OK, here's something that's been bugging me. As excited as I would be to see Criterion releasing the Stan Brakhage films and whatnot, I've grown a little weary of the DVD thing. Yes, it's still terrific to have movies at home with good video and excellent sound quality. And yes, I'm grateful that I can now rent movies from local video stores in pristine quality on a disc rather than on a worn tape that's been played through some of the stankiest VCRs in the New York metro area and boasts little detail and almost no color to speak of. But the stuff that seemed so magical -- the so-called "extras" that were a source of endless delight and fascination on laserdisc -- has been debased by current marketing mentalities.

The apparent dictum? Bigger is better. A healthy helping of more, thank you very much. I love Peter Jackson, who with the release of a mammoth laserdisc edition of The Frighteners some years ago, became reigning king of the special edition. So New Line is probably doing the right thing in releasing a four-disc (or five-disc, if you spring for the super-duper collector's box) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000067DNF/deepfocus in November, which will include a fully-scored alternate version of the film that runs a half-hour or so longer than what we saw in theaters. In fact, the folks at New Line's DVD department have done a consistently admirable job, especially in terms of how much meaningful stuff they're able to fit on a single, $24.95 DVD edition. (I was fond, for instance, of the segment on how Final Destination was radically reworked after a test screening.) Elsewhere in the industry, though, the two-disc set seems to have become de rigeur -- not, I suspect, because most movies are so precious that they deserve the treatment, but because studios have found that they can jack the price up a little by including the second disc, thus increasing margins.

But even the most lavish Hollywood packages, despite the animated menus and clever navigational concepts, are suffering from a screaming banality in their content. It's inevitable that, as you look to appeal to a market that now includes fully one third of U.S. households, you're going to shy away from hardcore film-geek talk as you assemble your supplements. I'm thinking of David Fincher speaking in almost religious tones, on the Criterion laserdisc, about the chemical processes that were used to give Se7en it's despairing look (indeed, Finch gives a shout-out to Stan Brakhage himself as the opening credits roll) or about that same company's Martin Scorsese titles, which featured the kind of hyperactive descriptions of the shooting process that made you want to go out and make your own studio movie right now goddamnit. And I won't name names, but some of the directors who regularly offer DVD commentary either don't have anything interesting to say or just don't have their heart in the task.

Studios are also more skittish about content on DVD than their third-party laserdisc publishing partners used to be. The unedited versions of movies like Scream and Breaking the Waves were available on LD but remain MPAA-censored on the studio-sanctioned DVDs. And I'm thinking of quality laserdisc boxed sets like The Lubitsch Touch, which casually collected films (including the reputedly terrific Trouble in Paradise, which I have yet to see) that remain unavailable today on VHS or DVD because the studio rights holders are no longer willing to negotiate licensing deals with interested third parties -- and the studios themselves are too busy to release such "obscure" material!

To make matters worse, when the really good stuff does come out on DVD, it too often gets dumped unceremoniously. Witness the inauspicious debut of Murnau's legendary Sunrise on DVD as a mail-order only promotional title from Fox, or much of the Fox Lorber/Wellspring catalog to date, some of it transferred from mediocre masters picked up overseas. And, finally, lots of good stuff is simply being held back by rights holders who are apparently reluctant to give up the VHS franchise. New Yorker Video, for instance, is sitting on key Godard titles — Weekend and 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her — for reasons that I can't fathom, unless it's an unwillingness to give up the lucrative rates fetched by 16mm print rentals for classroom use (and if actual film is being supplanted in film schools in favor of DVD, that raises a whole 'nother question entirely).

Did I have a point? Oh yes. As the shelves of your favorite DVD emporium are filled to overflowing with marginal titles that have been given two-disc packages loaded with superfluous making-of "documentaries" and electronic press kits; as the amount of money and effort spent on the DVD version of a title seems to rise and fall in inverse proportion to the preciousness of said title, since DVD-production dollars come mostly from studio marketing departments, which obviously favor blockbusters and other mass-market prospects; as commentary tracks consist, more and more often, solely of actors, producers, directors and others sitting around a microphone, cracking wise and congratulating each other; and as it becomes harder to locate the gems among the massive quantities of chaff clogging the distribution channels every fourth quarter, buying DVDs simply isn't as invigorating a prospect as it was in the days when the format was new, or -- especially -- when laserdisc, which catered to the obsessive-compulsive film buff, ruled the kingdom of video.

I don't want to sound too cranky. I think DVD is a terrific product, a necessary evolution, and an intriguing 21st century development in terms of film distribution, specifically as independent filmmakers start to think creatively about using DVD as the primary, rather than secondary, means of distribution from the moment of inception of any given title. It's a great business to be in, one whose runaway success must be viewed as an affirmation of the importance of cinema in the daily lives of people all over the world. But the snooty cinephile in me will always be a little disappointed that DVD, like laserdisc before it, couldn't have remained a boutique product forever.

Comments

I think the problem is that DVD manufacturers are stuck between catering to the general public (who just want to rent some new release at Blockbuster) and the videophile audience. Before, we had VHS for the former and laserdiscs for the latter. The fact that DVDs are more widely available for rental than laserdiscs ever were is a major coup, but studios still have the desire to make them collectors' items of some sort. Hence we get ennui-filled or self-congratulatory directors' comments.

Maybe New Yorker can be convinced to release a box set of WEEKEND, TWO OR THREE THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER featuring deleted scenes (a longer traffic jam or coffee cup scene, perhaps) and commentary from JLG consisting of cryptic aphorisms. It would be nice to see Wellspring get their act together too, especially since their Fassbinder titles are on the way.

Posted by: Steve Erickson at October 12, 2024 01:13 PM

I know what you mean. Another germany-specific problem is, to explain, over here all movies are dubbed (quite good actually, but still not the same), lazy companies don´t even include the original language tracks. This has happened on movies like "Flirting with Disaster" and "Abre los ojos - Open your Eyes".
As i recently found out there is also no german DVD of "Wings of Desire", which i´ll now have to import from the UK. This has really turned me to the internet where some movies are at least available through filesharing, at least a possibility to see some movies at all.

Posted by: Heiko Stullich at October 14, 2024 05:53 AM

At my school there are now no 16mm screenings in the film classes. They rely solely on projected DVDs, which isn't so bad in my opinion. It's certainly much cheaper for the university, which doesn't have near the budget of a school like NYU, and the picture quality is far superior to the old 16mm prints that used to be shown on campus.

Posted by: Scott W. Black at October 19, 2024 04:35 PM

Scott, I guess I see your point about the 16mm prints, and I was probably spoiled by taking film classes with professors who believed passionately in the primacy of the celluloid image. There's nothing quite like seeing a 16mm 'scope print of The Wild Bunch or Halloween projected on the freaking wall of an auditorium (because the screen just isn't big enough to hold the widescreen image) on campus in the dead of winter. Then again, I also remember the time Bruce Kawin, who still teaches at CU, insisted on showing the first five minutes or so of Don't Look Now on video because a few seconds of footage were missing from the 16mm print. (I also remember when Stan Brakhage freaked out a year or so later because he worried that Bruce had actually snipped footage out of said print to keep anyone else from showing it. "God help him," he muttered as he stormed up the aisle toward the projection booth. But it was OK -- the print had a trailer for the movie at the front, which Brakhage misinterpreted as subversion on Bruce's part.)

On a related note, I was interested to see a new schedule for MoMA's Gramercy Theater indicating that Harry Kumel is introducing his weirdo Daughters of Darkness on Halloween as part of the current Delphine Seyrig series. I'm not nuts about the movie, but I thought it would be nice to see on a proper screen in that kind of environment. And then I got a press release indicating that the film was actually being shown on DVD, per the director's request. I mean, wow. That's gotta beat the VHS copy of Cat Chaser that Abel Ferrara showed at Anthology last year, but I find it startling how quickly DVD has been embraced — even by filmmakers themselves — as a replacement for looking at actual films.

-bf-

Posted by: Bryant at October 22, 2023 10:33 PM

Bryant, TROUBLE IN PARADISE is as terrific as reported, and as it is now just about to be released on Criterion DVD, don't miss the chance to see it (though, like most all Lubitsch, it was designed for the "momentum" of full-audience-laughter).

Posted by: Scott K. Ratner at December 24, 2023 12:53 PM

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