DVD's: Everyone's a Cineaste



March 3, 2001



BOB GARFIELD: MTV is following an important trend by always recycling and never throwing anything away. That seems to be the secret behind the success of the latest technological sensation -- the DVD player. The DVD has penetrated the market twice as fast as the CD; almost 3 times faster than the VCR. Some 20 million players are predicted to be in American homes by the end of the year. The national fascination with DVDs has everything to do with what they manage to cram on to those little disks.

BROOK GLADSTONE:Did you know that in the film The Usual Suspects you can briefly see a California palm tree in a shot that's supposed to be New York? Did you know that Michael Redgrave hated movie acting when he debuted in The Lady Vanishes? Did you know that in The Cell, Miss Universe's naked breasts were created digitally in post-production? You would if you'd watched those movies on DVD. Special effects that offer juicy tidbits like these are the reasons the DVD player is the best-selling electronic device in history, says film critic Roger Ebert.

ROGER EBERT: The DVD provides twice as much picture detail. It provides true surround sound. It provides all of these bells and whistles; all of the deleted scenes, the little essays, the "making of" documentaries, the advertising campaigns, the trailers. It's just like getting a whole package about the movie instead of just getting a fairly low quality tape.

BROOK GLADSTONE:DVDs, being the same size as CDs are simpler than VHS tapes to handle and store and far less vulnerable to wear and tear. Ebert is thrilled because the high quality image and sound allow home viewers to enjoy an experience much closer to the film-makers' original vision. But you don't just see that vision; you can hear from the director, editor, cinematographer, designers and actors exactly how they crafted it -- and that is rapidly changing a nation of moviegoers into cineastes full of all the arcane knowledge the word implies.

MAN: If you got 5 or 6 of the best DVDs it'd be like taking a college course in film-making.

BROOK GLADSTONE: Richard Roper co-hosts Ebert and Roper and the Movies.

RICHARD ROPER: The first time you see a DVD picture on a DVD player I think it's the moment you say I'm no longer attached to my VCR.

BROOK GLADSTONE: Peter Becker, one of the pioneers of classic home video, is the president of Criterion, a company that meticulously transfers classic and contemporary films to DVD. The Criterion catalog ranges from Robocop to Roshomon and nearly every film is enhanced with additional tracks of expert commentary or rare bits of footage. For example, Criterion's vivid transfer of Carol Reed's 1949 The Third Man. [MUSIC FROM THE THIRD MAN]

PETER BECKER: Graham Greene originally wrote The Third Man as a novel. He never had any experience of writing in script form really, and Carol Reed said fine, write me the novel and I'll make you the movie!

BROOK GLADSTONE:The DVD provides a reading of Graham Greene's original text over the video. [MUSIC FROM THE THIRD MAN] MAN READING FROM TEXT: He called sharply: do you want anything? And there was no reply. He called again, with the irascibility of drink -- Answer, can't you! And an answer came, for a window curtain was drawn petulantly back by some sleeper he had awakened, and the light fell straight across the narrow street and lit up the features of Harry Lime. [MUSIC FROM THE THIRD MAN]

MAN: Harry!

BROOK GLADSTONE: In the case of Grand Illusion, Jean Renoir's 1938 classic, the brilliant DVD transfer was the result of a lucky break -- the recent discovery of a complete print captured and protected first by the Nazis and then by the Russians after the war.

PETER BECKER: There's a part of it that is about detective work, and there's a great kind of satisfaction in, in that, that eureka moment when you find the things that you never knew existed.

BROOK GLADSTONE: Criterion's edition of Grand Illusion includes Renoir's own introduction to the film recorded in 1958.

JEAN RENOIR:I had a very good friend; a wonderful man; a great fighter. His name was Captain Passar. Captain Passar was shot down 7 times by the Germans. He was taken to a prison camp 7 times, and he escaped 7 times! The story of Grand Illusion is based on the evasions of Captain Passar.

PETER BECKER: Collecting all of the things that might be lost but that are somehow related to the identity of a film, related to the mood in which it was made -- that can be very much a part of it. There's advertisements that were made for Life of Brian that are just hilarious that would have just slipped into obscurity and they certainly had by-- before we came along.

MURIEL CLEESE: My name is Muriel Cleese, and I live in a very nice elderly people's home in western Super Mayer [sp?]. My son John is in the new Monty Python film, Life of Brian. Do hope you'll go and see it, because he's on a percentage and he said if it doesn't do well he won't be able to keep me on in the home any longer. I'm 102 years old, and if I have to leave here, it'll kill me.

BROOK GLADSTONE:One of Criterion's most ambitious productions is its 3-disk rendering of Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil which includes the 94-minute studio release, the 142-minute director's cut, and a great deal more, including an hour-long documentary of Gilliam's famous fight with Hollywood.

TERRY GILLIAM:I would get calls from the editor occasionally wanting my input. Really? You want my "input." Yeah, but, but we're saving your film. No, no, no -- you're, you're killing my film; you're destroying it; you're taking the child and you're asking which limb do you want chopped off!

BROOK GLADSTONE:For some film-makers the DVD version is the one for posterity; the final statement; the place for stray snatches of inspiration; selected sweepings from the cutting room floor. Richard LaGravanese wrote The Fisher King and The Bridges of Madison County and wrote and directed 1998's Living Out Loud.

RICHARD LaGRAVANESE: You can always tell yourself well at least I'll put it on the DVD and someone will get to see it, whereas in the old days it was just lost forever. It lessens the pain of losing one of your little darlings which is what William Goldman, great screenwriter, refers to as those, those pieces that are just so perfect or perhaps a scene that was the whole reason you did the film, and then by the end of it you realize is the one thing that has to be sacrificed like Isaac and Abraham. [LAUGHS]

BROOK GLADSTONE:DVDs have immense storage capacity; so much so that the DVD of Terminator II was able to include three complete versions of the film plus an audio commentary with 26 members of the cast and crew, not to mention additional interviews, storyboards, featurettes and trailers. Fantasia 2000 has an additional eleven hours of programming, and how about the interminable commentary for Battlefield Earth?

MAN: ...big huge kind of machinery--

MAN: Right.

MAN: -- you're not quite sure what it does, but you know that--

MAN: It's smoky, stinky--

MAN: Yeah.

MAN: -- and everything - but it's--

MAN: Yeah.

MAN: -- something comes out of there that's beyond explanation.

MAN: It's kind of steam-punky.

BROOK GLADSTONE: Is there such a thing as too much information? Some directors, Steven Spielberg and Peter Weir, for example, won't do commentary tracks, and Criterion's Peter Becker said that Rob Reiner, as he sat down to talk through his film Spinal Tap, was frankly wary.

PETER BECKER: The very first thing that he said was-- I can tell you a lot that will increase your understanding of how this movie was made, but it will very likely decrease your enjoyment! And-- he encouraged viewers to listen at their own risk!

BROOK GLADSTONE:But the inescapable fact that DVDs are flying off the shelves suggests that knowing the tricks of the trade -- continuity and steadicams, pyrotechnics and animatronics does not diminish the magic of the movies; it just brings you a little closer to the magician.

ROBERT DENIRO IN TAXI DRIVER: You talkin' to me? [MUSIC FROM TAXI DRIVER]

ROBERT DENIRO IN INTERVIEW: Doing something in the mirror--

ROBERT DENIRO IN TAXI DRIVER: You talkin' to me?

ROBERT DENIRO IN INTERVIEW: -- that idea fit the whole thing -- somebody by themselves, talking to themselves, acting that way--

ROBERT DENIRO IN TAXI DRIVER: Huh? Well then who the hell else are you talking-- You talking to me? Well I'm the only here....