This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, March 22, 2009 - This passage in a recent article by Anthony Kaufman at Moving Image Source about the demise of VHS has been on my mind for the last week or so:
"I never understood how this myth that 'everything is available on DVD' got started," agrees critic Dave Kehr, the DVD columnist for The New York Times. As evidence, he points to Turner Classic Movies' database of U.S. feature films — of the 157,068 titles listed as of late February 2009, fewer than 4 percent are available on home video. Less than 4 percent? At first I thought that number seemed ridiculously low, but after making my own mental list of titles I’ve tried to find, I decided that the TCM list is barely the tip of the iceberg.
The TCM list tends to favor older, pre-1960s titles. Here’s a random assortment of films from my own wish list:
- Demme’s “Citizens Band”
- Altman’s “Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” and “Brewster McCloud”
- most of Warhol
- Ken Russell’s “The Devils” and “Lisztomania"
- John Huston’s “Freud”
- Welles’ “Chimes at Midnight” and “The Magnificent Ambersons”
- Alan Rudolph’s “Welcome to L.A.”
- Michael Apted’s “Stardust”
- Blake Edwards’ “Gunn,” “The Carey Treatment” and “The Tamarind Seed"
- Dennis Hopper’s “The Last Movie”
- Stanley Donen’s “Movie Movie”
- Francis Coppola's "You're a Big Boy Now"
- Joan Silver’s “Chilly Scenes of Winter”
- Nick Ray’s “Party Girl” and “Bigger Than Life”
A few recent developments are bucking the tide, though. On April 21, Sony will release Peter Bogdanovich's never-seen-on-video "Nickelodeon" as a double-feature disc with "The Last Picture Show." "Nickelodeon" is a charming look at the early days of the movie industry. based on the director's own interviews with movie veterans. It stars Burt Reynolds, John Ritter and Ryan and Tatum O'Neal, and will be available in both color and black-and-white versions. (The film was released theatrically in color, but the director had wanted it shown in black and white.)
Meanwhile, Warner Brothers has dug deep into its sizable vault (which also includes the pre-1970 MGM library) and released 150 previously unreleased titles, available only through its online store. Among the obscurities: Coppola's "The Rain People," Altman's "Countdown," Jack Webb's absolutely loony "The D.I." and Budd Boetticher's "Westbound". You can find the complete list here .
As admirable as the Warner releases are, it's still just a drop in the bucket: Accordingly, I thought I’d begin a series of reviews in honor of the films that seem to have fallen through the cracks into DVD limbo. Any suggestions? What’s on your MIA list?
'The Voice of the Moon'
You would think that a film that brings together one of the world’s most acclaimed directors and a popular comic actor (and director) who was, at least briefly, an art-house success would have no trouble finding U.S. distribution. Why, then, does Federico Fellini’s final film “The Voice of the Moon,” starring Roberto Benigni, remain almost completely unknown, almost 20 years since its premiere and 15 years since Fellini’s death? There have been a few isolated screenings, but even extensive tributes to the director (such as the current exhibit in Los Angeles at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) seem almost unaware of the film’s existence.
Released in 1990, Fellini’s film, based on a 1987 novel “The Lunatic’s Poem,” is, like his penultimate film “Ginger and Fred,” a colorful but confused criticism of the modern world, set in the Po Valley region where he grew up. Benigni plays a man of questionable stability (in the novel his character has just been released from an asylum; the film is slightly less clear on this point), obsessed with a local beauty. As he wanders through the countryside, Fellini shows a once-isolated community that has become corrupted by the modern world, with commercialism and American culture (in the form of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”) taking over. In such an environment, Benigni’s romanticism is nearly trampled underfoot but endures nonetheless.
The film is a bit of a shapeless mess (albeit it a lovely one, photographed by the great Tonino Delli Colli), lacking the sharper satire of “Ginger and Fred.” but with a little patience the final half hour pays off, helped immeasurably by the charm of Benigni. But it’s unmistakably the work of Fellini and certainly worth the attention of anyone who has followed his work from the lighthearted post neorealist comedies of the '50s through the personal spectacles of the '60s and '70s, and on through the scattered (but occasionally ingenious) satires of the '80s. Why haven’t any U.S. distributors been willing to take a chance on it?
The Lens is the blog of Cinema St. Louis, hosted by the Beacon.