Robert Tanitch reviews the latest DVDs
WOODEN CROSSES (Eureka).Raymond Bernard’s adaptation of Roland Dorgeles’s book, Les Croix de Bois, is a brilliantly convincing recreation of World War 1 in the original trenches and no man’s land. Released in 1932, and long unavailable, it is one of the greatest war films ever made, humane, painful, poetic and as authentic and as invaluable as any historical document. The images have a powerful impact. Adieu la vie. This isn’t war: its massacre, lambs to the slaughterhouse, a terrible, horrific waste of life. The photography, lighting and editing are masterly. So are the realistic sound effects. The dialogue rings true. The cast is headed by Pierre Blancher and Charles Vanel. The acting is always understated. “Let us live,” the soldiers pray. Not much chance of that if you are forced to stay in the trenches when you can hear the Germans digging away underneath to lay mines.
DARLING (StudioCanal). John Schlesinger’s 1965 film, a key movie of the era, very New Wave and all that, was Britain’s riposte to Italy’s La Dolce Vita. The script is a mordant Swinging Sixties satire on the shoddy, shallow glossy world of advertising and fashion photography. The beautiful Julie Christie, in an Oscar-winning role, is the glittering, ambitious, amoral darling, a destructive, tawdry, selfish bitch who gets rich and lonely. Laurence Harvey (suitably unpleasant) gets top billing but it is Dirk Bogarde as a thoroughly decent chap, a Frontman on a major TV arts programme, who has the more interesting role.
THE GRANDMASTER (Metrodome). Wong Kar Wai’s film is an elaborate paean to martial arts and its brutal choreography. It is also a tribute to Ip Man, the grandmaster and mentor to Bruce Lee. The story-line is not particularly coherent and people looking for an action movie will be disappointed. The film is essentially an operatic exhibition, a theatrical demonstration, of a variety of martial arts skills. The opening sequence (in a deluge of rain) is stunningly photographed and sharply edited in stylized slow motion. Tony Leung plays Ip Man.
PELO MALO/BAD HAIR (Axiom). Director Mariana Rondon sets the action firmly in the squalor and traffic jams of Caracas; and nobody seeing this film will want to go to Caracas for a holiday. An out-of-work single mother (Samantha Castillo), struggling to survive, shows no affection for her 9-year-old son (Samuel Lange Zambrano) who hates his curly Afro hair and wants to straighten it. She is so worried about his sexuality that she forces him to watch her having sex with the man who had sacked her, not the prettiest of sights. Does she really think that this will encourage him to be manly? Yes, she does
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