This week, we begin in Rome: La Dolce Vita (5 stars) Not rated, 174 minutes.
The Criterion Collection has digitally restored Federico Fellini’s 1960 gem for its Blu-ray release.
Marcello Mastroianni stars as Marcello Rubini, a Rome gossip columnist who journeys through the city for his work, meeting some of cinema’s most memorable characters. The lasting effects of his odyssey could be seen in Italy’s Oscar winning Best Foreign Language film, The Great Beauty.
Fellini cynically depicted a fame- and culturally obsessed society easily recognizable today. In an accompanying essay, film critic Gary Giddins describes Rubini’s wandering as a collection of seven stories told in 50 scenes, involving a “nighttime escapade and a vanquishing dawn.” Giddins asks, “Has anyone ever equaled Mastroianni in expressing the muddle of sadism, impotence and loss of affect born in the revelation of utter self-loathing?”
No.
DVD extras: interviews with film scholars David Forgacs (15 minutes) and Antonello Sarno (16 minutes) and director Lina Wertmuller (7 minutes); a 30-minute segment with maestro Fellini; and a 47-minute, audio-only interview with Mastroianni. Plus: the 10-minute analytical featurette “Eye of the Beholder,” and Giddins’ accompanying pamphlet with essay.
*
Venus in Fur (3 1/2 stars) Roman Polanski directed and co-wrote this clever two-person film based on the stage play of co-screenwriter David Ives.
Mathieu Amalric plays Thomas, a stage director and adapter of a 19th-century erotic (that is, pornographic) German novel. At the end of audition day, Vanda (Emmanuelle Seigner, a.k.a. Mrs. Polanski) uproariously appears hours late. Loud, crass and scatter-brained, she browbeats Thomas into letting her perform.
When the exhausted director relents, Vanda transforms herself. First, she changes into period costumes. She then becomes an accomplished performer, giving fresh, subdued, clear line interpretations that astound Thomas.
They continue for the film’s remainder as she reverses the roles and domineers Thomas. This transformation gives rise to an examination of changing sexual mores. Funny, surprising and inventive.
Not rated, 96 minutes.
DVD extras: 12 minutes of interviews with Polanski, Amalric and Seigner.
*
The Lusty Men (3 1/2 stars) The Warner Archive Collection releases noted director Nicholas Ray’s rodeo Western The Lusty Men.
A feeling of longing, even despair, runs through many of Ray’s films. Here, Ray channels that emptiness through a tough, laconic Robert Mitchum as Jeff McCloud, a broken-down, recently retired rodeo rider. He lands a job on a Big Springs ranch and quickly becomes mentor to Wes Merritt (Arthur Kennedy).
The younger man wants to leave ranching and join the rodeo circuit, a dangerous pursuit condemned by his wife, Louise (Susan Hayward). The three eventually go on the road together, which of course leads to trouble. The ongoing drama drips with its fatal determinism. Co-written by former Dallas Morning News staffer Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?)
Released in 1952, 113 minutes.
*
America: Imagine the World Without Her (2 stars) This theatrical release suffers from spotty production values to complement its relentlessly trumpeted single theme of American exceptionalism.
Naturally, the repetition’s reception may depend on individual viewpoints. The docu-drama clumsily re-enacts historical scenes, with embarrassing portrayals of various historical figures. Several sympathetic interview subjects include Ted Cruz, Niall Ferguson and others. Opposite viewpoints receive either brief dismissals or ridicule. The film’s slanted approach might have been better served with added technical and narrative attention.
Rated PG-13, 105 minutes.
DVD extras: 34 minutes of extended interviews and three extended scenes.
*
Animaniacs: Wakko’s Wish In this feature-length animated film, Yakko, Wakko and their sister Dot conspire against evil Baron Von Plotz. When Dot falls sick, they discover a magic star and make a wish for Dot’s recovery. But for the wish to come true, Wakko must touch the star, bringing on their buddies Pinky and the Brain, Slappy and Skippy Squirrel, Mindy, Buttons and others from the Animaniacs roster while performing 15 songs.
Not rated, 81 minutes.
*
Finally, from this week’s TV arrivals:
Silent Witness: Season 1 and Season 17 BBC brings to DVD and Blu-ray one of its most popular and most enduring series, one that influenced the prolific American CSI series.
In the first season in 1996, Amanda Burton starred as Dr. Samantha Ryan. She joins her team of forensic pathologists and scientists in Cambridge to uncover the hidden details in the bodies found in the season’s eight episodes.
Every episode contains a fully formed drama and mystery. Burton left in 2004 to be replaced by Emilia Fox as Dr. Nikki Alexander, who’s in the 10 episodes of Season 17. Both strong-willed pathologists suffer contentious relations with their meddling superiors.
The series also provides full portraits of Ryan’s and Alexander’s personal lives. This release of first and last seasons accentuates changing investigative methods: pagers and fingerprints give way to texts and DNA analyses, and local crimes to national terrorism.
In addition to releasing these two seasons, the BBC plans to release additional seasons in the future.
Season 1: 360 minutes on two discs. Season 17: 512 minutes on three discs.
*
The Honorable Woman Timing could not have been better for this recent eight-part BBC miniseries.
Maggie Gyllenhaal stars as newly knighted Nessa Stein, an English native who has Israeli citizenship because of her heritage. She and her brother, Ephra (Andrew Buchan), inherited their father’s immense wealth from arms manufacturing when he was assassinated in front of them as children.
She matures into a philanthropist intent on improving Israeli-Palestinian relations. When a business associate who has a contract with her dies, intelligence agencies from Israel, England and the U.S. converge.
The season rapidly unfolds with multiple assassinations, kidnapping, Israeli vs. Palestinian intrigues, and a fight for intelligence by Britain’s MI6, headed by Sir Hugh Hayden-Hoyle (Stephen Rea). Superb actors Janet McTeer and Lindsay Duncan also appear.
Not rated, 480 minutes.
DVD extras: a 16-minute “behind-the-scenes” featurette.
*
Mad Men: The Final Season, Part 1 The fascinating exploits of the workforce at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce begin to wind down in these first seven episodes of the last season.
Don Draper (Jon Hamm), Roger Sterling (John Slattery), Peter Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), Joan Harris (Christina Hendricks) and others fight through the 1960s, a decade devoted to paying for the previous era of rampant alcohol, pervasive sexism and lax work ethics.
During the first half of the final season, Don travels to California to see his liberated wife, Megan (Jessica Pare). But he bristles in the office when he must work under Peggy (Elisabeth Moss). Responsibilities and people change, none more than the major character who dies before this part of the season ends.
Not rated, 336 minutes.
DVD extras: commentary for every episode; a two-part featurette on “The Trial of the Chicago Eight,” which clocks in at 45 minutes; a 24-minute, two-part featurette on “Gay Rights”; and the eight-minute “making of” featurette “The Best Things in Life Are Free.”
*
Also available Tuesday on DVD: Canopy, King’s Faith, Running From Crazy, The Scribbler, Sex Tape and Snowpiercer.
