Author: Doug Cummings

Last week, the Criterion Collection released the first DVD of a key Bresson film in North America, Diary of a Country Priest (Journal d’un curÈ de campagne, 1951). This is my review of the DVD, which has also been posted at the site I co-admin, www.Robert-Bresson.com.

* * * *

The Film

Diary of a Country Priest is a key film in Bresson’s oeuvre for several reasons. It was his first film subsequent to the poorly received Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne released six years earlier. It was his first collaboration with cinematographer LÈonce-Henry Burel (a …

Well, well, well.

The Home Theater Forum has just announced this:

INGMAR BERGMAN COLLECTION

MGM Home Entertainment will not be releasing the Ingmar Bergman DVD Collection on Tuesday, February 10 due to transfer problems on two of the discs.

If possible, please hold your reviews until we announce the new street date which we expect to be sometime in May. We will contact you once we have further information.

It’s amazing what a couple of websites and a discerning consumer base can do. As my friend Nick Wrigley put it, “Pre-internet, pre-DVD, [this boxset] could’ve been released as [cropped] VHS …

The above screengrab is from MGM’s new DVD of Shame, part of their heavily-touted Ingmar Bergman boxset (Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Persona, The Serpent’s Egg, and Shame, along with extensive bonuses)–and it showcases the studio’s shamefully incorrect cropping of several of these titles. As Gary Tooze of DVDBeaver put it, “I can’t believe anyone but my uncle Des would frame this shot.”

Apparently, MGM decided most of the films should be framed at 1.66:1 instead of the proper 1.37:1. Several sites, including Masters of Cinema, are now advising cinephiles to cancel …

Can you name the films above?

This weekend, I had the rare opportunity to view these posters (and many like them) as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences new exhibition of Czech film posters. Unlike Western movie posters, which typically feature simple facial collages meant to serve and promote the star system, Eastern European posters once provided a major social and cultural function as public art. During the Cold War, the communist governments of Poland and Czechoslovakia allowed diversions from their “socialist realist” norm and allowed artists to create movie posters that could compete internationally in …

As an addendum to my last blog entry, the Criterion Collection announced today it will release Ozu’s silent A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and his sound remake, Floating Weeds (1959), together as a 2-disc DVD in April. Coming on the heels of Ikiru, The Rules of the Game, and Diary of a Country Priest, Criterion is definitely starting 2004 with a bang.

Details will include:

Disc One: A Story of Floating Weeds

ïNew high-definition digital transfer with restored image and sound
ïAudio commentary by Japanese film historian Donald Richie
ïNew score by noted silent-film composer Donald …

One of the best writers on film today, James Quandt, hasn’t authored any book-length studies I’m aware of–although he has edited several definitive compilations–and one of my dreams is that he’ll manage to compile his own writing into such a book someday soon. As the Senior Programmer for the CinÈmathËque Ontario, one can catch his fleeting essays on their website from time to time, but there doesn’t seem to be any archive for preserving this writing for posterity.

It’s a shame, because Quandt’s ability to balance a love of poetic language with precise and knowledgeable description makes him …