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The Vision of Buster Keaton

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The inimitable Buster Keaton has been acknowledged by some cinema historians as the master of silent-film comedy — surpassing Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd.  When examining his creativity throughout the 1920s, Keaton was a groundbreaking filmmaker whose somber but determined vision produced an enduring body of work.

Keaton’s stoic persona defied mainstream cinema as he transcended silent comedy by venturing into more dramatic territory.  This progression is evident when viewing three Keaton-directed features in chronological order:  Seven Chances (1925), Battling Butler (1926) and The General (1926).  Each film is distinctive in its comedic tone and cinematic style, while showcasing Keaton’s evolution as an artist.

Seven Chances is an example of Keaton placing his own personal and stylistic imprint on material not specifically tailored for him.  In fact, the premise seems ideal for Harold Lloyd:  on a certain day, a stockbroker belatedly discovers he will inherit $7 million if he marries by 7 p.m. that evening, yet only has a few hours remaining.  Under Keaton’s direction, what could have been a traditional thrill comedy emerges as a surrealistic nightmare brought to life.  It also reveals the epic scope of his filmmaking.

Like many of his features, Seven Chances maintains a natural tempo that enhances the humor of its individual scenes, particularly during the various proposals and rejections that Keaton encounters on his way to the altar.  In the words of Keaton biographer Rudi Blesh, the film begins “slower than other comedians and ends twice as fast.”

This deliberate, methodic pacing builds to one of the great climaxes in movie history, with hundreds of potential brides — and an avalanche of boulders — chasing Buster through the Southern California landscape.  Filmed entirely on location and utilizing expansive long shots, this 20-minute sequence is propelled by Keaton’s stunning athleticism and remarkable editing precision.

Ruthless romance in Seven Chances.

In a 1965 interview with British film critic John Gillett, Keaton described how he shot the spectacular chase: “When I’ve got a gag that spreads out, I hate to jump a camera into close-ups.  So I do everything in the world I can to hold it in that long-shot and keep the action rolling.  . . . Close-ups are too jarring on the screen and can stop an audience from laughing.”

Keaton seamlessly fuses his deadpan expressiveness with an expert command of the film medium.  In Seven Chances, he transforms a stage farce into a thought-provoking examination of ruthless romance in which deadly boulders are preferable to devouring women.  The film equates pain with redemption and reveals the seriousness of Keaton’s comic art.

The same can be said of Battling Butler, which was the closest Keaton ever came to making a dramatic film.  Though regarded by contemporary critics as one of his weaker efforts, Battling Butler was among Keaton’s personal favorites and made more money than any of his silent features.  The film also broke new ground in its directorial style and depth, thus paving the way for his masterpiece, The General.

Though a traditional Keaton comedy on the surface, Battling Butler has a subdued, gentle tone that eventually erupts into violent rage.  Buster plays foppish and pampered Alfred Butler, a millionaire’s son who falls in love with a country girl while camping in the mountains.  To gain acceptance from the girl’s family, he is willing to be mistaken for heavyweight boxer Battling Butler, who is training nearby.  The sadistic champ soon learns about the ruse and schemes to annihilate Alfred.

Rather than stage a humorous fight, director Keaton plays it straight with effective results.  Alfred receives a brutal beating in the champ’s dressing room as the girl watches.  The blows are painful.  Bloodied and humiliated, Alfred looks into the girl’s terrified eyes.  What follows is perhaps the most chilling of all Keaton transformations, as the weakling Alfred lashes out at the champ — knocking the boxer to the floor several times.  Alfred wins a personal victory and the girl’s love as he walks down the streets of New York wearing his top hat and boxing trunks.

A chilling Keaton transformation.

Despite the upbeat finish, Alfred’s abrupt change in personality lingers in the mind.  For the first time, Keaton “permitted comedy to give way to a greater urgency,” Walter Kerr observed in his 1975 critical study The Silent Clowns.  ”We have seen him be extraordinarily funny in a boxing ring earlier. Now, in the film’s closing reel, he suddenly seems no comedian at all.”

Keaton had the ability to step out of genre as an actor and filmmaker.  Battling Butler confirms this rare dramatic quality with its realistic fight sequence, which influenced Martin Scorsese when he directed Raging Bull (1980).  Like Keaton, Scorsese made certain his camera stayed in the ring. “The only person who had the right attitude about boxing in the movies was Buster Keaton,” he told biographer Marion Meade in 1995.

Clyde Bruckman, one of Keaton’s co-writers, was so impressed by Battling Butler that he gave Keaton a copy of William Pittenger’s 1863 book The Great Locomotive Chase.  It became the inspiration for The General — Keaton’s greatest feature (with Bruckman credited as co-director) and a cinematic masterpiece.  More than 93 years since its initial release, the film endures as a truly unique work that continues to resonate through generations.

Historians and critics often overlook Keaton’s ambition as a filmmaker.  Though Chaplin shot most of The Gold Rush (1925) in the studio, 90 percent of The General was filmed on location in Oregon.  In his quest for perfection, Keaton told his crew, “It’s got to be so authentic it hurts.” The result, in many respects, is the definitive Civil War epic, with Dev Jennings and Bert Haines’ superb cinematography evoking the photographic naturalism of Mathew Brady.

An independent filmmaker during most of the 1920s, Keaton had all the Hollywood resources at his disposal to create a very personal work not unlike Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) — commercial considerations be damned.  In retrospect, The General reveals as much about Keaton as it does the historic subject matter.

Keaton’s masterpiece: The General.

Welles was a great admirer of Keaton and praised The General on the 1971 PBS series The Silent Years:  “I think it’s the Civil War movie. Nothing ever came near it, not only for beauty but for a feeling of authenticity. Yet this is a farce — a farce without Chaplinesque sentiment, but imbued with a real and very curious sort of dignity.  . . . It’s a hundred times more stunning visually than Gone With the Wind.”

The General represents the ultimate fusion of man and machine, with the Civil War serving as a seriocomic backdrop in this larger-than-life escapade.  The film is an inventive chase through history while showcasing Keaton’s mastery of props and characterization.  “Think slow, act fast” was his modus operandi.

A recurring Keaton theme is the triumph of the outsider who relies on his own devices.  As engineer Johnnie Gray, Keaton overcomes elaborate obstacles in a world where the illogical appears logical.  He has the determination to fight terrible battles and prove his mettle to a society that initially rejects him.  Unlike Chaplin and Lloyd, the emotionally detached Keaton has no time to feel sorry for himself — he must keep going.  Life has become an endless chase.

Inevitably, the chase must end.  The final scenes in The General represent those few opportunities where the Keaton persona stands still and reflects upon his accomplishments.  Johnnie Gray finds love, redemption and a military rank, but only after a grueling journey.  It seems that all Keaton characters must pay an emotional and physical price before they achieve success.

To realize his cinematic vision, Buster Keaton created an enigmatic and inventive universe that knew no bounds.  Through the tragicomic wisdom of Seven Chances, Battling Butler and The General, viewers may envision themselves in these surrealistic battles — running and fighting for their lives.  Such is the timeless poetry of Keaton, whose films move beyond the realm of slapstick comedy to reveal an expansive, darker portrait of American individualism.

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Reviews

Blu-ray and DVD Review Round-Up: Films by Chantal Akerman, Kelly Reichardt, William Wellman & more!

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CertainCertain Women (2016)
The Criterion Collection

Kelly Reichardt has established herself as one of the greatest living American filmmakers with Certain Women, my favorite film of 2016, and perhaps her best in a career full of patient, revealing and intensely focused yet emotionally expansive films. It’s also her most gorgeous film yet, capturing the fading light of windswept Montana landscapes in all their plaintive beauty. (Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt even outdoes his remarkable Meek’s Cutoff photography here.) In Certain Women, there’s a repeated shot of a barn door opening to a snowy field, and it’s like the greatest wipe I’ve ever seen, opening up to an image of apparent stillness that nonetheless hums with possibility — an apt description of much of Reichardt’s work.

Based on short stories by Maile Meloy, the film’s triptych structure evades narrative cutesiness — stories overlap a bit, but with elusive implications — and thematic obviousness — the through-lines are more abstract, particularly in the film’s middle piece, a thrillingly elided enigma in which all the emotional mysteries are locked up in the expressions of Michelle Williams.

There are more traditional narrative pleasures in the first story, in which Laura Dern’s not-quite-indefatigable lawyer develops an unusual relationship with a pushy-then-worse client (Jared Harris) and the last, a tale of longing brimming up, as a ranch hand (Lily Gladstone) becomes enamored with a lawyer (Kristen Stewart) who’s teaching a class in her small town, seemingly by some kind of serendipitous mistake — or not.

This final segment has garnered most of the attention — and not unjustifiably as Gladstone gives an almost painfully revealing performance — but the whole film has that kind of emotional acuity. This is a spare film filled with women who sublimate their feelings for various reasons, but when Dern listens patiently to her client break down in front of her or Williams drops just an ounce of the ingratiating façade used to convince an acquaintance to give her some sandstone she covets or Gladstone tucks a suddenly wild strand of hair behind her ear while she sees Stewart for the last time, the film seems to expand far beyond the limits of its frames.

Criterion’s Blu-ray, with a 1080p, 1.85:1 transfer, is a faithful depiction of the film’s 16mm photography, rendering the grain beautifully and offering detailed, sharp images throughout. Detail isn’t lost in the somewhat drab color palette, and brighter scenes, particularly those with snow on the ground, really pop. The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is appropriately sparse, with every subtle gradation in sound design noticeable. Reichardt opts against a score, except for one scene, and the result is certainly effective.

Supplements feature a trio of new interviews. Reichardt discusses her attraction to Meloy’s stories and some of the changes she made, along with her experience shooting the film. Producer and longtime friend Todd Haynes gushes over Reichardt’s abilities, while Meloy talks about the genesis of the three stories and her appreciation for Reichardt’s interpretations. A trailer and insert with an essay by critic Ella Taylor are also included.

Criterion Collection / 2016 / Color / 1.85:1 /107 min / $39.95

VarieteVarieté (1925)
Kino Lorber

It’s almost immediately apparent that E.A. Dupont’s Varieté is going to feature a stunning array of camerawork, beginning with a frame story in a prison packed with evocative imagery, including an overhead long shot of prisoners walking in circular formation, like gears in a grinding cog. That’s far from the only visual metaphor in this landmark German silent: The film’s most kinetic sequences feature trapeze performances, and the camera swoops like it’s a performer itself.

Dupont’s visual sense is restlessly creative, moving from striking close-ups to environment-establishing long shots. If there’s an opportunity to move the camera, he takes it, scurrying up to give us a better look at crucial details. But he’ll also let scenes play out, uninterrupted. Rather than seem harried or chaotic, all of these methods work to amp up this hothouse melodrama, in which a carnival barker named Huller (Emil Jannings, whose unrelentingly intense visage is used perfectly) self-destructs over his attraction to a mysterious dancer (Lya de Putti).

Her name: Berta-Marie, taken from the ship she was discovered on. A crusty old sailor tells Huller the ship was haunted, and if that’s not foreshadowing, I don’t know what is. But while Berta-Marie certainly isn’t averse to the way Huller begins ignoring his wife and child to pay attention to her, Dupont doesn’t really frame her as a seductress. Instead, Huller’s urges are entirely self-sourced, like a volcano inside of him that’s threatening to erupt at any second. When he leaves his wife for Berta-Marie, and they flee to start a new life, the release valve is opened a little. But it’s not long before the pressure starts building again, and Dupont applies it masterfully all the way to an inevitable finish.

Kino’s Blu-ray features a 1080, 1.33:1 tinted transfer, sourced from the 2015 restoration by the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung and Filmarchiv Austria. It’s an impressive restoration, managing the damage and materials deterioration carefully and offering an image with great depth and detail. The tiny vertical scratches that run throughout can’t diminish the clarity of the underlying image. Aside from a few hiccups here and there, the image is also quite stable. Two scores are included: one created by a class at Berklee, which works pretty well considering the number of composers involved, and a less traditional score from British band The Tiger Lillies, which traffics in their usual brand of cabaret/punk music, with vocals.

On the bonus material front, Kino’s release arguably outperforms the UK disc from Masters of Cinema released earlier this year, which was sourced from the same restoration. The American version of the film isn’t here, but instead we get a whole separate film: Dimitri Buchowetzki’s adaptation of Othello (1922), starring Jannings as Othello and De Putti as Iago’s wife, Emilia. The elements it’s sourced from are pretty dupey, but it’s nice to have anyway. Also included: a visual essay by Bret Wood on Dupont’s style and a featurette on the Berklee orchestra.

Kino Lorber / 1925 / Color tinted / 1.33:1 / 95 min / $29.95

Louis XIVThe Death of Louis XIV (La mort de Louis XIV, 2017)
Cinema Guild

Oh, the indignities of growing old. In Albert Serra’s painstakingly observed interpretation, the French king Louis XIV wastes away, surrounded by a bevy of well-wishers and physicians, intent on not acknowledging that fact. Every small victory, like a bite of biscuit or a hat doffed to bid farewell is greeted rapturously, like a minor miracle has been performed. Throughout the film, the king’s doctors and attendants keep optimistically asserting that he looks like he’s getting better.

He’s not.

If the title of the film (and, of course, the history of Europe’s longest-reigning monarch) didn’t give it away, it would still be apparent that there is to be no dramatic recovery. As Louis, icon Jean-Pierre Léaud offers a performance that’s stunning in the delicacy of its movement.

An early scene sees the king being afforded a rare pleasure — a brief visit from his beloved dogs — and the slight trembling of Léaud’s cheeks as he grasps the fleeting moment is a potent capsule of heartbreak. The subtlety of this expression is remarkable — but it’s only the beginning, as his performance becomes stiller and yet more absorbing as the film proceeds. Léaud is constantly ensconced, from the massive wig on his head to the layers and layers of clothing he seems to be shriveling up inside. But I’m convinced he would perfectly capture the man’s ever-mounting sense of smallness and decay even without the makeup or costuming.

The follow-up to Story of My Death (2013), Serra’s film sees him returning to familiar themes of epochal shifts and mortality, though his sense of history is much less idiosyncratic here than in that Dracula/Casanova take. His slow-cinema approach is matched here by a kind of narrative intensity, with all extraneous story elements stripped away. Will a legion of medical professionals be able to save the king’s gangrenous leg? Will his legacy continue? Will he finally get that glass of water served in the crystal he wants it in? The profound and the absurd still comingle here, but the film’s purpose feels more tightly honed.

Cinema Guild’s Blu-ray release presents the film in a 1080p, 2.35:1 transfer that looks fantastic. There may be no cinematographic cliché more overused than “painterly,” but you’ve got it to apply it here to Serra’s Rembrandt-like gradations of light and shadow. Fine detail is nice in this transfer, while colors are consistently rendered. The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is subtly immersive in its usage of spare details.

Extras include a NYFF Q&A with Serra and Léaud, as well as Serra’s 2013 concert short Cuba Libre, also available on Second Run’s Story of My Death disc. A trailer and an insert with an essay by critic Jordan Cronk are also included.

Cinema Guild / 2017 / Color / 2.35:1 / 118 min / $34.95

AkermanChantal Akerman by Chantal Akerman (1996) — DVD only
Icarus Films

Icarus is one of the key curators of Akerman’s work on US home video, releasing many of her lesser-seen films and at least one key masterpiece: From the East (D’est, 1993), her mesmerizing study of the soon-to-be no-more Soviet bloc.

Their latest Akerman release isn’t quite as essential, but it’s the kind of film that could be valuable both to an Akerman fanatic and an Akerman neophyte. Made for the long-running French television series Cinéma, de notre temps (that stalwart of Criterion Collection bonus material), Akerman’s entry could act as both an introduction to unfamiliar work and as a recontextualization of deeply familiar work. Maybe this is more DVD bonus material territory than main-feature territory, but it’s a fascinating film in its own right.

Reluctant to include any new footage, Akerman was eventually persuaded to shoot something featuring herself, so the film opens with a series of shots in her apartment. She looks at the camera and reads from a script, each cut bringing the camera closer and closer until she fills the frame. She confesses her misgivings about the whole project, and makes observations about the nebulous line between documenting herself and playing a character. Both in her performance (and it is consciously “performed”) and the camerawork, Akerman seems to be pitting a deliberately anti-cinematic style against fundamental questions about what cinema means.

If it wasn’t obvious that Akerman had an almost peerless grasp of cinematic form, the film’s second segment proves it, cutting together clips from many of her previous films, interspersing iconic shots from Jeanne Dielman (the meatloaf! of course, the meatloaf) and D’est (one of the many gorgeous, enigmatic tracking shots) with pieces from harder-to-see films, like anti-capitalist musical Golden Eighties (1986) and several funny, piercing moments from Portrait of a Young Woman at the End of the 1960s in Brussels (1994). If nothing else, the film will make you yearn to see the films surrounding these scenes and remind you just how underrepresented Akerman is on US home video, the efforts of Icarus and Criterion aside.

In her introduction, Akerman comes across as an artist obsessed with cinematic truthfulness, and the moments from her films confirm it. There’s not a frame that doesn’t represent some kind of unvarnished honesty about the world we live in.

Icarus Films / 1996 / Color/black and white / 1.33:1 / 64 min / $24.98

BeggarsBeggars of Life (1928)
Kino Lorber

Though it’s likely not the first film one attaches to the names William Wellman, Louise Brooks or Wallace Beery, Beggars of Life is as good as one might hope for when seeing those three listed in the same place. Genuinely thrilling, with Wellman’s keen action instincts making for some exciting railroad sequences, the film is also psychologically probing and rousingly funny, at points.

Only several minutes in, the film delivers an impressively modern sequence, as Richard Arlen’s hobo smells breakfast in a house and peers in, hoping he can convince the owner to give him a plate. It turns out that man hunched over in anticipation of the food on the table is dead, and Louise Brooks is dressed in his clothes, preparing to make her escape after the murder.

A flashback, with Brooks’ face imposed over the events, recounts the horrors the man, her stepfather, perpetrated upon her. Watched so closely after the Twin Peaks finale, it was impossible not to associate this scene with Coop’s face imposed over the events in the sheriff’s station. (In the context of this film, the moment with Brooks’ face feels nearly as enigmatic.)

Brooks and Arlen hit the road together, and the temporary arrangement becomes more permanent after his attempts to teach her rail-hopping don’t quite go as planned. Among all its other virtues, the film is also sweetly romantic, the pair’s relationship blossoming into idyllic dreams inside a field of haystacks.

Naturally, when Beery shows up, the film shifts gears again into a more raucous mode. He plays Oklahoma Red, a hobo big shot who first appears swilling stolen liquor and singing. Is he a villain? A helper? Some kind of mischievous neutral character? At points, he plays all three roles, striking a midway point between menacing and charming. Paired with Brooks’ coolly understated approach, the two performances achieve a kind of perfect symbiosis.

Kino’s 1080p, 1.33:1 transfer is sourced from 35mm film elements from the George Eastman Museum, featuring about-average image quality for a film of this vintage. There’s an inherent softness to much of the image, with detail of faces and clothing that never quite gets there, but damage has been minimized and the presentation has a pleasing consistency. The 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio track presents a lively score from the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, based on selections from the original release cue sheet.

Two audio commentaries are nice inclusions: one from Wellman’s son, actor and historian of his father’s work, William Wellman Jr. and one from Thomas Gladysz, founding director of the Louise Brooks Society. A booklet essay by critic Nick Pinkerton offers some excellent contextual information on “hoboing” and the film’s journey from page to screen.

Kino Lorber / 1928 / Black and white / 1.33:1 / 81 min / $29.95

TreasureThe Treasure (Comoara, 2015) — DVD only
IFC

Like countless festival darlings, Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Treasure made a reasonably substantial splash at Cannes in 2015, winning the Prix Un Certain Talent prize and garnering plenty of positive notices from critics, and then seemingly fading away into the ether.

Now, it’s been nearly two years since the film’s limited US release, and it’s finally arrived on US home video, in an unsurprisingly underwhelming DVD-only release. Perhaps Criterion or another label with an IFC deal was considering picking up the film, but it’s not hard to see why other labels must have eventually passed. Porumboiu is one of the marquee names in Romanian filmmaking, but this is a minor effort.

All that early buzz focused on the film’s ending — the DVD’s lead pull-quote is A.O. Scott gushing about the “punchline — and one can understand why, as it starkly and charmingly departs from the deadpan bureaucratic comedy of the rest of the film. But viewed with some distance from the hype surrounding the film’s premiere, this is a conclusion that mostly just provokes a shrug.

More memorable is the sequence in which protagonist Costi (Toma Cuzin) and his neighbor Adrian (Adrian Purcarescu) hire a guy with a metal detector to search Adrian’s family’s property, reputed to have buried treasure somewhere on its grounds. Here, Porumboiu’s sense of low-key comedy shines, as a series of minor exasperations mount in a tidily built tower of annoyance. The following 20 minutes just feel like stalling to get to that ending. Is it really worth it?

Even taking into account the limitations of the format, the image on IFC’s DVD release is not great, plagued with a fuzziness that doesn’t do any favors to a film mostly composed in medium and long shots. Aside from some trailers, you won’t find any extras either.

IFC / 2015 / Color / 2.35:1 / 89 min / $24.98

Big KnifeThe Big Knife (1955)
Arrow Video

The follow-up to one of the greatest noirs ever, the apocalyptic Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife turns his attention to Hollywood venality. Based on the Clifford Odets’ play (revived on Broadway a few years ago, but otherwise fairly low-profile), the film is patently ridiculous melodrama, florid language and amped-up emotions stewing together inside the Hollywood estate of marquee icon Charles Castle (Jack Palance).

Under Aldrich’s direction, this material is compulsively watchable, careening from heightened moment to heightened moment with a cast full of actors hungry to devour each scene they’re in. Palance grimaces and grumbles, determined not to re-sign his studio contract, despite the best efforts of boss Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger), who has a host of blackmail tactics up his sleeve. Castle wants to reconcile with his semi-estranged wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), but his attentions are divided between her, Hoff, liquor and the host of visitors that traipse through his house, including Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters.

Like Mike Nichols with his adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), Aldrich understands that a theater-to-film adaptation can embrace the limitations of so-called “stagy” material, and he turns Castle’s home into a pressure-cooker, with only a handful of scenes that venture outside its confines. The material may be pulpy — even risible in its depiction of substance abuse — but it’s easy to buy in with the way Aldrich builds the framework for it.

Arrow’s 1080p, 1.85:1 transfer is heaven for lovers of black-and-white films with heavy grain structure. Sourced from a new 2K restoration, the image handles the grain exceptionally well, with only a few moments of density fluctuation scattered here and there. Fine detail is abundant, grayscale separation is rich and images are consistently sharp. The uncompressed 2.0 mono mix sounds good on the surface, though there’s a persistent low-level hiss that’s noticeable if turned up loud enough.

Extras include an audio commentary from critics Glenn Kenny and Nick Pinkerton and an archival interview with Saul Bass on his titles work. A trailer and a vintage featurette are also included.

Arrow Video / 1955 / Black and white / 1.85:1 / 111 min / $39.95

 

Dusty Somers is a Seattle-based writer and editor who splits his critical ambitions between writing Blu-ray & DVD reviews and theater criticism. He’s a member of the Online Film Critics Society and Seattle Theater Writers.

 

1928: Buster Keaton in "Steamboat Bill, Jr."
Reviews

Blu-ray Review Round-Up: Films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jess Franco, Ousmane Sembène & more!

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FoxFox and His Friends (1975)
Criterion Collection

Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Fox and His Friends, made midway through his short but incredibly prolific career, unfolds like a brutal car crash in slow motion. It’s almost immediately evident what is going to happen to the naïve carnival worker Fox (played by Fassbinder himself with a startling lack of guile), but there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it, least of all the oblivious protagonist.

The cynicism runs bone-deep in this portrait of transactional bourgeoisie gay culture. A compulsive lotto-player, Fox finally sees his persistence pay off after he wins 500,000 marks. But Fassbinder completely elides the actual discovery of his win. It’s possibly the only moment of unsullied joy for Fox within the film’s borders, and it might as well not exist.

Shortly after his big win, Fox is introduced to a group of upper-class friends by Max (Karlheinz Böhm), an antiques dealer he’s picked up by at a public restroom, and soon he’s become enamored with Eugen (Peter Chatel). Sensing an opportunity, Eugen starts seeing Fox and then asks for money. He doesn’t wait long and he doesn’t start small, securing a 100,000-mark loan for his company before convincing Fox to buy an apartment and fill it with lavish furniture and décor from Max’s shop.

As usual, Fassbinder shoots interior spaces with an eye toward their oppressive and distancing effects, and Fox and Eugen’s apartment, stuffed from floor to ceiling with ornate accessories, is an especially overwhelming place. Fox never seems aware of his new friends’ capacity for manipulation, but his alienation is palpable, even if his carefree personality deflects it on the surface. Even one of his favorite spots — a dive bar that Eugen et al sneer at — is eventually transformed into a space where he no longer feels at home.

This is depressing, harrowing and emotionally penetrating stuff, and Fassbinder never lets up. The indignities persist for Fox up through the film’s final shot. He gets one final gut-punch, and so do we.

Criterion’s 1080p, 1.37:1 transfer is sourced from a new 4K digital restoration by the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation, and it looks essentially identical to the Arrow Region B Blu-ray, sourced from the same restoration. Fine detail is excellent, grain is well-supported and colors are stable and vibrant, with a slight yellowish warm hue to them. The uncompressed mono soundtrack is limited by the dullness of the post-dubbed dialogue, but there are no major hiss or noise issues.

While Arrow’s disc included an informative commentary track from Hamish Ford, Criterion’s disc offers more quantity, including two newly filmed interviews. Filmmaker Ira Sachs offers an appreciation of the film and Fassbinder’s place within queer cinema, while actor Harry Baer, who played Eugen’s ex, reminisces about making the film and sadly notes that only three of the principals are still living. Two brief archival excerpts are offered: Fassbinder talks about the film’s politics and composer Peer Raben discusses the cabaret-influenced score. A trailer and an insert with an essay from former Criterion staff writer Michael Koresky round out the supplements.

Criterion Collection / 1975 / Color / 1.37:1 / 124 min / $39.95

OrloffDr. Orloff’s Monster (1964)
Redemption

Before he became notorious as an insanely prolific director of horror films of, let’s say, dubious quality, Jess Franco emerged with his breakthrough, The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962). Two years later, Orlof was back with an additional f in Dr. Orloff’s Monster, a film that references Orloff all of once. Cash-in implications of the title aside (it’s also known as the not-quite-accurate-either The Mistresses of Dr. Jekyll), this not-sequel is certainly of interest.

A stock horror template is given some dimension via moody lighting and a pervasive sense of melancholy that seems to especially afflict the film’s murderous creature, Andros (Hugo Blanco, caked in crusty face makeup), a reanimated corpse who does the bidding of Dr. Jekyll (Marcelo Arroita-Jáuregui). That bidding is mostly limited to strangling prostitutes and cabaret performers.

Meanwhile, Jekyll’s niece Melissa (Agnès Spaak) returns to the family castle, where she’s alternately puzzled and creeped out by her Aunt Inglud (Luisa Sala) and Uncle Jekyll. Melissa wants to know more about her family history, particularly her father who died when she was young, but there isn’t much information forthcoming.

Even at just 84 minutes long, Dr. Orloff’s Monster is relentlessly shaggy, luxuriating in lengthy nightclub scenes that are punctuated with brief bits of horror. The plot is mostly coherent, but that’s due more to its simplicity than any facility for visual storytelling. Franco seems to have no regard for spatial awareness, cutting haphazardly and mangling almost any sense of suspense. The murder scenes are miserably blocked.

That doesn’t mean Franco had no sense of visual style; it’s here in spades, from foggy graveyards to smoky clubs, often shot at unusual canted angles. Franco never had the polish or psychological depth of a Jacques Tourneur or Georges Franju, but Dr. Orloff’s Monster proved he could make a brand of atmospheric horror of his own.

Redemption/Kino’s Blu-ray presents Dr. Orloff’s Monster in a 1080p, 1.66:1 transfer that generally follows in the footsteps of their other releases of 1960s Franco films. The image is a little contrast-y, but is overall decently sharp and detailed. Tram lines, scuffs and scratches are all here, but nothing too egregious. Audio options are two DTS-HD Master Audio mono soundtracks, one in French and one in English. Both feature persistent low-level hiss, and the English dialogue is performed considerably more histrionically at points.

Extras include a typically studious audio commentary from Tim Lucas and 11 minutes of silent footage —almost exclusively of the nudie variety — that was excised from some cuts of the film. Theatrical trailers round out the disc.

Redemption / 1964 / Black and white / 1.66:1 / 84 min / $29.95

GeneralThe General (1926) and Three Ages (1923)
Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928) and College (1927)
Kino Lorber

Kino goes back to the Buster Keaton well with two new double-feature releases, sourced from 2K restorations by Lobster Films. Generally, these releases improve upon the previous Kino Blu-rays, but Region A Keaton fans may want to wait for the forthcoming releases from Cohen Media, who have restored some Keaton titles in 4K, and will be sourcing additional 4K restorations from Cineteca Bologna. (More info about that in this helpful NitrateVille thread.)

Undoubtedly, Kino wanted to get these new editions out there before they are likely to be superseded by the Cohen releases, but to their credit, they’ve made them relatively affordable ($29.95 for a two-disc Blu-ray set). With no firm release date yet for the Cohen Blu-rays, these refreshed releases could be worth a first-time purchase, though it probably doesn’t make much sense to upgrade from the old Kino Blu-rays until one gets a look at what Cohen has in store. (Eureka also has a Masters of Cinema Region B box set with The General, Sherlock Jr. and Steamboat Bill, Jr. coming sometime this year.)

Each set pairs a Keaton masterwork with a lesser title, releasing these films in different configurations than previously available. The General, Steamboat Bill, Jr. and College were all released as standalones, while Three Ages was paired with Sherlock Jr. (another masterpiece Kino no longer has the rights to).

The General isn’t just one of the greatest comedies ever made; it’s one of the best Civil War films, and his final independent silent feature Steamboat Bill, Jr. features Keaton’s most astonishing collection of risky stunts, culminating in an incredible cyclone sequence. While the stale D.W. Griffith parody of Three Ages wears out its welcome in a repetitive triptych, the trend-chasing College maintains a lot of slapstick charm despite its derivative nature.

SteamboatTransfer-wise, these new 2K restorations offer some noticeable upgrades, although I have mixed feelings about The General. Kino’s old disc presents the film with a slight sepia tint, and there are some hefty scratches and blotches throughout. The new disc features a much cleaner image and gets rid of the tint. But while the new transfer is unquestionably more stable, it’s also quite a bit darker, with heavy contrast obscuring some details. Some might prefer the transfer with less damage, but Kino’s old disc is often a more pleasurable viewing experience.

With the other three films, the new transfers are clear winners. Three Ages gets the biggest boost, and is now presented in 1080p instead of 1080i. While nitrate deterioration still plagues the film, the image is often much sharper, with clearer detail visible beneath the damage. The elements limit how good this film can look, but this a significant step up over the cloudy old transfer.

Steamboat Bill features a more stable image, with better fine detail and a tighter grain structure. Whites that looked slightly blown out on the old disc are better here. College is still afflicted with a fairly persistent softness, but damage has been mitigated greatly.

Audio and extras-wise, these discs are significantly different. At least one new score has been made available for each film, while all but College have at least one removed. The General loses some featurettes, but gains an audio commentary by historians Michael Schlesinger and Stan Taffel. Thankfully, the Orson Welles and Gloria Swanson introductions have been retained.

Three Ages adds a Keaton-starring Alka-Seltzer commercial and Candid Camera segment and retains the excerpt of Griffith’s Man’s Genesis (1912), while dropping two featurettes.

Steamboat Bill feels the deepest cut, losing a complete alternate version of the film comprised of different angles and takes, as well as vintage song recordings, a making-of featurette and a montage of Keaton stunts. Added are a Schlesinger/Taffel commentary track, an introduction from Lobster Films’ Serge Bromberg and a different Alka-Seltzer commercial.

College fares the best, losing no extras (a Rob Farr commentary track, locations featurette and 1966 industrial film The Scribe — Keaton’s final film role) and adding several more: a Bromberg intro, a Lillian Gish intro and 1928 collegiate two-reeler Run, Girl, Run, starring Carole Lombard.

The General and Three Ages: Kino Lorber / 1926, 1923 / Black and white / 1.33:1 / 79 + 64 min / $29.95
Steamboat Bill, Jr. and College: Kino Lorber / 1928, 1927 / Black and white / 1.33:1 / 69 + 65 min / $29.95

Girl AsleepGirl Asleep (2016)
Oscilloscope Laboratories

Many reviews of cloying/charming Australian film Girl Asleep have focused on its influences, and the Variety pull-quote on the Blu-ray’s back cover sums up most of those observations, mentioning Wes Anderson, Napoleon Dynamite and Where the Wild Things Are. OK, fine. The hermetically framed opening shot certainly recalls some of Anderson’s, though the film’s formalist touches tend to diminish. And yes, there are aggressively weird family members and costumed creatures in the woods, so sure, those other two are represented.

This can be a lazy way to review movies, but Girl Asleep invites it with its pastiche of other, more original ideas. Before it was a film, Girl Asleep was a stage production at Adelaide’s Windmill Theatre, and the company’s artistic director Rosemary Myers directs the film adaptation. Like a lot of fringe theater, there’s more emphasis on the “imaginative” than the dramaturgically sound. There are fun costumes, kitschy production design and a winking disco dance number, but does that add up to much of a movie?

When the film does work, it’s mostly due to its appealing performances, particularly from Bethany Whitmore as shy protagonist Greta and Harrison Feldman as the gawky, kindhearted Elliott, who befriends her when she moves to a new school in a new town. Elliott and Greta become fast friends, but she doesn’t have much luck in her other relationships, enduring torment from a trio of mean girls and disinterest from older sister Genevieve (Imogen Archer).

When her well-meaning but clueless parents (Amber McMahon and screenwriter Matthew Whittet) throw her a 15th birthday party, Greta is forced to come out of her shell, but it’s not long before she’s been plunged into an allegorical dreamscape where she must confront her worst fears. Regular teenage awkwardness and discomfort probably doesn’t warrant such heavy-handed metaphorical inquiry.

Girl Asleep comes to Blu-ray from Oscilloscope, whose 1080p, 1.33:1 transfer faithfully reproduces the golden-amber tones of the film’s late-1970s setting. The image is sharp, and fine detail is excellent. Brightly colored costumes, especially yellows and blues, pop, while detail remains strong in shadowy scenes. The 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack is crisp and dynamic.

The most enjoyable bonus feature is one unrelated to the film, except for having been packaged with Girl Asleep theatrically. Amy Nicholson’s documentary short Pickle (2016) details one couple’s indefatigable ability to care for a host of unusual pets, and the inevitable deaths that follow. Also included: a standard making-of doc, a separate interview with Myers that features some overlap, a promo video for Windmill Theatre Company and a trailer.

Oscilloscope Laboratories / 2016 / Color / 1.33:1 / 77 min / $32.99

RevengeRevenge of the Blood Beast (1966)
Raro Video

Gruesome occult horror and slapstick don’t really make for a logical pairing, but that doesn’t stop Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General) from trying to fuse the two in his feature debut Revenge of the Blood Beast, a tonal mishmash that mostly holds together thanks to Reeves’ steady directorial hand.

Barbara Steele is striking as always as Veronica, a woman honeymooning in Transylvania who becomes possessed by the spirit of an ancient witch after a car crash into the lake where she was drowned by the townspeople centuries ago. Unfortunately, this means Steele is largely absent for the majority of the film, replaced by a man in hideous hag makeup.

Her milquetoast husband Philip (Ian Ogilvy) must try to reverse the curse, aided by a descendant of Count von Helsing (John Karlsen, a perma-twinkle in his eye) who was previously just a bit of annoying local color as Philip and Veronica passed through town.

Revenge of the Blood Beast has everything you could want in a movie, provided your list consists only of leering, rapist hotel clerks (Mel Welles, playing the unsubtly named Groper), gags about Communists (there’s a visual hammer-and-sickle joked wedged into a brutal death scene) and car chases featuring bumbling cops (apparently shot by the second unit without Reeves’ knowledge or initial approval).

Still, even though the comedy (or attempts at it) never feels congruous with the mission to defeat a bulbous, bloodthirsty beast on a rampage, Revenge of the Blood Beast is an entertaining enough Euro-horror jaunt.

Raro’s 1080p, 2.35:1 transfer of Revenge of the Blood Beast is surprisingly strong, with stable color reproduction, healthy amounts of detail and a well-supported grain structure that isn’t afflicted with any obvious digital manipulation. Skin tones are natural, while colors like blood red and the yellow of von Helsing’s car are fairly vibrant. Audio is presented in a 2.0 DTS-HD Master Audio English soundtrack that seems to betray the weakness of the source due to its low volume and low-level hiss. Despite a claim on the packaging, there is no Italian soundtrack included.

The major extra is a 30-minute audio interview with Steele about her career that plays over still images and is interspersed with clips from the film.  An included booklet features an essay by Nocturno that explores Reeves’ career, tragically cut short by his overdose death at age 25.

Raro Video / 1966 / Color / 2.35:1 / 79 min / $29.95

Black GirlBlack Girl (1966)
Criterion Collection

Ousmane Sembène’s seminal Black Girl, his debut feature and a watershed work of art for African cinema, makes its way to Region A Blu-ray from Criterion. In 2015, the BFI released the film in a fantastic dual-format set (reviewed here), but Criterion has improved on it with its Blu-ray release, including a transfer sourced from the same World Cinema Project 4K restoration and adding a number of valuable new bonus features.

Excerpted from my previous review of the BFI’s disc:

Mbissine Thérèse Diop stars as Diouana, a young woman who takes a job working for a rich French couple (Anne-Marie Jelinek, Robert Fontaine), moving from her home in Dakar to the Mediterranean resort city of Antibes. Diouana anticipates a life of caring for the couple’s children and exploring a brand new country. Instead, she’s saddled with additional cooking and cleaning responsibilities and her sightseeing is limited to the car ride from the boat to the house when she first arrives. As Diouana says in one of her flat, resigned voiceovers, France is merely a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom to her.

Sembène’s politically charged film runs on an engine of focused righteous anger, its characters emblematic of a poisonous symbiosis. The couple’s fundamental misunderstanding of Diouana’s humanity is ugly and patronizing — to them, she’s simply a task-oriented automaton or an exotic trinket to show off to “less-cultured” friends. Diouana is a woman isolated, stripped of any agency and relegated to an even more inconsequential position than her life back in Senegal, shown through flashbacks.

Her alienation is strikingly realized by Sembène, who frames her pinned against lily-white backgrounds. The couple’s living spaces are notably unadorned; one wall is home only to a tribal mask given to them as a gift from Diouana when they first met. Soon, it will become an object of struggle as she engages in a futile fight to reclaim at least a portion of her identity, cultural, personal or otherwise.

Criterion’s 1080p, 1.37:1 transfer is the equal of the BFI’s, displaying the same excellent levels of fine detail, clarity and grayscale separation, while the uncompressed mono French audio is clean and unaffected by damage.

Criterion’s disc emerges as the winner on the supplement front, particularly thanks to two new scholarly interviews packed with a wealth of information.

Samba Gadjigo puts Sembène’s work into the context of African cinema at the time, which was basically nonexistent outside of French-controlled film productions. There was no film infrastructure, and Gadjigo details how Sembène worked from scratch to create his early films that challenged dominant paradigms.

Manthia Diawara contributes a deep analysis of Black Girl, discussing Sembène’s approach to enlightening his viewership. Diawara argues that Sembène took a fundamentally intersectional approach, understanding that gender, race and class conventions would all have to be challenged to bring about change.

Also exclusive to Criterion’s release: a newly filmed interview with star Diop, who explains her serendipitous entry into the movies, and a brief excerpt of a 1966 interview with Sembène about his surprise Prix Jean Vigo win for Black Girl.

Overlapping with the BFI disc: Sembène’s debut short, Borom Sarret (1963), also sporting a new 4K restoration; a brief alternate color sequence that Sembène dropped (presented here as a standalone, not integrated into the film like on the BFI disc); and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and Diawara’s 1994 documentary Sembène: The Making of African Cinema.

A trailer and an insert with an essay by critic Ashley Clark are also included.

Criterion Collection / 1966 / Black and white / 1.37:1 / 59 min / $39.95

 

Dusty Somers is a Seattle-based writer and editor who splits his critical ambitions between writing Blu-ray & DVD reviews and theater criticism. He’s a member of the Online Film Critics Society and Seattle Theater Writers.