Tokyo Story (Criterion, Blu-ray+DVD Combo) is perhaps the definitive film by Yasujiro Ozu, the artist called the most “Japanese” of Japanese directors. Chishu Ryo (Ozu’s favorite performer) and Chieko Higashiyama star as an elderly couple in rural Japan who find a cold welcome waiting for them when they come to Tokyo to visit their two urbanized children, who too busy with work and their own lives to pay them any attention. Within this simple framework Ozu creates a quiet but profound drama of the changing face of Japanese culture and the loss of traditional values in modern society.
The familiar themes and formal elements are all here – the quiet, graceful formality of Ozu’s style, the “tatami mat position” of his camera (about 36 inches from the floor, as if viewed from the position of a person seated cross-legged on a floor mat), the themes of familial responsibility and sacrifice – executed with the sureness of a master at the peak of his powers. But it’s also a resolutely modern portrait of post-war Japan, where western fashion defines the business culture and traditional dress is reserved for home, and careers and success increasingly dominate the lives of the rising generation. The painterly images bring the past and present together and the still life compositions have a serenity contradicted by the collision of cultures. It is sublime and one of the masterpieces of Japanese cinema.
Previously available on DVD from Criterion, this new Blu-ray+DVD Combo is mastered from a new 4k film transfer and digital restoration, which upgrades the image significantly, and features commentary by Ozu scholar David Desser and three documentaries: the feature-length profile of the life and career of Ozu “I Lived, But” from 1983, the 40-minute tribute “Talking With Ozu” from 1993, and the 45-minute “Chishu Ryu and Shochiku’s Ofuna Studios” from 1988, all carried over from the previous DVD release. The accompanying booklet features an essay by critic David Bordwell (updated from the original version featured in the DVD release).
Assault on Precinct 13: Collector’s Edition (Shout Factory, Blu-ray) isn’t John Carpenter’s first feature but it’s the first real John Carpenter film, with his themes and sensibility in rough but recognizable form. Ostensibly an urban crime thriller of street gangs gone wild, it plays like a cross between a Howard Hawks western and a zombie siege film that meets in a desolate Los Angeles no man’s land of a nearly abandoned neighborhood. A small group of people—cops, criminals, civilians and office workers—find themselves suddenly under siege by a nearly faceless gang in a nearly vacant police station. Carpenter turns his dingy set into a claustrophobic cage and builds the tension as the gang takes out the besieged members one by one, forcing the survivors into the corner for a last stand. The acting is hardly Oscar material, but Carpenter fills his characters with real character and his smart, dramatically strong sense of visual design and tight pacing pulls the film together as it continues. For all the exposition dealt out in the opening half hour, it’s become an almost abstract act of violence by the end, motivations long forgotten by the attackers and survival the only thought on the minds of the dwindling survivors. And this is Carpenter’s first film shot in Panavision, his format of choice for the rest of his career.
This is pressed from the transfer used by Image for their Blu-ray in 2008 and supplements include the superb, detail-rich commentary that John Carpenter recorded for the film’s initial laserdisc release about 20 years ago and an onstage Q&A with John Carpenter and Austin Stoker from a 2002 screening, recorded on low-fidelity video and included on the earlier Image disc. New to this edition is a second commentary track by art director and sound effects editor Tommy Lee Wallace and new video interviews with actors Austin Stoker and Nancy Loomis Keys.
The Bells of St. Mary (Olive, Blu-ray, DVD), Leo McCarey’s 1945 sequel to his sentimental hit Going My Way, sends Bing Crosby’s street smart Father Chuck O’Malley to a parochial school facing financial woes and a gaggle of nuns led by Sister Mary Benedict (Ingrid Bergman) determined to keep it open. The story (by McCarey himself, scripted by Dudley Nichols) is pure feel-good hokum but the odd relationship between the worldly Father, brought in to help right the floundering ship, and the stubborn Sister, determined to compromise neither her moral duty nor her commitment to the school and its pupils, keeps the film interesting, in no small part thanks to the very different approaches by the performers: the classical grace of Bergman meets the laid-back phrasing Crosby. Henry Travers (Clarence the Angel of It’s A Wonderful Life) is the construction mogul who wants to purchase the church school property and Ruth Donnelly (the sardonic best friend of so many great thirties pictures) is the devoted Sister Michael, who has Sister Benedict’s back. There are no video supplements but this release includes a nice little booklet
The Vivien Leigh Anniversary Collection (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD) collects the four major British features that Leigh starred in before her international fame as Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Wind. Fire Over England (1937), a drama of the Spanish Armada, was Leigh’s her first role in a major feature, playing a lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Flora Robson) and lover of loyal naval officer Laurence Olivier (their first onscreen pairing). James Wong Howe photographs the visually impressive production and Raymond Massey and James Mason co-star. From wide-eyed innocent to cagey professional, she transforms into double agent in Dark Journey (1937), a World War I espionage thriller with Conrad Veidt as her German opposite.
Storm in a Teacup (1937) is a romantic comedy with Rex Harrison and St. Martin’s Lane (aka Sidewalk of London) (1938) is a rags-to-riches tale starring Charles Laughton as a busker who takes street urchin Leigh under his wing and Harrison as a theater impresario who takes our off the streets and onto the stage. It was Leigh’s final film before she won the role of Scarlet O’Hara. Her Cockney accent is unconvincing at best but her sassy performance is dynamic and she is entrancing as the dancing dreamer, theatrical ingénue and finally the confident stage star managing the press and her fans with utter professionalism. There is a fire in her eyes and behind her radiant smile and angelic face is a ruthless drive. A star is born. All four films are mastered in 2k from archival 35mm materials from the BFI for Blu-ray and DVD. Both two-disc collection include a featurette with Leigh biographer Anne Edwards and a booklet with an essay by Leigh biographer Kendra Bean.
More releases:
Night of the Comet (Shout Factory, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Maniac Cop 2 (Blue Underground, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Maniac Cop 3 (Blue Underground, Blu-ray+DVD Combo)
Lost and Found (eOne, DVD)
Sanguivorous (Tidepoint/MVD, DVD, VOD)
Danguard Ace: The Movie Collection (Shout Factory, DVD)
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD