Cohen Film Collection

[knives]

Though there's been no word yet on the shorts keeping the MOC discs still important.

[Zot!]

I also see no Police or A Nos Amours. Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.

[domino harvey]

That's because Police is with Olive and A Nos Amours is with Criterion

[EddieLarkin]

Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.

Maybe, but there are no French discs of La Gueule ouverte and Passe ton bac d'abord. And the French discs of the other films have unsubtitled supplements.

[JabbaTheSlut]

Maurice Pialat, l'amour existe (2007)

Great news!

[Zot!]

Not to mention, I think the french bds might be more cost effective.

Maybe, but there are no French discs of La Gueule ouverte and Passe ton bac d'abord. And the French discs of the other films have unsubtitled supplements.

Oh, overlooked by me then, especially the two features. Thanks!

[rockysds]

William Dieterle's Syncopation February 10th.

[captveg]

Interesting. Anyone know how this RKO film ended up not being owned by Warner? Is it PD?

[Michael Kerpan]

William Dieterle's Syncopation February 10th.

Bosley Crowther provided a withering review of this at thetime of its initial release:

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res ... 8389659EDE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

;~}

[The Fanciful Norwegian]

Interesting. Anyone know how this RKO film ended up not being owned by Warner? Is it PD?

It's not PD, but RKO didn't actually own the copyright—William Dieterle Productions did. Same as The Devil and Daniel Webster, which isn't with WB either. The copyright on Syncopation was renewed in 1969 by some outfit called "Film Archive Trading Co.", then shows up in a 1990 copyright assignment from the executor of the Raymond Rohauer estate to "Rohauer Collection Foundation, Inc." So that explains how Cohen has it, though I don't know how or when Rohauer got it. ("Film Archive Trading Co." doesn't seem to be a Rohauer company, since he was renewing copyrights in his own name at the same time.)

[captveg]

Makes sense. Thanks!

[Gregory]

Bosley Crowther provided a withering review of this at thetime of its initial release:
http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res ... 8389659EDE" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
;~}

One of his criticisms of Dieterle is that "his comprehension of its spirit is obviously nil," but I would never think of Crowther as someone with a keen sense of the spirit of the music who can necessarily judge what's true to it and what isn't. He always seemed pretty priggish, narrow-minded, and too eager to cut something down that he didn't seem to understand. For example, in his review of Shirley Clarke's The Connection, I can almost see his proverbial monocle popping out as he watches a bunch of sleazy junkies sitting around, who only occasionally redeem themselves momentarily when they entertained him by performing some "generally respectable jazz." He spends most of the review coming up with as many ways as he can to express his disapproval of these people and the apartment they're holed up in, and wondering where the plot is.

[Numero Trois]

He always seemed pretty priggish, narrow-minded, and too eager to cut something down that he didn't seem to understand.

And he tended to have a "Hollywood-first" mentality when it came to discussing foreign films that at least sometimes crossed into condescension. A recent reviewer (don't remember his name) who commented on something he wrote called that mindset "imperialistic" which seems about right to me.

The worst thing is to this day the New York Times quotes him from time to time when certain classic films are revived. Always makes me cringe.

[ellipsis7]

Cavani from Cohen on BR.... Following closely on the heels of Criterion's THE NIGHT PORTER upcoming in December and I CANNIBALI/THE YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS from Raro USA which debuted January last...

THE SKIN/LA PELLE on January 13th 2015...

[Aunt Peg]

I'm hoping it is region free and will hold buying until I find out.

[Cold Bishop]

If I'm not mixing up my articles and authors, Olivier Assayas wrote about this when he was covering Cannes for Cahiers and singled it out as surprisingly a film from Caviani that was actually good. So for all the Night Porter haters...

(It probably helps that Malaparte was a hell of an author.)

EDIT: As it turned out, I already translated that whole article...

La pelle surprised everyone, starting with me: it is a film not lacking in qualities. Radically foreign to everything which Liliana Cavani has filmed up until now, this adaptation of a pictaresque novel by Malaparte has qualities of humor, and of sensitivity, which nothing in this director’s career has suggested. The film is structured in vignettes which look to reconstruct, in a unanimiste manner, the climate of Naples as the first European town liberated by the Allies; some episodes are very successful, other less-so, some are failures, but if there is at least one striking success in La pelle which merits attention, it is Marcello Mastroianni. In fact, he portrays the very character of Curzio Malaparte with a complicated blend of cynicism, self-importance and the pathetic which is undoubtedly one of the screen’s most skillful portrayals of a novelist. It is also necessary to point out the technical control which emerges from the complex ensemble, and the direction of American comedians here is very precise, something which is rather rare in European cinema.

[ellipsis7]

I guess a third significant footprint for Malaparte on European cinema, along with his own distinguished directorial effort IL CRISTO PROIBITO, and the villa on Capri that he had designed & owned, which figures so prominently in Godard's LA MEPRIS/CONTEMPT that it is almost a character in itself...

This rather shocking clip from THE SKIN/LA PELLE of Italian liberation by US tanks & troops points to an unblinkered portrayal of Malaparte's stories...

[accatone]

Godard also refered to this book in Film Socialisme. Malaparte (real name Kurt Erich Suckert) describes the arrival of the US Troops as the pest. Its a very interesting book with a disputable "message" for sure - predominantly because of the author himself who is also the main character. I found this much more enjoyable than Kaputt. There is a german DVD out for some time which i held off as i really enjoyed the book…

[rockysds]

For its Cohen Film Collection Blu-ray release, syncopation has been restored in 2K from an archival 35mm fine grain master struck by the Library of Congress from the nitrate negative. In addition to a 2015 re-release trailer, special features include nine short musical films showcasing some of the most iconic performers in jazz history:
"Symphony in Black" (1935 w/Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday) (9:36)
"Rhapsody in Black and Blue" (1932, w/Louis Armstrong) (10:00)
"St. Louis Blues" (1929, w/Bessie Smith) (15:41)
"Cab Calloway's Hi De Ho" (1933) (10:00)
"Bundle of Blues" (1933, w/Duke Ellington) (9:00)
"Hoagy Carmichael" (1939, w/Carmichael and Jack Teagarden) (10:00)
"Artie Shaw's Class in Swing" (1939, w/Shaw) (10:00)
"Jazz a la Cuba" (1933, w/Don Azpiazú) (5:19)
"Black and Tan Fantasy" (1929, w/Duke Ellington and Fredi Washington) (19:00)

[zedz]

It's great to see Ioselliani's wonderful Favourites of the Moon out on BluRay, but I have to say that Philip Lopate's commentary is a total washout. The useful information he has to offer would amount to maybe a ten minute featurette, allowing for several lengthy film extracts, and the majority of the commentary is devoted to narrating what's happening on screen, interpretive damp squibs (a particular detail is "no doubt very symbolic" - END OF ANALYSIS) or 'additional information' that's useless to anybody who has actually watched the film (e.g. a couple of dozen iterations of "this character will return later on!") N.B. the commentary may turn into a fireworks display of shattering insights in its final fifteen minutes, but I guess I'll never know.

On the plus side, the commentary on Cohen's The Wind Will Carry Us is really good.

[What A Disgrace]

Don't worry, zedz, it doesn't.

The film is a masterpiece, though, and I'm very glad it came out on Blu-ray.

[Kirkinson]

Somehow haven't picked up the Blu-ray yet, but I feared as much about the commentary. I presume Lopate was brought in because he's one of the few critics who has written about Iosseliani in English—he interviewed him for Film Comment many years ago—but that very article reveals that his research and insight into Iosseliani was very shallow indeed, and it sounds like it hasn't improved. For example, he refers to the initial setting of the modern-day sections of Brigands, Chapter VII as taking place in an unnamed city in former Yugoslavia, and while that would be a perfectly understandable mistake for someone who knew nothing about the film, didn't know what Tbilisi looked like, and had never heard or seen Georgian before, you'd think the laziest, most cursory amount of research still would have told him what language the characters are speaking and the graffito in several background shots is written in. Iosseliani intends for his films to be universal, but the choice of Tbilisi in the midst of civil war after the dissolution of the USSR is not insignificant, and it's not the sort of detail someone in Lopate's position has any excuse for getting wrong (and it's just one of several instances in that article).

Anyway, thanks for the reminder that I still need to get Favorites of the Moon!

[Ashirg]

Next release -

April 14
Jean-Paul Belmondo double feature - That Man from Rio (1964) / Up to His Ears (1965)

[FrauBlucher]

(614) Magazine interview with Cohen Film Collection’s Tim Lanza Several of Cohen's restorations will screen at Wexner at the end of the month. Part of a week long look at the state of film restoration.

[manicsounds]

Syncopation review at DVDBeaver