ellipsis7 wrote: Wed Jun 16, 2021 9:16 am
Interesting to see Visconti: Man of Two Worlds, 1969 as an extra, but can't see much about it...
Man of Three Worlds: Luchino Visconti, 1966 is a BBC documentary included as an extra on SENSO...
I'm assuming they never got round to completing the trilogy with Visconti: Man of Four Worlds...
I wonder if that's the same faded-looking behind-the-scenes doc that's on the Warners DVD under the title Visconti. I can't find any info about a 1969 show titled Visconti: Man of Two Worlds. But it is the tagline of the other one, and someone may have just decided to rebrand it. (A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but I'll stick with it till proven otherwise. )
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Sun Jun 20, 2021 6:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
therewillbeblus wrote: Tue Jun 15, 2021 11:48 pm
I'm with Pauline Kael on this one, and while I will not post her entire spot-on evisceration, this shall do
Pauline Kael wrote:I have rarely seen a picture I enjoyed less than THE DAMNED, a ponderously perverse spectacle
The same Pauline Kael praised "Last Tango in Paris" as one of the greatest films ever made. I guess "ponderously perverse" is selectively applied based on how one responds to the film. I have found Pauline Kael to be a very reliable critic. Her sympathies are consistently opposed to mine.
I also find myself opposed to Kael in many of her opinions, but obviously there are going to be some crossovers for anyone (even Armond White!) and not 100% disagreement across the board. Her praise for Blow Out and Pretty Poison, as well as Godard's La Chinoise and Masculin Feminin, are very interesting reads. Again, I only posted the opening line of her review for The Damned, and mostly for the initial "I've rarely seen a film I enjoyed less than this" quip- so you'd need to read the rest of the long writeup to see how she breaks down one film vs. the other. It's not really fair to compare her opinions on each film based on a broad line like that, as regardless of what one thinks of her, she certainly explains her positions in detail.
I feel like Kael was a massively eccentric free spirit who was bizarrely frozen at a very particular time in her development. Like, I used to basically be Pauline Kael LOL, still feel close to much of what she has to say, but now I'm in a more mature, John Simon-ish or Jonathan Rosenbaum-y camp, and I think the latter logically and comfortably grew out of the former. I wonder what my affinity for Kael and Simon says about me, but....let's put that to one side. I certainly don't admire everything about them! Her "affinity" for people like Bertolucci, for god's sake, and if you ask me, Scorsese, seems like something she didn't really logically think through based on her other very firmly held standards expressed elsewhere frequently in her work. She had no patience for puerile, Beat-poetish, or poseur-ish filmmaking, a Simon-ish standard, although she did occasionally not hold to that, and yet she swooned over something as nasty and foolish and humanly hollow as 1900! Or like the opinion of a very intelligent child for whom an overpowering experience is sort of what they think is real meaning. Some of this is definitely me projecting myself onto her, but... And her steadfast refusal to see the point in rewatching a film seems as I get older to be an utterly humanly absurd thing to believe, and like something that, you know, just existing would end up convincing her otherwise.
I'm ecstatic for this especially coming from Criterion, but can't help but wonder what's up with Ludwig? I missed out on the Arrow Limited Edition and it seems to have been abandoned for a standard release.
A couple of notes on the Italian-language soundtrack: Helmut Berger is dubbed by actor Giancarlo Giannini (as he was in the Italian version of "Ludwig").
And Umberto Orsini, the only Italian member of the main cast, was dubbed with a British accent in the English-language version (to better match his co-stars). His actual voice can be heard on the Italian soundtrack.
Too bad Criterion isn't including the German-language dub, though. Not only is it more appropriate to the milieu than either the English or Italian soundtracks, but it seems to take the camp level up a notch or two. (If that's what you're looking for.)
Here's a German-language scene of the Von Essenbeck family spending a typical evening at home together.
Last edited by Fred Holywell on Sun Oct 20, 2024 8:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Do you think that Criterion's decision to release this movie in September might be linked to the upcoming premiere of "The House of Gucci" and the smashing hit of the "Succession" TV series?
I think the restoration of the Cineteca di Bologna was completed a couple of years ago, so maybe this sudden interest from Criterion to incorporate it to its catalog comes from these similar-themed features. BTW, I would love to see Patrizia Reggiani (played by Lady Gaga) as a renewed version of evil Sophie Von Essenbeck.
Toby Dammit wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:01 pm
Do you think that Criterion's decision to release this movie in September might be linked to the upcoming premiere of "The House of Gucci" and the smashing hit of the "Succession" TV series?
I think the restoration of the Cineteca di Bologna was completed a couple of years ago, so maybe this sudden interest from Criterion to incorporate it to its catalog comes from these similar-themed features. BTW, I would love to see Patrizia Reggiani (played by Lady Gaga) as a renewed version of evil Sophie Von Essenbeck.
I don't mean to come off as a troll or anything, but what does Succession or The House of Gucci have to do with this movie?
Toby Dammit wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 4:01 pm
Do you think that Criterion's decision to release this movie in September might be linked to the upcoming premiere of "The House of Gucci" and the smashing hit of the "Succession" TV series?
I think the restoration of the Cineteca di Bologna was completed a couple of years ago, so maybe this sudden interest from Criterion to incorporate it to its catalog comes from these similar-themed features. BTW, I would love to see Patrizia Reggiani (played by Lady Gaga) as a renewed version of evil Sophie Von Essenbeck.
I don't mean to come off as a troll or anything, but what does Succession or The House of Gucci have to do with this movie?
I think that OP was attempting to say that Criterion's release of the film might be related to much of current pop culture's fixation on watching the exploits of wealthy people who commit horrid act after horrid act to fulfill their extremely self-centered desires. However, I do agree with you that their reasoning is a bit of a stretch; I highly doubt that the release of this film and the interest in media like it in the past few years are anything but coincidental.
Computer Raheem wrote: Sat Jul 17, 2021 9:10 pm
I think that OP was attempting to say that Criterion's release of the film might be related to much of current pop culture's fixation on watching the exploits of wealthy people who commit horrid act after horrid act to fulfill their extremely self-centered desires. However, I do agree with you that their reasoning is a bit of a stretch; I highly doubt that the release of this film and the interest in media like it in the past few years are anything but coincidental.
I'm new to this forum. Count me as among those who like and appreciate the aesthetic realm of this film... with discomfort. But I would rather sit and watch this film (in its entire length) than pretty much anything made today ascetically or else synthetically, in the most anodyne fashion possible.
"Death in Venice" has been out on DVD in the UK for a while (I have one). But I'm glad it's getting a Criterion release, having assumed it was already in the collection.
I've generally stopped buying any discs with this yellow-green grading from the usual suspect because I'm way more sensitive to that than lesser resolution. It's such a damn(ed) shame.
The only good thing with such a thing is that it is yet another example that statistically supports the structural issue of those grading, which you can predict just by reading who did them with almost 100% accuracy (which is plain wrong of course).
I'm going to assume that WB did not have suitable elements for this or Death in Venice in their possession. So there probably was little chance of the scan being done by WB/MPI / avoiding L’Immagine Ritrovata.
It's also possible that the negatives were stored in Italy and WB/the Italian rightsholders decided that it made little sense to transport it to the States when there are labs in Italy that could do the restoration.
It's not an issue of storage. The elements could have very well be cleaned up, fixed and scanned wherever they were and the grading done digitally anywhere else in the world, including outside Ritrovata/Bologna if the rightholders wanted to.
Arrow are routinely having movies scanned and restored there but graded elsewhere (say, Silver Salt London). Texas Adios for instance was scanned and restored at Bologna and graded at R3store London. Beyond The Door was scanned at Eurolab Rome and everything else was done at Deluxe London.
That is what I meant yoloswegmaster, the elements are in Italy not in the US and, as tenia said, the Italian owners obviously wanted to use Ritrovata to scan, restore and grade the new master. Unfortunately.
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