SunriseSunrise (Fox, Blu-ray) – A deliriously romantic fable on a magnificent scale, F.W. Murnau’s 1927 Sunrise is a story of reconciliation and renewal and a Utopian vision of paradise lost and regained. A strapping young farmer (George O’Brien) under the spell of a sexy vamp from the city plots to kill his innocent Madonna of a wife (Janet Gaynor), but just when it seems to be playing out An American Tragedy, fate sends them on a second courtship through the bright lights and busy culture of the big city. It’s subtitled “a song of two humans” and it plays as much like verse as it does a story.

German master Murnau was lured to America by William Fox to give his studio class (Fox had money but he wanted was a masterpiece) and the director let his imagination loose upon the machinery of Hollywood to create the most beautiful piece of cinematic poetry to come out of America. There may be no more beautiful shot in all of cinema than the creeping prowl through the swamp, the camera pushing through leaves and branches and breaking through the mist, subtly shifting perspective without ever breaking it’s measured pace or floating gaze. His big city is like Metropolis for the jazz age, but invested with a benevolence that American filmmakers save for their small town portraits, and his storytelling is as unabashedly romantic as it is sophisticated. Sunrise reminds us of the silent cinema dream worlds lost in the new realism and visual literalness of the sound revolution. Almost a century of sound filmmaking has never equaled its emotional power or the cinematic purity. If there is a single essential silent classic, this is it.

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Though produced as a silent film, it was released at the dawn of the sound era with a synchronized score by Hugo Reisenfeld in the U.S. and the disc features the original Reisenfeld soundtrack (with sound effects but no dialogue) and a subsequent score composed and conducted by Timothy Brock for the home video release. The disc presents two editions of the film, the original American release and a European silent version discovered a decade ago, created from alternate takes and sometimes different shots (a common practice in the silent era). The European print has a stronger image while the American version, mastered from an archival print (the negative was lost in a studio fire decades ago), is as close to the director’s definitive version we’ll find. Both are mastered in HD and debut on Blu-ray in the U.S. (many American collectors picked a British Blu-ray release few years ago; this is produced from the same digital masters).

Also features commentary by respected ASC cinematographer and cinematography historian John Bailey, outtakes with commentary by Bailey, the original scenario by Carl Mayer with annotations by F.W. Murnau, the original screenplay, and note on the restoration.

CatPeopleBRCover72dpiCat People: Collector’s Edition (Shout Factory, Blu-ray) is not the 1942 classic of shadow and suggestion and Freudian sexuality clawing its way out of a virginal young woman but the 1982 remake directed by Paul Schrader. Nastassja Kinski, in her second American film, is entrancing as Irena, who arrives in New Orleans to be reunited with her brother Paul (Malcolm McDowell) only to discover that she belongs to a race of shapeshifters who turn into leopards when they have sex. Unless, of course, they keep it in the family.

Calling this a remake isn’t really accurate, I confess, even with the homages to the original film. Alan Ormsby’s screenplay doesn’t just update the story, it reimagines it with a backstory mythology that is both more literal and more dreamlike than the original and Schrader paints it with a palette of old world atmosphere and modern, unreal colors. Kinski and McDowell both, in their own ways, evoke a feline quality in their performances, McDowell in his rolling, swaggering walk and Kinski in her eyes and sleek Siamese presence. Tom Burman’s transformation effects are sometimes garish and often beautiful but the live cats (actually cougars dyed black) bring a primal charge to the film. It’s gorgeous and kinky and very Schrader, even though he didn’t write it (though he did contribute the film’s ending), slipping back and forth between Schrader’s visual elegance and the slashes of sex and violence of its Jungian themes turned into horror movie spectacle. And electronic drum beat aside, Giorgio Moroder’s electronic score is moody and lovely.

The disc is well mastered—the color seeps into every image and becomes more saturated as the film goes on—and features seven new interviews with the cast (a fidgety Nastassja Kinski, Malcolm McDowell, John Heard, Annette O’Toole, Lynn Lowry), composer Moroder, and director Schrader. He gives the most articulate and interesting interview in his nine minutes, discussing the origins of the project, the style, and the themes that attracted him: “What I though was cool about the film, the admixture of sex and fear, was not something that seemed to excite the American audiences in the way that it excited me.”

ManinDarkMan in the Dark (1953) (Twilight Time, Blu-ray+Blu-ray 3D) is quite the rarity. It was the first 3-D film to be released by a major studio (it beat House of Wax to theaters by mere days!), and the only genuine film noir shot in the format. It’s nifty little crime film in the shadows, with Edmond O’Brien as a heist mastermind who loses his memory (and the violent side of his nature) after experimental brain surgery and gets kidnapped by his old gang determined to find the hidden loot. O’Brien does a nice job of playing a simple, ordinary guy who is confronted with the evidence of his past, forgotten life as a criminal, and he effectively lets us see his sense of self crumble under the knowledge and the beatings doled out by the gang. Director Lew Landers was an old hand at making the most of poverty row budgets and he revels in the increased resources of this film, especially the amusement midway and the finale in the wooden beam latticework holding up the rollercoaster. This is minor noir at best, but it’s the real thing nonetheless, with the shadow of fate always about to swallow O’Brien whole. The disc offers both standard and 3D editions of the film, but you need a full HD 3D TV, compatible 3D glasses, and a Blu-ray 3D player for the latter.

Also from Twilight Time is Julie Taymor’s Titus (Twilight Time, Blu-Ray) with Anthony Hopkins and a slate of supplements that includes three commentary tracks and three featurettes. Both discs are limited to 3000 copies and include the Twilight Time trademark isolated score track (with Frank Cordell’s music) and a booklet with notes on the film by film historian Julie Kirgo. Available exclusively from Screen Archives and the TCM Shop.

See my reviews of the Twilight Time releases Zulu and Khartoum at Cinephiled here.

LaVieBohemeLa Vie de Bohème (Criterion, Blu-ray+DVD Dual Format) – Aki Kaurismäki’s 1992 take on Henri Murger’s novel “Scenes from la Vie de Bohème” is a far cry from the more grandly melodramatic versions seen in the opera La Boheme and the various adaptations. Kaurismäki is far more laid back in his meandering adaptation, which updates the film to contemporary Paris, and directs the story of trio of starving artists (Kaurismäki regulars Matti Pellonpää and Karl Väänänen and French actor André Wilms, future star of Le Havre) with his usual hangdog deadpan and wry sense of humor. The women (including the doomed Mimi, who takes center stage in most remakes) are pretty much left to the margins of their lives, which play out as a practically inevitable cycle of failure and self-sabotage. Shot in black and white, this is a dreary, eternally wintry Paris but the friendship of the men warms the film. Jean-Pierre Leaud, the one-time poster boy for the nouvelle vague, plays an eccentric art collector and American director Sam Fuller is a publisher, both small but memorable roles. Features the hour-long documentary “Where is Musette?” and a new interview with actor André Wilms plus a booklet with an essay by Luc Sante.

Also new from Criterion but unseen by me: Michael Mann’s Thief (Criterion, Blu-ray+DVD Dual Format), which Bilge Ebiri pinpoints as the forerunner of the modern crime thriller (and finally gets a disc edition worthy of its stunning visuals) and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Criterion, Blu-ray+DVD Dual Format), which features both the restored 159-minute version and a reconstruction of the 197-minute roadshow edition along with hours of supplements.

NostalghiaNostalghia (Kino, Blu-ray, DVD), Andrei Tarkovsky’s most hauntingly beautiful film, is a melancholy meditation on exile with Oleg Yankovsky as a Russian poet in Italy visited by memories of his homeland and of his wife and children. Tarkovsky played out this cinematic exile just a year before his own defection from Russia. His achingly slow style and subtle, subdued images play better on the big screen than the small, where detail and scale get lost, but his emotional investment comes across no matter what the medium. A moody, contemplative film, remastered from an archival print with visible scuffs and wear on an otherwise excellent image. Italian and Russian with English subtitles.

PostmanRingsThe Postman Always Rings Twice (Warner, Blu-ray), Bob Rafelson’s 1981 remake of the film noir classic, takes a grubbier, more faithful approach to adapting the James Cain novel (scripted by David Mamet), with Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange playing down the Hollywood glamor that John Garfield and Lana Turner brought to the 1946 version and playing up the animal attraction. The Blu-ray debut marks the first time the film has been released to home video in its correct aspect ratio and reunited director Rafelson, screenwriter Mamet, and star Nicholson for a new commentary track.

InHeatNightIn the Heat of the Night (Fox, Blu-ray) is one of Sidney Poitier’s most famous roles: Virgil Tibbs, the African-American police detective from Philadelphia who reluctantly teams up with a racist police chief (Rod Steiger) to solve a murder in the Deep South. The 1967 Oscar winner for Best Picture is famous for foregrounding racial tensions, an element that hasn’t dated too well, but it’s still a compelling murder mystery and Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger are a formidable match, even through Steiger’s drawling excess (which won him the Oscar for Best Actor). It also won Oscars for editing, sound, and Stirling Silliphant’s adapted screenplay. Norman Jewison directs and Warren Oates and Lee Grant co-star in memorable roles. The Blu-ray debut carries the supplements of the anniversary DVD over: commentary by director Norman Jewison, cinematographer Haskell Wexler, and actors Rod Steiger and Lee Grant and three featurettes.

yearofcannibalsAlso debuting from Fox is A Chorus Line (Fox, Blu-ray), the 1985 adaptation of the legendary Broadway musical directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Michael Douglas as the brilliant but demanding choreographer casting his new show from the dancing hopefuls who have made it to the final audition. No supplements.

The Year of the Cannibals (Raro, Blu-ray, DVD), starring Pierre Clémenti, Britt Ekland and Tomas Milian, is Liliana Cavani’s 1970 reinterpretation of Sophocles’ Antigone as a political commentary on the unrest in late-1960s Italy. Features a 26-minute interview with director Liliana Cavani and a booklet with notes on the film.

More releases:

DMDBRCover72dpiDie, Monster, Die (Shout Factory, Blu-ray)
Raise the Titanic (Shout Factory, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Buffalo 66: 15th Anniversary Edition (Lionsgate, Blu-ray)
Blind Date (Image, Blu-ray)
The Doors R-Evolution (Eagle Rock, Blu-ray, DVD)
Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (RLJ/Image, Blu-ray)
Marvel Knights: Wolverine vs. Sabertooth (Shout Factory, DVD)

Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD