It began with a tweet.
As only one of many Kurosawa fans excited by the Criterion Collection's announcement last year that they would soon release Ran on Blu-ray, I was shocked when @criterion, which I follow, suddenly sent out a tweet last April saying that the release had been scrapped. I can't remember if I was sipping liquid at the time or not, but rest assured that if I was, a legendary spit-take must have occurred.
At the time, I didn't know that the cancellation was due to the licensing of certain Criterion-released films being pulled by rights-owner StudioCanal, who are now putting these films out on Blu-ray under their own umbrella, distributed in the US by Lionsgate home video. The first wave of this collection is made up of three celebrated classics from three different countries: Akira Kurosawa's Ran, Jean-Luc Godard's Contempt and the original The Ladykillers.
Given the caliber of the films involved, fans of the Criterion Collection's respectful handling of classics are understandably wary of this release. To my pleasured surprise, these three releases are by no means slack and well worth the consideration.
• • •
StudioCanal retains the angle of aiming these films at customers who are big into cinema. In addition to the attractive packaging, each disc is accompanied by a small nice-looking booklet about twenty pages long, containing an essay by experts of the respective films. It's not essential and maybe not even the best analyses of these films, but it is a welcome accompaniment that shows some care.
Though Seven Samurai may be Kurosawa's most famous film, Ran is largely considered to be his masterpiece. An adaptation of King Lear set in feudal Japan with a semi-autobiographical bent, Kurosawa himself once said that Ran was an attempt to give the characters of King Lear a background Shakespeare never did. A gorgeous royal drama about the fall of a clan's empire, told in an epic scale that was, at the time, Japan's most expensive production. To call it a risky challenge was an understatement, given Kurosawa's state during its production. He was nearly blind when he directed the film, guided only by the storyboards he'd painted beforehand. He was also at a career low at the time, having just bankrupted his production company and survived a suicide attempt just a few years prior. To make matters worse, his wife of 40 years died during filming. It's an absolute wonder that the film was completed at all, let alone turned out so brilliantly.
Contempt, as the title hints, is Godard's criticism of the big-budget film production. It's not Godard's best, but it's easily, as often said, his most accessible film, with its satiric nature and clear-cut conflicts. Instead of just putting his New Wave theories in practice as he did in Breathless, Godard had Fritz Lang, playing himself in a fictional film production of Homer's Odyssey, expound upon them onscreen; acting as the marooned artist in an ocean of commercialism. It lampoons the director-producer relationship in how they often don't see the intended film eye-to-eye. Ironically, or perhaps consequently, Contempt itself was a victim of producer meddling, as Godard expert Colin MacCabe recounts in an introduction video included in the extras. They were unhappy that Godard shot an entire film with sex bomb Brigitte Bardot without a single nude scene and demanded one, which Godard begrudgingly obliged in his own way.
After that satiric thrill, a full-blown laugh can be had with The Ladykillers, a caper comedy from Britain's famous Ealing Studios—officially the world's oldest film studio—where American director Alexander Mackendrick got his start before moving to Hollywood shortly after completing The Ladykillers. The film is darkly funny, a wicked heist that has a master criminal and his gang of scummy robbers dealing with the eccentric landlady of their rented preparation space. You might remember, but hopefully not, that the film was remade somewhat poorly by the Coen Brothers in 2004 with Tom Hanks. Just keep in mind that the original is more bizarre and hilarious than its update.
If you haven't seen any of these movies, know that they're pretty great and definitely worth getting the releases for, especially when they're looking this good. I still have the Criterion DVD release of Ran; this is better than that and obviously the best-looking version we have to date, though the picture seems blown out and not treated as well as it could have been (just to not beat around the bush, I'll come out and say that Criterion probably would've done a better job). The Contempt transfer, on the other hand, looks great—its cheeky use of bright pastel colors popping in high-definition beautifully.
• • •
Something peculiar I noticed about Contempt and Ladykillers, but not Ran, is that when you start up the discs, you're immediately asked to choose your country from a list of twelve. I had assumed that it's for choosing the language of the menu screen. It's that, sure, but not just. Choosing "USA" brings up the Lionsgate logo and then the menu, but choosing any other country will give you the logo of whichever company is distributing the disc there, followed by a series of piracy warning screens. Because I have too much time on my hands, I curiously tried these out one by one. It's kind of fun to discover the different piracy warnings of different countries. I'm not sure why Ran is the odd one out.
I find it a little lame, though, that all three movies have the exact same menu screen. Same layout, same type of background, even the same menu music (I guess it's the official StudioCanal Blu-ray music now). The only thing different are the title, the color scheme and the little box in the middle of the screen playing clips from the movie. Brand uniformity is all well and good, but it's boring to collect.
• • •
The pressure was on for StudioCanal to supplement these films with the appropriate features, which they have the access to provide. Included are several older 40-60 minute documentaries. Contempt gets two (slightly redundant, maybe, although the two actually rarely intersect) while The Ladykillers gets a 50-minute one on Ealing Studios. That 2002 doc called Forever Ealing is narrated by Daniel-Day Lewis and interviews historians familiar with the studio, as well as famous Ealing fans such as Martin Scorsese.
Most impressive is the inclusion of the 1985 feature-length documentary AK on the Ran disc. Shot during the filming of Ran by La Jetee director Chris Marker, AK explores Kurosawa's personality rather than the film itself. More about Kurosawa's filmmaking techniques would be on the 40-minute feature "Akira Kurosawa: The Epic and the Intimate." Ran's extras is overall the disappointing one of the three releases. The only other two features are educational programs on samurai history. Insightful, but flat and barely have to do with the film. Compare it to Criterion's DVD release—which had an interview with director Sydney Lumet, Kurosawa regular Tatsuya Nakadai, a great commentary track by Stephen Price and best of all, a video slideshow of Kurosawa's hand-painted storyboards—and this release is just thoroughly dwarfed.
The Ladykillers fares better by being the only release with a commentary track, this one an incredibly knowledgeable one by film historian Phil Kemp. There's a video introduction by Terry Gilliam—not so much an introduction as it's just him talking about scenes from the film that he loves, which kind of reminds me of "The Chris Farley Show." To my observation, this footage is not new; but taken from Forever Ealing. There's also a series of interviews with Alan Scott, Ronald Harwood and Terence Davies. The back cover lists an interview with James Mangold too, but it's nowhere to be found on the disc, nor is it available on BD-Live. Oversight or printing error? Finally, there's "Cleaning up The Ladykillers," a video demonstrating the update in the Blu-ray's picture quality. It's good because it shows you the effort they put into it; it's annoying because it's pretty long and for some reason unskippable. Why force anyone to sit through the whole thing? Afraid they won't appreciate it otherwise?
The best release of the three is undoubtedly Contempt. Aside from the superior picture quality, the extras are the most significant, thanks to two fantastic archive footage. One is a 15-minute interview with Fritz Lang, while the other is carried over from the previous Criterion release: an hour-long table conversation between Lang and Godard. A must-see for fans of either. No commentary, as I said, but there's a weird "feature" with the audio tracks if you care for it. Contempt is a film that has its characters speaking four languages: English, French, Italian and German. When you select the French audio track, it will be the original with all four languages, but if you select English, you'll get the English dub from the American cut of the film, which is shorter. The thing is, since the disc has only one version of the picture, some sections are simply missing the audio. The opening of the film, for instance, omits the voiceover narration.
• • •
It's still not as cinephile-oriented as the Criterion DVD (which had a commentary track by film scholar Robert Stam and interview with cinematographer Raoul Coutard), but it comes close. Cautiously excited all the same, I was understandably skeptical about these StudioCanal Blu-rays, given my trust in the Criterion Collection brand. They probably would have done a better job, but that shouldn't be a strike against these, which are recommendable in their own right.
Here's a tip. While the 2-disc Criterion DVD editions of Contempt
