probably would’ve paid it little mind, thinking it was part of the gritty film’s soundtrack.

Wait for it.

While ignoring a siren is one thing, a heavy fist pounding on your door is harder to ignore. The plot thickens further after opening the door and finding a police officer on the other side, especially when the police officer tells you the building is on fire.

I grabbed my phone and shoes and departed, following other residents who has also been alerted by the officer. Stepping outside the building to the exterior walkway, I see not one but two fire engines stationed in the parking lot, one with the hose crane extended towards the end of the building opposite where I live. Natural inclination and the circumstances moved me to follow the crane arm’s extension, leading my gaze to this scene:

A air-conditioner/heater closet used to be there. But it’s gone now.

So here’s the rough timeline of that Sunday night. About a half-hour after I begin watching Blast of Silence, an air-con, after attempting to combat a day of 95° and high humidity, decides to give up the ghost and go out in style. This exhausted air-con decides to set the building on fire as a parting shot, which also could bring the benefit of taking down other air conditioners in the complex and towing some friends along the ride to air-con heaven.

The heater closet goes up in flame, eventually catching the siding, too. Someone at the pool notices the building’s conflagration and in sequence calls 911, evacuates the building, and alerts the apartment complex’s maintenance staff. While all this is happening — while my apartment building is on fire — I am approximately forty-five minutes into my movie and enjoying it greatly.

Note that prior to starting the DVD I closed all my windows and blinds, barring away the outside world in a sad attempt to replicate the theater experience, but unwittingly also barring away a possible early warning that my living quarters were minutes away from going up in smoke and flame.

Five minutes later, the fire trucks arrive. The sirens mesh perfectly with the gritty NYC streets, and I am none the wiser. Approximately about the time the fire engine is extending a crane and hose to extinguish my flaming apartment building, the film’s Frankie Bono is moving in on his assassin target.

Another five minutes. Within my own little world, immersed in that personal screening, Frankie silently picks a fire axe from a grimy apartment wall with two gloved hands and steps quietly through a room’s open door, approaching an arms dealer, intent to murder. Outside of that bubble, roughly fifteen yards away from my sorry screening room, men and women in heavy fire-repellant suits are also wielding fire axes, not with intent to murder but to save the property and, possibly, lives of dozens of tenants.

The night ended well, as well as it could go: the heater closet’s outburst did not succeed at moving beyond its enclosure, besides a bit of the vinyl siding. The tenants in my half of the building were allowed to return to our domiciles after an hour, and the other half returned to their abodes the following evening, save the one tenant whose unit had housed the offending air conditioner.

As for Frankie Bono, his story wasn’t concluded until Monday evening.

(An additional note: only until after our building was evacuated did the hallway fire alarm, a harsh and deafening rattle that could wake the dead, go off. I guess the fact that the other half of the building could’ve potentially burnt to the ground was not cause enough to start the alarm.)

Tuesday evening was a game night, the ying to movie night’s yang, and now Wednesday evening brings another film: tonight I’ll be watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Considering the events of this past Sunday, while I don’t expect any far-future time-travelling adventures to appear at my door, I might leave a window cracked open just in case another air-con has had enough with this mortal heating coil.

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Blast of Silence, a film by Allen Baron: Criterion summary and trailer.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, a film by Mamoru Hosoda: Wikipedia article, trailer at YouTube.