Appassionata
(1974/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/The
Brave One (1956/RKO/VCI
Blu-ray)/In The French
Style
(1963/Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/Rich
Kids (1979/United
Artists/MGM/Olive Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B/B/B Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+ Extras: C/C/B-/D Films: C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Appassionata
and In
The French Style
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time,
are limited to only 3,000 copies and can be ordered while supplies
last from the links below.
Here
are four dramas that deal with children, young adults, adults and
those who don't quite become adults for all kinds of reasons, even if
they are all limited and flawed works....
Gian
Luigi Calderone's Appassionata
(1974) is
a still-controversial film about a dentist (Gabriele Ferzetti from On
Her Majesty's Secret Service
and L'Avventura)
who is seeing his daughter's female friend (Ornella Muti) for dental
work, when she starts to sexually seduce him. He resists at first,
but they give in, beginning the tale of his slow obsession he should
not have. Though it is not quite Lolita,
we see his desire for her grow into unusual behavior as his already
sick wife continues to deteriorate. Ultimately, his daughter could
be affected, so what will he do (or not do) next?
This
could have easily drifted into outright exploitation and it is
graphic, i.e. Hollywood would never make this film and certainly like
this, but it is slow moving and a bit uneven. However, it is still a
more mature work than expected down to its ending and at 96 minutes,
could have been a bit shorter. I had not seen it in eons, so its is
nice to see it back in print, albeit limited. Definitely worth a
look if you can handle the mature content and have some patience.
Irving
Rapper's The
Brave One
(1956) is
one of the rare 'respectable' films produced by B-movie legends The
King Brothers (Gorgo),
but even more than the fact that this is one of the few widescreen
scope films (in color yet) that RKO ever released before they folded,
or that it was a hit or that it was meant to be a family film for
what the market was at that time, the film was written by Dalton
Trumbo when he was still blacklisted... and won the Best Original
Screenplay Academy Award that year. VCI issued this on DVD in the
early years of that format and now, they've come up with a new
Blu-ray to replace it nicely.
The
tale (with more whining and illicit appeal to pity than you might
think) of a young man named Leo (Michael Ray) saves a baby bull in a
terrible storm it barely survives, taking care of him, but spending
the whole film trying to keep him when all the adults want to take
him away. This culminates into a giant bullfighting event. Can Leo
save him?
By
today's standards, this is actually too violent for its intended age
group, but is still historically important and all serious film fans
should see it at least once. This new Blu-ray is the way to go.
Robert
Parrish's In
The French Style
(1963) is
a strangely failed film about a young woman (Jean Seberg) who wants
to be a serious painter, but things are not picking up as she'd like.
She starts to fall for one of the guys (Philippe Forquet) she's
painting (the one portrait we see makes him look like he's ready to
play Speed Racer!) and they start to hanging out. However, the mixed
results are followed by negative encounters with other men, including
her own father and the 105 minutes lands up covering several years of
her life.
The
film was actually a hit in its time since Seberg was still an item
thanks to her breakthrough work in Godard's Breathless (1959),
but the film has a mix of flat, failed and surreal moments that you
either follow its plastic, unrealistic ways or be stunned at the bad
choices that keep coming up. This one's worth a look to see how odd
it gets.
A
sequel was made with a different cast at a different studio called
The
Happy Ending,
which Twilight Time also recently issued. You can read more about it
at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/14026/From+The+Terrace+(1960/Fox)/The+Happy+Endin
Robert
M. Young's Rich
Kids
(1979) was
co-produced by Robert Altman at the peak of his artistic credibility
and powers, getting films made you cold barely get made then and
could very likely not get made now. Altman's studio was the original
Lion's Gate and his name meant something mature, ironic and
challenging would be made. This one is about some young people (the
film opens with them) in the park, but from money. Jeremy Levy and
Trini Alvarado are young adults becoming interested in each other,
but it is unfortunately in the midst of adults and parents who are
divorced, dysfunctional, toxic or ready to disco.
The
film says that these adults of the counterculture era might not be
ready to be adults (hat would explain the Presidential election the
following year) and though we get more than a few superfluous scenes
that could have been cut or condensed, yet other scenes work nicely,
are funny and are just honest in a pleasant way that is an Altman
production at its best. Shot on location in New York, John Lithgow,
David Selby, Paul Dooley, Roberta Maxwell, Kathryn Walker, Irene
Worth, Olympia Dukakis and Terry Kiser play the adults. Despite its
issues, definitely worth a look.
These
Blu-rays all look really good, though the 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High
Definition image on Appassionata
has small flaws and detail issues throughout, but was originally
issued in dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor 35mm prints and you
can often see how good that color must have been. The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Brave
also has some issues with slight color inconsistency, but fares a bit
better. Shot in CinemaScope, it too was issued in 35mm dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor prints and you can see how good that color
looks in many shots throughout. A few shots look a little waxy, but
otherwise, this far outperforms VCI's old DVD of the film.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfer on French
can show the age of the materials used a little bit, but there are
also some great shots throughout that will impress, including
location shooting.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Kids
can show the age of the materials used from the thick grain and minor
print flaws, but when the color is at its best, this is a
presentation with its share of high quality visual surprises.
As
for sound, all the films here are theatrical mono releases except
Brave,
which in its best prints offered 4-track magnetic sound with
traveling dialogue and sound effects, presented here in a lossless
PCM 5.1 upgrade that shows off the music score, but shows the
agedness of the rest of the original audio. That quality split shows
up all the time in such films into the 1980s, but the disparity is
enough that the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on
French
is able to compete sonically overall, but the DTS-HD MA (Master
Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on Appassionata
and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix on Kids
are weaker and older, even a little compressed. In both cases, we
expect it is from how those films were recorded.
There
are sadly no extras on Kids,
but extras on Appassionata
and French
include more nicely illustrated booklets on each
film including informative text and another excellent set of
ever-underrated essay by the great film scholar Julie Kirgo and
Isolated Music Score tracks in both cases. French also adds a great
feature length audio commentary track by Kirgo and fellow film
scholars Lem Dobbs & Nick Redman, plus an Original Theatrical
Trailer. Brave
has a trailer, as well as the music
of Victor Young isolated as an extra, but NOT as a track you can
watch with the film.
To
order the Appassionata
and In
The French Style
limited edition Blu-rays, buy them and other great exclusives while
supplies last at these links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo