New Releases | Tom Russo
Pilgrim, they don't make 'em like this anymore
A wagon train is indeed a wagon train in the underappreciated John Wayne classic "The Big Trail" (1930), a film of sweeping frontier images captured by shooting in widescreen 70mm, a rarity for early talkies. Venerable director and D.W. Griffith protégé Raoul Walsh cast Wayne, then all of 22 or 23, as pioneer guide Breck Coleman, the Duke's first starring role after a string of mostly uncredited screen appearances. Leading hundreds of settlers westward through unforgiving desert expanses and on to the Pacific Northwest, Breck tangles with the caravan's nefarious Bluto-nian wagon master (Tyrone Power Sr.), and awkwardly woos a disdainful society gal (Marguerite Churchill). The performances are uneven; as film historian Richard Schickel aptly notes in commentary, the industry clearly was still figuring out how to "play" sound. But the real star here is the wide-open adventure, as Walsh at times makes an evolving creative form look supremely polished. Extraordinary as it is to watch a sequence in which Walsh's sprawling cast uses ropes to lower themselves - and all their wagons - down a canyon escarpment, it's even more so to learn that the director improvised the whole thing on location.
Fittingly, the DVD includes a featurette on Walsh, along with others on Wayne's early career and the so-called "Grandeur Process" used to shoot the film. A second disc includes the picture in full-frame format, which for decades after its initial release was the only way audiences could see it. "Big Trail" is also available as part of the four-film set "John Wayne: The Fox Westerns," which follows him through to the late-career entry "The Undefeated." A companion genre release, the three-disc "Fox Western Classics," is anchored by Gary Cooper's "Garden of Evil." (Fox, $19.98)
"THE LOVERS" (1958)
Director Louis Malle scandalized many with his sophomore feature, in which he cast his returning "Elevator to the Gallows" star Jeanne Moreau as a straying provincial wife. Moreau's involvement with a socialite polo player (Jose Luis de Villalonga) is mostly a vehicle for Malle's satirical commentary on the Parisian bourgeoisie, but her subsequent moonlight encounter with a standoffish intellectual (Jean-Marc Bory) is surprisingly physical. Clear-eyed as Malle is about Moreau's longings, he seems to wrestle with how to keep her sympathetic. At one moment, there's voice-over narration about how she has no regrets; at another, thoughts about her own young daughter compel her to take a look at herself, literally, in a mirror. Malle was ahead of his time in ways that were a challenge even for him to manage.
Extras: Archival interviews with Malle and Moreau; additional material with Malle is included on a companion reissue of his 1963 drama "The Fire Within." (Criterion, $29.95 each)
"INDIANA JONES: THE ADVENTURE COLLECTION" (1981-89)
The marketing angle for this reissue of the original trilogy is that it's the first time the films are being sold as DVD special editions, with supplemental materials tacked to each. (The series' initial release on DVD collected all the extras on a three-hour bonus disc.) Alas, what we get is a skimpy sampling of new featurettes revealing, say, what the "Raiders" legacy meant to new cast members. Some may instead want to check out the recently released third volume of "Young Indiana Jones" adventures, which includes a Ford cameo - his first appearance as an AARP-age Indy. (Paramount, $49.99; individual titles, $26.99; "Young Indy," $129.99)
"YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH" (2007)
Francis Coppola's first film in a decade is a fleetingly intriguing, more often ponderous tale of a septuagenarian linguist (Tim Roth) in late-'30s Eastern Europe who takes on a hazy sort of immortality after being struck by lightning. Coppola's metaphysical ramble feels like the work of a filmmaker who once lost himself in "Apocalypse Now" trippiness, and has simply aged. Which isn't exactly a selling point, but isn't the horror (the horror!) of "Jack," either.
Extras: Commentary by Coppola shedding at least a bit of light on just what he was thinking. (
Documentary DVD | Ty Burr
Revisiting rape, murder — and rays of hope
The 1937 Rape of Nanking was the occasion for a savagery so intense it beggars description. Numbers are somehow less daunting: 200,000 Chinese shot, bayoneted, bombed, and burned to death by Japanese troops; 20,000 women and girls raped. Bill Guttentag and Dan Sturman's "Nanking" is a thorough and sadly engrossing documentary that takes an unusual approach to the subject.
The filmmakers have assembled a stunning pool of historical footage and they get still-raw memories from aging survivors. "Nanking" also relies, however, on a wealth of material written by Europeans and Americans who remained in Nanking to offer what help they could to the Chinese, and these are read directly to the camera by actors, some well known, in period dress and hair. If it's jarring at first to see Woody Harrelson as surgeon Bob Wilson or Mariel Hemingway as Minnie Vautrin, dean of Ginling Women's College, the dissonance passes.
The reason for the star wattage is that "Nanking" has a story to tell, that of the handful of Westerners who established a 2-mile safety zone in the center of the city, saving an estimated quarter of a million lives in the process. This "Schindler's List"-style subnarrative is fascinating, and it allows a few rays of human hope to pierce the blackness, but it struggles for dominance with the larger historical canvas.
One former Japanese soldier recalls, "In Nanking, we had time on our hands and nothing to do. So we raped girls." The desperate attempts by Westerners to hide Chinese women from their attackers provide moments of drama: German businessman John Rabe (played by Jürgen Prochnow) brandishing his Nazi armband to chase away soldiers who'd broken into his house; Vautrin ordered to choose girls from the refugees on her campus to provide "comfort" and certain death, and devastated when 25 prostitutes volunteer.
Just as disturbing is the lack of interest from other governments. On his return to Germany, Rabe sent the footage he shot of Japanese atrocities to Hitler himself - and was promptly arrested by the Gestapo. Years later, the mayor of Nanking collected thousands of dollars from those Rabe had saved and delivered it in person. Vautrin returned to America in 1940 and, overwhelmed with a sense of failure, committed suicide a year later. There are no winners in this story, and that needs to be remembered, too.
Extras: director's commentary; trailer (ThinkFilm, $27.98, already available)
Indie DVD | Janice Page
Kids with autism get on with the show
Don't be afraid. As flip and gaudy as a title like "Autism: The Musical" might sound, this spare little movie is actually one of the most candid, down-to-earth, organically inspirational documentaries you'll ever see.
Directed by Tricia Regan ("Soldiers Pay"), the film follows the lives of five autistic children in Los Angeles, where an extraordinary woman named Elaine Hall is determined to feature them in an original stage production. Hall calls her mission the Miracle Project, and she brings to it skills honed professionally as an acting coach, writer, performer, and educator, and, personally, as the mother of an autistic boy.
Given that the setting is LA, you might expect Hollywood polish. But Hall and her cast seem as regular as they are special. And Regan, who also shot and co-produced the film, wisely delivers an unsentimental, simply photographed chronicle.
In mounting their stage production - an amazing undertaking for kids who frequently have issues with chaos and communication - the people in this movie fail about as often as they succeed. They prop each other up and they tear each other down. They laugh, cry, yell, hit, hug. The hug is clearly the hardest part for some.
As in "Mad Hot Ballroom" and other recent kid-focused, artistically inclined documentaries, what happens onstage is only a small fraction of the point in "Autism: The Musical." That's why it will have audiences cheering long before the final act.
Extras: deleted scenes; featurettes on organizations Autism Speaks and The Miracle Project (Docurama, $26.95)
ALSO THIS WEEK
"THE GREAT DEBATERS" (2007)
Denzel Washington stars in and directs a dramatically sturdy (if slightly telegraphed) account of the debate team at a Southern black college in the '30s, from their many struggles against racism to their big match with Harvard.
Extras: Production featurettes. (
"UNTRACEABLE" (2008)
Diane Lane is an FBI agent on the trail of a psycho killer who displays his victims trussed up on a website and ups their suffering as he gets more hits. Despite the twisted premise, not as cutting-edge as it fancies itself - and really, what would the payoff be anyway? Dicier torture porn? Ecch.
Extras: Commentary by director Gregory Hoblit ("Fracture"); production featurettes. (
"MAD MONEY" (2008)
Diane Keaton, Queen Latifah, and Katie Holmes cutely scheme to swipe currency that the government is literally throwing away. We've seen this sort of lark before - remember Jane Curtin's mad-money strip-down in "How to Beat the High Cost of Living"? - but still, it's a likable diversion.
Extras: Commentary by director (and "Thelma & Louise" writer) Callie Khouri. (Anchor Bay, $29.98)
REISSUES
"FRANK SINATRA: THE GOLDEN YEARS" (1955-65)
A decade after his death, Sinatra is remembered with a wave of rereleases, including many titles new to DVD, and sets spotlighting his early films, his pairings with Gene Kelly, and his escapades with the Rat Pack. The most notable, though, is this mid-career set, anchored by Sinatra's gritty, Oscar-nominated turn as a struggling heroin addict in "The Man With the Golden Arm." The lineup also includes "The Tender Trap," "Some Came Running," "Marriage on the Rocks," and "None But the Brave," his sole outing as director.
Extras: Retrospective featurettes. (Warner, $39.92; "Man With the Golden Arm" and other titles also available separately, $12.97 each)
FOREIGN
"LA CHINOISE" (1967)/"LE GAI SAVOIR" (1969)
Jean-Luc Godard ventures down the rabbit hole of political awakening in a pair of films from his "revolutionary" period. Radical or tiresome, depending on one's interest level.
Extras: Archival interviews on "Chinoise." (Koch Lorber, $29.98/$26.98)
TELEVISION
"SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE": THE COMPLETE THIRD SEASON (1977-78)
What a bunch of characters: Bill Murray as lounge lizard, John Belushi as screaming samurai, and Steve Martin as King Tut. Flashing back to it all will put you in such a good mood, you'll even forgive Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin for the Coneheads.
Extras: Belushi wardrobe test (and what a clothes horse he was, no?). (Universal, $69.98)
Capsules are written by Tom Russo and titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.
