Nobody does ghost stories like the Japanese. Just ask someone who has seen the contemporary Japanese movies, Ringu and Kairo. Ugetsu isn’t just a ghost story, though it’s the images from the ghost portion of the film that tend to linger in the mind and haunt the viewer for years to come.

Ugetsu is generally acknowledged to be director Kenji Mizoguchi’s finest film. Tastes in movies can be subjective, but it’s fairly obvious to anyone who has seen it that Ugetsu belongs in the same league as Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Set in a period of violent civil strife, a humble potter leaves his wife and young child to sell his wares in the city. He meets a mysterious woman there, who turns out to be much more than meets the eye.

One of the most beautifully photographed and fluid of the classic Japanese films, Ugetsu is given a first-class treatment by Criterion with a new high-definition digital transfer. The scenes on the water glimmer and sparkle as they did in the 35mm print, and the subtle lighting throughout is far more apparent than in the previous laserdisc release. As someone who treasured his laserdisc version of this film, I was very happy with the Criterion DVD transfer.

Eureka Entertainment offers a Blu-ray that is supposed to be very close to the theatrical experience, however that disc is Region B encoded. No word yet from Criterion on whether they plan to offer a Region A version for the U.S. market.

Criterion’s double-disc DVD set includes an informative 150-minute documentary on Mizoguchi and his films, titled Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director. It’s an excellent introduction to an under-appreciated director, who Jean-Luc Godard proclaimed as “quite simply one of the greatest of filmmakers.”

Ugetsu
(1953; directed by Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray and DVD)

Monday, October 30 at 4:15 a.m. eastern (late Sun. night) on Turner Classic Movies

No current horror movie would be quite the same if Alfred Hitchcock hadn’t chosen to scare the living daylights out of us in Psycho (1960). It isn’t just a movie that rises above its genre. Psycho has become a model for any type of film that attempts to creatively disorient the viewer. Similarly, Bernard Herrmann’s musical score is copied — almost note for note — by young composers hoping to set the right mood for a variety of genres, including horror, action, adventure, and science fiction.

This film is so well known you probably have seen it by now. If you haven’t watched it, please do. No director knows more about manipulating the audience than Hitchcock (and that’s meant as a compliment). This is his second best film, after Vertigo (1958). If you haven’t seen Psycho, don’t read the next paragraph or the block-quotes below that paragraph, for I’ll need to touch on a key plot element.

What would be Psycho’s most important innovation? You’re not allowed to identify with any of the characters for very long. Hitchcock explained this strategy in a 1962 interview with Françoise Truffaut:

You know that the public always likes to be one jump ahead of the story; they like to feel they know what’s coming next. So you deliberately play upon this fact to control their thoughts. . . You turn the viewer in one direction and then in another; you keep him as far as possible from what’s actually going to happen. . . I purposely killed the star so as to make the killing even more unexpected. As a matter of fact, that’s why I insisted that the audiences be kept out of the theaters once the picture had started, because the late-comers would have been waiting to see Janet Leigh after she had disappeared from the screen action.

While it has been widely available on DVD since the 1990s, an anamorphic widescreen version didn’t turn up on DVD until 2005. That format provides a higher resolution for compatible televisions. The anamorphic widescreen print is included in the current DVD and Blu-ray versions.

Psycho
(1960; directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
Universal Studios (Blu-ray and DVD)

Friday, October 27 at 8:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

In Barbara Leaming’s book Orson Welles: A Biography, Welles described his film Macbeth (1948) as a bold charcoal sketch of the play.

Welles had convinced Herbert Yates, who headed up Republic Pictures, to fund the production, though he was given a budget of only $700,000. And when Republic’s board of directors grumbled about the decision, Welles agreed to personally pay any costs that might go over that amount.

Because of these constraints, Welles had only 23 days to shoot the film. To streamline the production, the actors pre-recorded their dialogue, which forced them to essentially mime their lines as their performances were captured on film.

Most of the costumes were rented from Western Costume, a Hollywood-based costume warehouse. Years later in a conversation with Peter Bogdanovich, Welles admitted that:

Mine should have been sent back, because I looked like the Statue of Liberty in it. But there was no dough for another and nothing in stock at Western would fit me, so I was stuck with it.

Welles also decided that the performers should have Scottish accents, to reflect the fact that Shakespeare’s play is set in Scotland. And he made changes to the original text. He created a new “Holy Father” character to emphasize a religious contrast with the three witches. That character was given new lines, as well as lines that were originally spoken by a now-eliminated character from the play.

The movie wasn’t well received by the film critics. And it didn’t do well at the box office. In an attempt to recoup its loses, Republic released a shorter 85-minute version in 1950. The dialogue was re-recorded—this time without the Scottish brogues.

This shorter version was the only one that was available until 1980, when the original uncut version was restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Fortunately, time has been kind to both Welles and his interpretation of Macbeth. We’re now much more forgiving of filmmakers who alter Shakespeare’s plays to suit the film medium, especially if those changes help to bring a deeper understanding of the interweaving characters and plot.

Despite the severe financial constraints, Welles’ Macbeth is one of the best Shakespeare films ever make. And it’s the most visually striking Shakespearean film so far.

In fact, it’s the co-mingling of the theatrical performances and evocative visual backgrounds that makes this production so memorable. Macbeth is fully equal on its own terms to Welles’ other Shakespeare-adapted films: Othello (1951) and Chimes at Midnight (1965).

Olive’s latest Blu-ray of Macbeth provides both the uncut (107-minute) and truncated (85-minute) versions within the same package. It was recently released through the Olive Signature series. Both versions are fully restored from the best available print materials. And both look terrific, as each version gets its own disc with an appropriately high bitrate.

The original cut includes an excellent commentary by Welles biographer Joseph McBride as an alternate audio track. And there are plenty of extras on the second disc, including interviews with Peter Bogdanovich and UCLA Film & Television Archive Preservation Officer Robert Gitt. Highly recommended!

Macbeth
(1948; directed by Orson Welles)
Olive Signature (Blu-ray and DVD)

Film is an intrusive medium. Even though we willingly suspend our disbelief to accept movies as fiction, there’s a strong element of voyeurism that’s inherent in the art form. Movies allow us to spy and eavesdrop on the lives of others. We see private actions we wouldn’t ordinarily see and hear private conversations we wouldn’t ordinarily hear.

The Conversation (1974) is one of a handful of films that openly — and successfully — exploit this key attribute of the medium. As in Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960), we’re simultaneously repelled and fascinated by the main character. In all three films, the protagonist is psychologically detached from others and — perhaps because of the extreme detachment — obsessive in his observation of other people. The three protagonists also intensely guard their own privacy.

In The Conversation, the protagonist is Harry Caul (played by Gene Hackman). He spies on people for a living using sophisticated listening devices. Well aware of what he can do to other people, he is compulsively paranoid that others will invade his own privacy. His girlfriend (played by Teri Garr) doesn’t even know what he does for a living.

While editing one of his surreptitious audio recordings, Harry discovers what he thinks is evidence that a murder will be committed. This echoes Blowup (1966), where a photographer uses the isolating and magnifying power of visual technology to uncover a possible murder. Here we have the added pleasure of a fine character study. Gene Hackman gives an understated performance that’s easily one of his best.

More relevant today than when it was first released, The Conversation (1974) probes the boundaries between technology and privacy. Francis Ford Coppola directed it in-between The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974), and just before Apocalypse Now (1979). If you’ve familiar with the other three films, you may be surprised by how restrained and personal this film is. In its own way, it’s just as good as Coppola’s other films from the 1970s.

The Conversation
(1974; directed by Francis Ford Coppola)
Lions Gate (Blu-ray and DVD)

Friday, September 9 at 8:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Carl Dreyer’s Gertrud (1964) is one of the most demanding classic films you’ll ever see. At the Cannes Film Festival, many in attendance walked out, apparently finding it too painful to watch. At the New York Film Festival, Dreyer was booed when he stood up in the director’s box. You might wonder what profanity, chaotic editing, or wild camera movements might elicit such an extreme response. In fact, the offense was in the opposite direction. Following the general U.S. release of Gertrud in 1966, a New York Times review slammed the film for its overly restrained style:

Its slowness will not surprise those familiar with Dreyer. His tempos have always been deliberate. But here his camera movement and his editing defy the minimal drama in the script. In dialogue the camera often travels back and forth from face to face, instead of cutting from one to the other. “Direction” frequently consists of having characters rise from one sofa, move slowly to another, then sink. Nothing that can be done at length is ever suggested.

Today, there’s a growing recognition that Gertrud may be Dreyer’s masterpiece. This is a work that doesn’t compromise in any way. It’s unusually measured and highly stylized. As if in a trance, the characters speak, but rarely look at each other. Don’t be put off by this mannered approach — stick with it. The severe style allows you to focus in on the characters, to study who they are and what they’re really saying. Look for small revelations in the subtle movements of the characters, as they interact with each other and their sparse surroundings. Like Ozu and Bresson, Dreyer pares everything down to the bare essentials. In this, Dreyer’s final film, what’s left is the barest of the bare.

Filmmaking this extreme is at odds with the cinematic excesses best exemplified by Federico Fellini. Yet this is what Fellini had to say about Dreyer and his pared-down approach:

I know only a few of his films, but I remember being enthralled and bewitched by the extraordinary imaginative force of this great master who contributed so decisively to making film an authentic act of art and expression. The films of Dreyer, so rigorous, so chaste, so austere seem to me to come from a distant, mythical land, and their creator a kind of artist-saint, but it is also true that I find in these films a familiar dwelling place where an artistic vocation has been completely lived, experienced, and expressed.

Gertrud is the story of a woman who refuses to compromise in her search for genuine, unselfish love. The theme reflects Dreyer’s own struggle to attain an uncompromised vision of his artistic intent. Not wanting to give away the ending, let me just say that Gertrud’s free-will journey and contentment with her decisions may parallel Dreyer’s coming to terms with his artistic choices and unique body of work.

Gertrud
(1964; directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer)
The Criterion Collection (DVD)

Monday, June 6 at 4:15 a.m. eastern (late Sun. night) on Turner Classic Movies

Mr. Arkadin (1955) has always been a difficult film for Welles fans. Visually and thematically, it plays out like a baroque variation on Citizen Kane (1941). Once again, Welles portrays a wealthy megalomaniac who attempts to control how others view him, even to the point of buying their adoration. But unlike Citizen Kane, Mr. Arkadin’s technical flaws prevent the story from completely jelling. It also hasn’t helped that the film could only be seen in blurry, incomplete prints with sometimes obvious voice-overs (Welles personally dubbed-in the voices for 18 of the minor characters). Most critics wrote off Mr. Arkadin as a failed attempt to rekindle Welles’ creative flames.

Even sympathetic Welles scholars felt the need to mix their praise for the film with a strong disappointment in its shortcomings. Here’s what Joseph McBride had to say in his book Orson Welles:

If The Stranger is self-parody, albeit unconscious, Mr. Arkadin is something more dangerous and more interesting: a work, like Sternberg’s The Devil Is a Woman or Ford’s Donovan’s Reef, in which the artist pushes his style past its limits, treating his most personal themes self-consciously, with a measure of irony, and in a manner not pretending to physical or psychological realism. The result, if successful, is a refinement of the artist’s themes to a high pitch of intensity, an intoxicating liberation. The given story is kept purposefully simple so as not to hinder the free expression of character and motif. The pitfalls of such excess are obvious, though for Sternberg and Ford the problem is less acute because on a basic level the concerns of the director and the general audience coincide . . . Welles pretends to no such level of common response, and in this we may see the essential failure of Mr. Arkadin.

We may be due for a major reassessment of this often overlooked film. Criterion has released a three-disc DVD set it has optimistically titled The Complete Mr. Arkadin. The package contains no less than three versions of the film: the 99-minute Corinth version, which is the earliest English-language version; the 98-minute Confidential Report version, which is the European release that was completed by producer Louis Dolivet after he and Welles had split; and a new 105-minute comprehensive version that may be as close as we’ll ever come to what Welles had hoped the film might become.

The DVD set also includes a book version that in the true Wellesian tradition may — or may not — be a work by Orson Welles, since it appears to be “an unaccredited English translation of a French text adapted and translated from Welles’ writing by a friend and ghostwriter.” Intrigued? Welcome to the many mysteries that surround this unusual project.

Mr. Arkadin
(1955; directed by Orson Welles)
The Criterion Collection (DVD)

Wednesday, April 20 at 12:15 a.m. eastern (late Tue. night) on Turner Classic Movies

Mention the topic of foreign films to some people, and you may elicit a wince or frown. They think of hard-to-decipher films such as Bergman’s Persona (1966), austere films such as Dreyer’s Gertrud (1964), or confrontational films such as Fellini’s Satyricon (1969). Add in the difficulty of reading the subtitles, and you don’t have to travel far to find film fans who avoid anything foreign.

Fortunately, there are many foreign language films that are eminently approachable. They’re warm, upbeat, and easily digested. And truth be told, the approachable ones are often as good as the more demanding ones. In my opinion, Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) is as fine as 8½ (1963). But why choose between them, when you can savor both?

This brings us to Cinema Paradiso (1989). You would have to be hardhearted not to be touched emotionally by this film, yet it’s much more than a warmhearted story. It’s nostalgic not just for a way of life that had disappeared, but also for a style of filmmaking that had grown out-of-style. Ennio Morricone’s excellent musical score intensifies the experience, as it strikes the right mood in just the right places. Not surprisingly, Cinema Paradiso won the 1990 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

As good as the 124-minute theatrical release is, the 174-minute re-edited version is even better. You’ll have to rent or purchase the DVD to see the longer cut, which is more complete than the original 155-minute Italian release of the film. While all three versions are centered on the relationship between a young fatherless boy and a solitary movie projectionist, the newer version spends more time with the boy as an adult as he searches for Elena, his lost love.

Given the 124-minute running time listed on the TCM website, it looks like HTCM will be showing the theatrical version. Don’t worry about not seeing the longer version first, as the theatrical version stands up well on its own.

Cinema Paradiso
(1989; directed by Giuseppe Tornatore)
Miramax (Blu-ray and DVD)

Thursday, December 12 at 8:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Kevin Brownlow’s cinema history documentary, I’m King Kong!, is a profile of Merian C. Cooper. Known best as the larger-than-life director of King Kong, Cooper co-directed This Is Cinerama, which helped launch widescreen movies to the public. He also produced The Searchers with John Ford.

WWI bomber pilot, war prisoner who walked 400 miles across hostile terrain to escape, and tireless promoter of his own films, Cooper was a real-life Carl Denham (the flamboyant promoter in King Kong).

I’m King Kong!
(2005; directed by Kevin Brownlow, Christopher Bird)
Turner Home Entertainment (DVD)

Friday, July 12 at 5:00 a.m. eastern (late Thu. night) on Turner Classic Movies

Is Cops (1922) the best comedy short of all time? You can certainly make a case that it is. Film buffs split on whether Chaplin or Keaton is the king of comedy, so Chaplin fans might choose one of his Mutual comedies as the best short. Even so, I don’t know of any other short that’s as superbly inventive and frenetically paced.

Cops is darker in tone than the other great silent comedies. Comedy often takes the premise that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Think of TV situation comedies where a mistaken identity, or an attempt to fool someone into thinking you’re something you’re not, is the basis for many of the plots. Cops began production just as Keaton’s friend Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was facing a third trial. Perhaps for that reason, it’s darker, faster paced, and concerned with weightier issues, such as loneliness and the inevitability of death. As grim as that sounds, this is easily one of the funniest films ever made, and a real crowd pleaser for audiences who haven’t been exposed to silent comedy. Apparently, hopelessness can be extremely funny — as long as it’s happening to some other guy.

This film straddles two styles of comedy: the traditional slapstick comedy that’s mostly rough-and-tumble and a newer cerebral comedy that’s more ironic and self-aware. This hybrid form was ideally suited to Keaton’s character and comic approach. Full of carefully choreographed chases involving hundreds of pursuing policemen, Cops recalls the early Keystone comedies. No one could run as fast or as gracefully as Keaton, and there’s a keen joy in watching him run in high gear, while magically seeming to be suspended motionless in the air. The French gave Buster the nickname of “zero,” in part because his character and films reduce comedy to the bare essentials. If Kafka had written a true comedy (some argue his books are meant to be dark comedies), it might resemble a Keaton film, where Buster is pitted against the universe. Sometimes he wins; sometimes the universe wins.

Keaton and Chaplin films are profound in ways we don’t always expect. Keaton’s films provide lessons about our relationship to the universe, while Chaplin’s films provide lessons about our relationships with each other. That’s why it’s surprising to discover how dependent both filmmakers were on chance elements. In Rudi Blesh’s biography Keaton, Buster talked about the horse that pulled his wagon in Cops:

Onyx was my costar. Bruckman, for some cockeyed reason, named him Onyx. I can’t recall why we didn’t rent a horse. Anyway we bought this old-timer. There was a scene — before we stumble into the parade — where Onyx slows down and can’t pull the heavy load of furniture any longer. I’m to unharness him and lead him out from the shafts. Then it’s to cut and show me, bit in mouth, between the shafts pulling the wagon. Then pan back and show Onyx up in the wagon riding. It was a good idea except that Onyx wouldn’t go along with it. We wasted a day trying to get him up in that wagon. He wouldn’t walk up the ramp, refused to be hoisted in a veterinarian’s bellyband, snorted and kicked whenever we came near. We finally gave up and shot the scene with me pulling the wagon alongside of the horse. Not as good a gag, but it had to do. That finished the Saturday shooting. Monday morning we saw the reason for it all. Onyx had a brand-new colt standing by her when we came to the studio. Her, I said. Bruckman was just opening his mouth to say something. I could feel the word forming in his mind. I beat him to it. ‘The baby’s name,’ I said, ‘is Onyxpected!’

Cops concludes with the usual title card that reads, “The End.” Only this time, the words are carved into a tombstone with Keaton’s porkpie hat casually placed on top. If the film is a musing on how fate usually wins in the end, this would be the final irony. In the end, it really doesn’t matter — from our perspective — whether the hero gets the girl. The end result will be same. Only Keaton could conclude with such a morbid comment and still warrant a smile.

Cops
(1922; directed by Edward F. Cline and Buster Keaton)
Kino International (Blu-ray and DVD)

Sunday, October 2 at 9:30 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Fahrenheit 451 (1966) is a film that pleased almost no one when it was released. Truffaut fans felt it lacked the spontaneity and warmth of his previous films. Science fiction fans were puzzled by the lack of futuristic technology. Today we’re more sympathetic to the virtues of this unusual Truffaut movie, which was his first color film, his first studio film, his only English-language film, and his only venture into science fiction.

Just two years later, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) would portray another version of the future that lacked human warmth. In retrospect, Truffaut’s emphasis on the societal rather than technological ramifications seems a better fit for the theme of intellectual repression, which is at the center of both the book and movie.

The story is told through the eyes of Guy Montag (played by Oskar Werner), a fireman who doesn’t put out fires — he starts them. Firemen in the future destroy books because the written word is banned. No one is allowed to own or read books. In a wonderful conceit, the opening credits are read to us, as though the rules have spilled out from the story onto the medium itself. Nowhere on the screen will you see a printed word.

In an interview published in the book Françoise Truffaut by C. G. Crisp, Truffaut said he was drawn to the story because of his affection for reading and concern over institutional censorship:

The theme of the film is the love of books. For some this love is intellectual; you love a book for its content, for what is written inside it. For others it’s an emotional attachment to the book as an object. . . On a less individual and intimate level, the story interests me because it is a reality: the burning of books, the persecution of ideas, the terror of new concepts, these are elements that return again and again in the history of mankind. Once, they were expressed cruelly, openly. Now they are manifested more obscurely, more discreetly, but more dangerously.

The critics didn’t care much for this film in 1966, though Ray Bradbury praised Truffaut for having “given a new form to my book while remaining true to the spirit of it.” Today most film historians view this movie as a flawed work with cinematic elements that don’t always succeed. Bernard Herrmann’s restrained musical score and Nicholas Roeg’s color choices that pit conformity (red and black) against pseudo-individuality (yellow and blue) are perhaps too subtle. And while the characters too-often fail to connect emotionally with the viewer, the film does have its share of emotionally satisfying ideas and images.

Odds are you’ll savor the ending and find comfort in Truffaut’s optimism that the creative impulse will endure.

Fahrenheit 451
(1966; directed by Françoise Truffaut)
MCA Home Video (DVD)

Monday, June 14 at 3:45 a.m. eastern (late Sun. night) on Turner Classic Movies