La Notte (Criterion, Blu-ray, DVD), the second film in Michelangelo Antonioni’s “trilogy of alienation” (it’s bracketed by L’Avventura, 1961, and L’Eclisse, 1962, both on Criterion DVD), stars Marcello Mastroianni as a celebrated novelist in Milan who has nothing left to say and Jeanne Moreau as his quietly unsettled wife who can’t seem to express all the disappointment building up behind her unfazed expression. Their marriage is inert at best, but they seem resigned to their roles, at least until a hospital visit to a friend dying of cancer (he has champagne delivered by the nurse for the visit – but of course) shakes up Moreau.
The film covers just under 24 hours of their lives together, not that they ever seem together even when they go out to a nightclub and, finally, an all-night party at the mansion of an industrialist who wants to hire Mastroianni to write his biography and run the public relations of his company. It all plays out in sculpted landscapes and creamy, austere modern spaces filled with reflective surfaces, but these rarified oases of affluence are no less alienating than the crush of traffic in downtown Milan. Mastroianni is so at home in the crowds that he just flows with the current like driftwood in a slow stream while Moreau, shaken by the visit to their terminal friend, wanders away from the crowds, braving the current in the streets or simply watching the rituals from afar. Just like Antonioni, who dispassionately records every nuance of the rituals and flirtations and seductions and watches Mastroianni’s fascination with an enigmatic beauty played by Monica Vitti, a jaded-before-her-time young brunette who seesaws between childish playfulness and world-weary commentary.
This was one of the films that inspired Pauline Kael’s “Come-Dressed-as-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Parties” essay, a portrait heavy on the Antoni-ennui of beautiful people narcotizing themselves on small talk, cocktails and sex. Antonioni strips Mastroianni of the winking charm he brings to even his most rakish characters and turns him into an empty shell (“I no longer have ideas, only memories,” he tosses off with a self-effacing half-grin) with a self-awareness that suggests a desperation to lose himself in meaningless activity. Moreau is more haunting and less passive, her eyes and signature frown carrying a disappointment she shrugs away with a flash of a smile. It’s a portrait of lives disconnected from feeling or passion, and a marriage that has slipped into mere routine, and you may find it mesmerizing and sophisticated or merely elegantly-sculpted tedium amidst the idle rich and empty intelligentsia. I’m not an Antonioni fan – give me the strangled yearnings and corrupted societies of Visconti any day – and I find this among his more mannered and calculated films, so take my complaints as you will. I dare say it won’t convert any new fans, but if you love the sick soul of Europe in sixties cinema, this is quite the modernist contemplation of abstracted lives in the new urban world.
Mastered from a new digital restoration from a 4k film transfer and it looks beautiful, clear and clean and sharp. You’ll notes stray hairs present in a couple of shots; I don’t believe they are print issues but artifacts from the camera negative or the editing process. Both Blu-ray and DVD editions include two original interview featurettes (one with film critic Adriano Aprà and film historian Carlo Di Carlo, the other with professor Giuliana Bruno discussing the role of architecture in the film) and a booklet with an essay by critic Richard Brody and a 1961 article by director Michelangelo Antonioni.
The Beauty of the Devil (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD) is René Clair’s playful take on the Faust legend, which stirs whimsy into the tragedy of a scholar who sells his soul to the devil. As the film opens, Michel Simon is the frumpy old Professor Henri Faust, a sheepdog of a scholar disappointed in himself as he prepares to retire without making his mark on the world, and the young and handsome Gérard Philipe is the seductive devil Mephistopheles, but fear not. To prove his power, the devil gives Faust youth and the actors swap roles, with Philipe’s young Faust the rejuvenated romantic discovering everything his missed in a life of scholarship and Simon playing the devilish clown as the bearish Mephistopheles, scheming to compromise and corrupt Faust at every turn with a twisted grin and a gleam in his eye.
You might say that Simon is the whole film. Clair has a way with having fun with dark themes and making jokesters out of evil figures — see I Married a Witch, released last week by Criterion — and this is no different. He and co-writer Michel Kelber concoct some deviously clever machinations in the battle of wills, and Simon makes Mephistopheles into a black-hearted trickster behind the manner of a clown, taking pleasure in corrupting what was once a soul dedicated to truth and discovery. But there’s little tragedy when Philipe’s swaggering young Faust carries no sense of history or yearning. It’s as if he lost his entire sense of self in the body swap — wily but no longer wise and more interested in seducing young lovelies than continuing his life’s work. Clair’s mischievous sense of humor and snappy energy keeps the film bouncing forward, turning tragedy into black comedy with fantastic twists and swashbuckling flair, but fails to make Faust’s odyssey anything but a clever lark.
In French with English subtitles. It also includes the 50-minute documentary Through the Looking Glass with René Clair: Master of the Fantastic, which is mostly about the production of this film and features lots of stories of Michel Simon’s eccentricities.
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Deluxe Edition (Warner, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) brings the two parts of the DC Universe animated original adaptation of Frank Miller’s landmark graphic novel (originally released separately) into a single package. The adaptation, directed by Jay Oliva, manages to capture the best and the worst of Miller: along with the savage deconstruction of superhero fantasy is a glib satire of social liberalism as blind hysteria and criminal-enabling that makes Ayn Rand look measured. But it gets more of the sensibility than we could hope for in a direct-to-disc production, with some shots right out of Miller’s graphic novel and a shockingly cold-blooded atmosphere tossed off without dwelling on it. Peter Weller is marvelous casting as old man Bats, voicing the character with the cold edge of an angry survivor, and Michael Emerson takes on The Joker with a perfectly underplayed glee for chaos. For the true believers who invested in the earlier releases, it’s a frustrating double dip because this new “deluxe” presentation includes new commentary from director Jay Oliva, screenwriter Bob Goodman and voice director Andrea Romano and the feature-length documentary “Masterpiece: Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns,” and the SRP is a mere $5 more than each of the earlier singles. Which means that if you haven’t picked it up, this is a real deal.
A pair of timely companion pieces also arrive this month: Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle (PBS, Blu-ray, DVD) is a three-hour tour through the history of the superhero phenomenon, more comprehensive than deep, and Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD) is even less probing, more like a celebration of fan favorites. Liev Schreiber (who played Sabretooth in the first Wolverine solo film) narrates the former, horror movie icon Christopher Lee narrates the latter.
Hanging for Django (Raro Video, Blu-ray, DVD), directed by Sergio Garrone and starring Anthony Steffen and William Berger as rival bounty hunters in a town filled with wanted men, is another of the dozens of violent spaghetti westerns that branded themselves with Django without actually having a character of that name in the film. Mastered from 35mm negative, it features original Italian and English dub soundtracks and a featurette.