Allonsanfan
(1974/Radiance*)/Lon
Chaney: Before The Thousand Faces 1914 - 1916
Vol. 1
DVD + 1914
- 1917 Vol. 2
Blu-ray (Undercrank)/Murphy's
War
(1971/Paramount/Arrow/*both MVD Blu-ray)/Under
The Fig Trees
(2021/Film Movement DVD)/Youth
Spring
(2023 aka Youth
(Spring)/Icarus
DVD)
Picture:
B-/B- & C/B/C/C Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+/C Extras: B-/D/B/C-/C+
Films: B-/B- & C+/B-/C+/C+
Next
up are dramas and releases that cover over 100 years of cinema...
Paolo
& Vittorio Taviani's Allonsanfan
(1974) is one of Marcello Mastroianni's more obscure, political
films, though he was not very political himself, a big and by then,
legendary international cinema icon. Playing an anarchist trying to
retire and go into hiding, he is found finally being released from
prison and the next generation wants him to lead them to a big
victory. He's not too happy about this and has to deal with all
kinds of bad, bizarre treatments, not well to begin with.
His
family is one of means and he comes back to their big estate, but his
lady in waiting (Lea Massari as charlotte) shows up and one of his
own family betrays him too, resulting in a group of soldiers showing
up and opening fire on everyone! The couple escapes, but the madness
is far from over. You get more twists and turns, plus Stanko Molnar
(of Cimino's The
Sicilian
and a Lamberto Bava veteran, in his debut film) plays (the film
actually has one) the title character, whose name is also the first
two words of the French National Anthem, so the screenplay is filled
with all kinds of meaning, some of which will be more hidden from
U.S. audiences than those of Europe.
To
say anything else would be a spoiler, but this is rich, well done and
has the benefit of a music score by Ennio Morricone. Definitely
worth a good look. Very underrated and not as well known as it
should be.
Extras
include a Feature Length Audio Commentary Track by critic Michael
Brooke
Archival
interview with the Taviani brothers by critic Gideon Bachmann in
which they discuss filmmaking approaches, the role of the director,
the future of cinema and more (57 minutes)
Original
Theatrical Trailer
Newly
translated English subtitles
Reversible
sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
Limited
Edition
booklet featuring new writing by Italian Cinema expert Robert Lumley
and a newly translated contemporary interview with the Taviani
brothers
and
Single Pressing of 3,000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo
packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of
certificates and markings.
Lon
Chaney: Before The Thousand Faces 1914 - 1916
Vol. 1
(DVD) and 1914
- 1917 Vol. 2
(Blu-ray)
are two of hopefully several sets of nearly lost and still partly
lost short silent films featuring one of the most successful movie
actors of all time, so big that his name looms large beyond the early
years of filmmaking and well into the digital and ultra high
definition era. Eventually the star of some major, key feature film
classics, he helped then 'little sister' studio Universal become an
established studio decades they became the major studio they still
are today and is a permanent part of their legacy as both are of film
history.
Vol
1.
contains
A
Mother's Atonement
(1915, 20 minutes), If
My Country Should Call
(1915, 24 minutes) and The
Place Beyond The Wind
(1916,
39 minutes),
while Vol
2.
offers By
The Sun's Rays
(1914,
13 minutes),
The
Oubliette
(1914,
46 minutes),
The
Millionaire Paupers
(1915,
6 minutes),
Triumph
(1917,
33 minutes)
and The
Scarlet Car
(1917,
62 minutes).
Most are incomplete, usually with five reels produced and often with
the last two reels missing. The title cards explain how the films
survived and which parts survived, plus how they replaced the missing
parts for their respective releases.
Thus,
the shorter the film, the more of it that is missing. Of course, as
always in these cases, if more footage turns up, it can be added
later, but more than a little work was needed to even clean and fix
what we get here. Also, the longer the film and the more of it that
has survived, the better the condition in most of these cases.
Chaney
scholar Jon C. Mirsalis (who produced these sets) has created all the
new music for all the films here and even when the films show their
age with stereotypes, political incorrectness and dated visual
effects, they are all worth a look and to see how an actor hones his
craft and becomes a major star. Horror fans will have a special
interest in catching them all.
There
are sadly no extras.
Peter
Yates' Murphy's
War
(1971) has
a really gritty Peter O'Toole performance as the title character, the
lone survivor of a deadly attack by a Nazi German U-Boat on his
British Naval ship. Badly hurt, he soon recovers and as soon as he
is able to get a seaplane going, spots the U-Boat and plans revenge,
no matter the cost. More than just a revenge film or WWII tale, this
tale is also a character study of war, its characters and even world
politics.
He
has the help of a local (Philippe Noiret) to get the plane going and
then, the game of cat and mouse begins, even with the locals
potentially in danger one way or the other.
Yates
(Bullitt,
Suspect,
The
Hot Rock,
Friends
Of Eddie Coyle,
Breaking
Away)
delivers one of his better films, legendary writer Sterling
Silliphant (In
The Heat Of The Night,
Village
Of The Damned,
The
Killer Elite,
The
New Centurions,
Circle
Of Iron)
matches it with a smart screenplay and the result is an underrated
British production that should have been a bigger hit. Especially
after Lawrence
Of Arabia
and its revival since its landmark restoration, too many of O'Toole's
other films have been a little more forgotten than they should be.
Getting those films restored and reissued is key and Arrow and
company have done a solid job here. This is realistic, solid
filmmaking at its best and all serious film fans need to see it at
least once.
Besides
the fine locales, the supporting cast are a big plus with Sian
Phillips, Horst Janson, John Hallam and Ingo Mogendorf. The strong
set of producers just getting started include Alan Ladd Jr. (Outland,
The
Right Stuff)
and Michael Deeley (The
Man Who Fell To Earth,
The
Deer Hunter)
who later co-produced Blade
Runner
together and co-produced this film with Yates.
Extras
include Running
Out of War,
a new visual essay by film critic David Cairns
A
Great Adventure,
an archive interview with assistant director John Glen, a James Bond
film series veteran
Dougie,
Chic and Me,
an archive interview with focus puller Robin Vidgeon
One
Man Army,
an archive interview with film critic Sheldon Hall
Original
Theatrical Trailer
Image
Gallery
Reversible
sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter
Strain
and
an Illustrated Collector's Booklet featuring new writing by film
critic Philip Kemp.
And
now we get to our two imports. Erige
Sehiri's Under
The Fig Trees
(2021) takes place for an entire morning in Tunisia where a group of
mostly women harvest figs for not-enough-money under the watchful eye
of a supervisor of their employer. As they talk, the screenplay
becomes a character study of them, their lives, women in the country,
capitalism there and life. Can they have a better
future?
Well,
at least they have some self-awareness and this has some good
moments, but even at 1.5 hours, they are still trapped enough and the
film can only do so much. Well cast, you might like it simply
because it is something different and is metaphor and doppelganger
for the same thing going on in Mexico, Canada, third world countries
(now rebranded as 'emerging markets') and in a more widespread way in
the U.S. than we hear about. That is highly censored in the states.
So
a smart, sometimes gentle film worth seeing if you are really
interested, but others might find it slightly repetitive or even
showing things we have seen before, depending on the kinds of film
and TV you watch.
Trailers
are the only extras.
Wang
Bing's Youth
Spring
(2023 aka Youth
(Spring))
is also
an intimate film, though it runs over 3.5 hours and is a documentary
that sometimes plays like fiction. This time, the people are working
at a garment sewing factory in Zhili, many miles away from Shanghai
and as isolated as it sounds. In echoes of steel workers in the U.S.
prior to labor unions, they live in special dormitories when they are
not at work, so how much freedom do they have?
The
makers are trying to make all kinds of points and in long-term,
casual ways designed not to sell any of the implications short.
Sadly we have seen this in so many countries and some of the darker
aspects of this have been making a disturbingly unreported comeback
in the U.S. since the early 1980s and as unions have declined.
Ironically, the year this is issued is the year unions resurged in
the U.S., but at least they might continue. The people here will not
have such recourse unless they rise up and then get cut down. That
is why this is timely enough and will stay relevant for a very long
time, though it is a long watch, so that has its limits too. Better
than way than settling for anything less.
A
Q&A with director Bing from the New York Film Festival is the
only extra.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition
image on Allonsanfan
looks good, with some softness intended and other styling, though the
results can still show some detail and color limits, they are there
albeit limited. The color can be as beautiful as the locales and
even lush at times, all lensed by Director of Photography
Giuseppe Ruzzolini, whose credits include A
Fistful Of Dynamite,
Polanski's What?,
Pontecorvo's Burn!,
Short
Night Of Glass Dolls,
My
Name Is Nobody,
Pasolini's Porcile
and Teorema.
This is up there in how good it looks.
The original theatrical mono is well remastered for Italian PCM
2.0 Mono and I doubt this will ever sound any better.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white (and sometimes tinted) digital High
Definition image transfers on the Chaney
silent films can definitely show the age of the materials used, from
jumpy images to shockingly clean and clear ones, so the range is
something and that can also be seen on the low definition of the DVD,
which is passable and also available on Blu-ray. Even with the
roughness of more than a little footage and the like, the Blu-ray
still delivers better Video White, Video Black and gray scale. All
formats feature the new music scores in lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, which is also passable and the music good,
but it can be a little loud and slightly edgy, which is why I wish
these had lossless sound to do the music more justice.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on
Murphy's
War
sometimes
shows the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a
transfer to all previous releases of the film and even apparently
another Blu-ray edition. Shot on 35mm film in real anamorphic
Panavision by legendary Director of Photography Douglas Slocombe,
B.S.C., it makes exceptionally strong use of the widescreen, scope
frame. Slocombe is best known for his work on the Indiana Jones
Trilogy, Never
Say Never Again,
The
Lavender Hill Mob,
The
Blue Max,
Houston's Freud,
Scream
Of Fear,
Fearless
Vampire Killers,
the original Italian
Job,
The
Lion In Winter
and The
Servant.
This is up to his best work.
Color
is by Rank, which is a little darker than the likes of Technicolor,
Metrocolor, Movielab and other labs, but has a look that matches the
narrative better. A few decades later, the Bond film Licence
To Kill
would also be a Panavision shoot with Rank labwork and it is uncanny
how similar they look. The original theatrical monophonic sound is
remastered and presented here in PCM 1.0 Mono, which is good, but
would have been better and clearer in any lossless version of 2.0
Mono. Otherwise, a very nice restoration and upgrade.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Trees
is softer than I would have liked, but part of that looks like the
limits of the digital production and though the soundtrack is here in
both Arabic lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 and lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo mixes, they are on the weak side, so be careful of high
playback volumes and volume switching.
Finally,
the anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Spring
is also on the soft side and also is in part that way because of its
digital shoot, but the lossy multi-lingual Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
fares better sonically sounding much cleaner and clearer.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
