On Blu-ray - David Hare looks at CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (Mike Nichols, USA, 1971) and THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, USA, 1953)

 

Two Indicators and a Criterion

Let’s start with Carnal Knowledge. This is a fabulous, visually flawless delivery of an early 70s Panavision/Technicolor “serious” American post MPAA “adult” feature from Mike Nichols, shot for greater arthouse cred by the great Giuseppe Rotunno. I bought the Indicator edition not only because it beat the Criterion by two weeks but because I think Indicator’s extras have the edge. I gather the encode itself which was done by Dave McKenzie/FIM is also the basis for the Criterion. 

Having said all that I still can’t fathom the mountains of cinephilic dedication given to a movie about an unrepentantly toxic man, his trippy, passive buddy and a string of women who don’t seem to mind these appalling men. All the players are great, especially the women, but Nichols never lets the sponge rise beyond Jules Feiffer’s sour, unedifying screenplay. Nichols would go on to much better things - Primary Colours and The Birdcage are unalloyed comedic commentaries on post 70s America, and both are very much enhanced by the contribution of Elaine May.

Which leads us to compare Indicator’s terrific Blu-ray edition of Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat from only a few years ago, and the new Criterion 4K UHD disc. The Indicator is so good as a 2K delivery I am really fighting to find reasons to call Criterion’s new 4K (from Sony) as “better.” But this is always the impossible crux of things. In Dolby Vision, slightly more than HDR, the image is slightly more detailed, but with it the lighting (by the great Charles Lang ex Paramount Noir) becomes revelatory. 

One of the things 4K can resolve and display is grain, and especially the way it disperses light. The new 4K is startling in the way it makes the depth and sheer lighting quality quasi-three dimensional. It certainly emphasises Lang’s decision to shoot every sequence except one in the studio where he and Charles Lang can control not only light and shade but the small, constant camera movements, mostly circular which seem to affirm a dialogue of chance fighting with fate. This is a definition of Lang of course from the very beginning to the very end, and I dips me lid to everyone else who’s called this Lang’s greatest American movie. Watching this again, the penultimate scene with Debbie and Banion had me in tears, as the two of them remained totally alone, and totally without any peace with the furies. What a masterpiece, and what staggeringly beautiful home video deliveries of this masterpiece.

On Blu-ray - David Hare is impressed by Criterion's new edition of MISHIMA: A LIFE IN FOUR CHAPTERS (Paul Schrader, USA

After the major disappointment with Criterion’s new Blu-ray of Midnight, it’s nice to get a really fine, blow-it-outta-the-water 4K UHD of Schrader’s terrific Mishima, complete with giant booklet and a folding box within the sinisterly faux-camp lurid cover.

The UHD is from a brand new 4K scan from Warner and encode from Criterion in-house which just goes to show how good they can be. The decision was made to stay with SDR 8 bit dynamic range rather than 10 bit which is both interesting and compelling. There’s so much visual artifice in the picture by way of extreme high contrast black based B&W and kaleidoscopic color which although wide ranging never pops beyond the intended pastel. 

All things considered this is a brilliant presentation. I rewatched the older Blu-ray before ordering this and I frankly wondered how much better a 4K could be. The answer is emphatically YES IT IS: for depth, texture, detail and sheer filmic consistency. Along with Arrow’s absolutely flawless 4K of American Gigolo these two titles are 4K catnip for fans. 

On Blu-ray - David Hare is not happy with the Criterion edition of MIDNIGHT (Mitchell Leisen, USA, 1939)

 A few screens from Criterion's new Blu-ray of Mitchell Leisen's Midnight.

I won't comment at length but there's no doubt this should have been served up as a fully fledged 4K UHD disc. The Blu-ray runs with a healthy bitrate of ca.40 kbps which is usually enough to give a good theatrical 2k standard to a 35mm 1.37 B&W movie transfer with plenty of grain and detail. But this just doesn't. The image manages to display good nitrate shimmer and sparkle (of highlights and wardrobe designs) and the dynamic range (SDR of course) gives nice jet blacks and a good wide light exposure.

But there's just no fucking grain. I don't know how they've done this but if it wasn't actually de-grained at some level pre-mastering I suspect Criterion have gone into their now notorious filtering, a process which makes it "easier" to deliver a 2K encode without straining the grading process. They are now notorious for this.

As it stands this is very, very disappointing Blu-ray gets only part of the way towards replicating the 4K master which was itself derived from a long "hidden"/aka mislabelled deposit entry at Library of Congress as a dupe pos which in fact turned out to be a nitrate fine grain. Hence the gorgeous step across from the original to 4K scan is only one step off a nitrate O-neg.

I can only assume Criterion figures the sheer dollar return on this would not be enough to justify doing even a bare bones SDR 4K. I just hope the rights are not once again restricted so that someone else, and more reliable for quality mastering like Indicator in the UK can do this justice.

On Criterion Collection Blu-ray - Rod Bishop welcomes the 4K restoration of WITHNAIL AND I (Bruce Robinson, 1987, UK)

They're selling hippie wigs in Woolworths, man. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.

There’s not much of a plot, just a couple of-out-of-work actors in London in 1969 who decide to take a holiday in Cumbria. There are no plot twists, no romance, and no action sequences either. 

But it does have a cracking screenplay from Bruce Robinson and superb, unforgettable performances from Richard E. Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths and Ralph Brown.

On the first day of shooting, Robinson stood on a chair and said ‘Hello, I’m Bruce Robinson, I’m directing this movie and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing so any help you can give me is gratefully received.’ 

He has also said film crews are, in fact, conspiratorial endeavours. 

I don't advise a haircut, man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald-headed men are uptight.

In The Loser Chronicles, Charles Epstein’s “compendium of world-class failures, misfits, fools…”, he writes:

“I have been futilely trying to get people to watch this movie since its release in 1987. That’s 36 years of stony indifference.  My friends and the people I tend to associate with generally respect my recommendations: books, movies, TV shows, YouTube videos, articles, restaurants…[but]…apart from my friend Paul (we’ve been quoting lines at each other for three-plus decades, and never fail to laugh ourselves into a respiratory condition even though we’ve long beaten them into the ground), not a single person I’ve recommended it to has, to my knowledge, watched it.  If any of you losers - yeah, I said it - are reading this, now’s your chance, it’s the last time I’ll mention it.

Here was a man with 3/4 of an inch of brain who'd taken a dislike to me. What had I done to offend him? I don't consciously offend big men like this. And this one has a definite imbalance of hormone in him. Get any more masculine than him and you'd have to live up a tree.

I called him a ponce. And now I'm calling you one. Ponce!

Jason Hill, a brewer in Cumbria, says “In my opinion, Withnail and I is the best film in the world, but unfortunately you can’t set a record for that…” So, eleven years ago, he made an audacious attempt to set a world record at an open-air screening of the cult classic. The Westmorland Gazette reported: “Eden Brewery, based near Penrith, will attempt to set a new record for the number of people simultaneously saying a film quotation. The brewery will attempt to get the audience to shout out the line ‘I demand to have some booze’ in unison… 

Withnail fans have descended on Sleddale Hall - the location used for Uncle Monty’s cottage Crow Crag in the film – annually since 2012. Jason Hill said he was relishing the chance to get one of his favourite films into the record books. 

Paul McGann, Richard E Grant

Speed, is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane... Time change. You lose, you gain... Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you got to get out, because it's crashing. And all at once those frozen hours, melt through the nervous system, and seep out the pores.

Unlike the otherwise exemplary A Complete Unknown, this film is far more honest about the drugs consumed in the late 1960s. Apart from the alcohol and weed, there’s speed, anti-depressants, and in desperation, lighter fluid and anti-freeze. There’s even an invented pill called Phenodihydrochloride Benzelex. “Street name The Embalmer”.

Richard E. Grant

The joint I'm about to roll requires a craftsman. It can utilise up to 12 skins. It is called a Camberwell Carrot…

Who says it’s a Camberwell carrot?

I do. I invented it and it looks like a carrot.

 I think we've been in here too long. I feel unusual.

We are indeed, drifting into the arena of the unwell...

Wikipedia: “There is a drinking game associated with the film.  The game consists of keeping up, drink for drink, with each alcoholic substance consumed by Withnail over the course of the film. All told, Withnail is shown drinking roughly 9¹⁄₂ glasses of red wine, one-half imperial pint (280 ml) of cider, one shot of lighter fluid (vinegar or overproof rum are common substitutes), 2¹⁄₂ measures of gin, six glasses of sherry, thirteen drams of Scotch whisky and a ¹⁄₂ pint of ale.” 

Paul McGann

We went on holiday by mistake.

Actor Paul McGann, in his first film, has plenty of reminiscences. He used to have strangers suddenly whisper or yell lines from the film at him in the streets of various cities around the world. He still laughs that someone once chalked on the pavement outside his house - apropos of that drunken Irishman - the word "'ponce' with an arrow pointing at his house. “I kind of like that."

McGann has also observed: “You see these TV documentaries about the sixties and the way it ends. You get Janis Joplin dying, you get Jimi Hendrix dying, Jim Morrison is dead…It’s all over in that particular few months. And you know that 12 months later you’re gonna get the Carpenters…”

Flowers are essentially tarts. Prostitutes for the bees. There is, you'll agree, a certain 'je ne sais quoi' oh so very special about a firm, young carrot. 

And this 4K restoration? 

Who knew the red blob on Monty’s lapel was actually a beautifully rendered brooch of a radish?

Richard E Grant, Richard Griffiths 
.....and the red blob on Monty's lapel

On Criterion Blu-ray - Rod Bishop comes down hard on on PAT GARRETT & BILLY THE KID (Sam Peckinpah, USA, 1973)

Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

 

Back then - and 50 years later - it’s hard not wondering whether this Sam Peckinpah ‘revisionist’ western would been made if Two-Lane Blacktop hadn’t appeared two years earlier. 

Written by the same scriptwriter, Rudy Wurlitzer, it also boasts two famous musicians with little acting experience in the main cast, and it valiantly strives to recreate the languid ennui of Monty Hellman’s seminal road movie in similar wide-open landscapes.

In 1973, casting musicians in films was hardly a new idea. But after the counter-culture highs (ahem) – and lows - of Easy Rider (1969), a film that blew up the Hollywood business model; and after Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, and folk prince James Taylor - neither of whom had acted before - headed up Two-Lane Blacktop, why not give it a try?

Country singer Kris Kristofferson had acted before, in 1971’s Cisco Pike, but if he’d learnt anything from that outing, it certainly doesn’t show up here. His self-conscious performance as the notorious Billy The Kid is close to awful, and his technique with rifle and pistol so abysmal, it’s hard to believe he could hit anything, let alone all the cowboys hiding behind barns and rocky outcrops and riding their horses. 

Charismatic is a word often applied to Bob Dylan songs, but never to his screen performances. That’s because he simply can’t act. Even if he has been watching James Caan with his knife in El Dorado. Dylan’s role in Pat Garrett is so marginal and perfunctory, it’s clear he’s in the film because he is Bob Dylan - and you’re not.

Kristofferson's and Dylan’s lack of acting chops are compounded by the presence of seasoned professionals forced to work with them – James Coburn, Barry Sullivan, Jason Robards, Jack Elam, Harry Dean Stanton, Elisha Cook Jr and, best of all, Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado who use their limited screen time to give the film its only true moment of emotional clout.

Peckinpah’s last western was a dismal failure and it’s still hard to believe it came only four short years after his best, The Wild Bunch. 

Gene Siskel in The Chicago Tribune felt Pat Garrett “appears to have been made in emotional slow-motion, and the self-inflating lethargy and mugging of all concerned reduces the enterprise to an exercise in pretension.”

Criterion have now released a 4K Blu-ray package including no less than three versions of the film - The 50^th Anniversary edition (1 hour 57 mins); the Theatrical Release (1 hour 46 minutes) and Peckinpah’s Final Preview Cut (2 hours 2 mins).

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid was bad back then. It’s even worse now.

 

On Blu-ray - David Hare recommends McCABE & MRS MILLER (Robert Altman, USA, 1971) and PEEPING TOM (Michael Powell, UK,

 

The 4k encode of McCabe takes it to a new level of visual definition, and it’s a very big step up from the earlier Criterion Blu-ray. There’s no intrusion of Criterion’s occasional encoding screwups, like low pass filtering. This was basically scanned, graded and encoded by Warner/MTI so it looks flawless. And it remains a majestic Altman.

The new 4K disc of Peeping Tom from StudioCanal is so gorgeous it had me watching with my mouth hanging open for the duration. The new 4K was initiated by Film Foundation, and the BFI, with Silver Salt doing the scan in the UK and Cineric who did the grading in the States. It debuted in Brit cinemas last October.

The restoration work and the encode are simply gobsmacking. The Cineric team’s grading and color timing have totally captured the insane depth and lustre of 60s Eastman 35 stock, and the disc, especially in projection takes me back to a single 35mm screening at the old Kings Cross Gaiety circa 1968. I think the new grade actually deepens the color design in particular, which was so crucial to the overall production design by Arthur Lawson. Lawson had worked with Hein Heckroth on several earlier Powells including The Red Shoes. Lawson here is on his own, credited as Art Director and his design is just as crucial to the film’s dynamic, as is the great Otto Heller’s constantly lively, nervous and all-encompassing camera.. 

The disc is a perfect reason for upgrading your gear.

Coming Soon on Criterion Blu-ray - Marshall Deutelbaum alerts to the release of THE UNKNOWN (Todd Browning, USA, 1927)

One of the October Criterion releases will be Todd Browning’s The Unknown. 

It’s a great movie! It was thought for many years to be a lost film. All that time a print of it was at the Cinematheque Française in cans labelled “inconnu” (“unknown”). People thought it was an unidentified movie. 

Only when someone opened a can to look at the film was it discovered that it was actually the Lon Chaney film. Criterion have probably used the Eastman House print for the transfer. 

I haven’t seen the movie in more than 40 years and will be thrilled to see it again. Lon Chaney plays Alonzo the armless circus knife thrower who throws knives with his feet. Joan Crawford plays a woman who loves him because he can’t touch her. She hates to be touched. 

It’s wonderful.

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Editor's Note: The Unknown will be released in a three film package (cover below) along with two other Browning titles Freaks  (1932) and The Mystic (1925).

Good luck trying to to import Criterion to Australia but there are ways.