DVD Spin Doctor

DVD review: 'The Fall of the Roman Empire'

After 1961's "El Cid," noted crank Charlton Heston wanted nothing more to do with Sophia Loren. So when producer Samuel Bronston came calling again for "The Fall of the Roman Empire," the actor rejected him, despite the box office riches that flowed from "El Cid."

For "The Fall of the Roman Empire," Bronston and Co. turned to Irish actor Stephen Boyd, who'd supported Heston in "Ben-Hur," earning an Oscar nomination. Boyd had just missed out playing Marc Antony in 1963's "Cleopatra." "He'll look great on a horse," they figured.

But Boyd was no Heston, unfortunately, and "The Fall of the Roman Empire" proved to be no "El Cid."

"Roman Empire" bombed, despite its wondrous re-creation of ancient Rome. The three-hour flop with the biggest budget in film history brought an end to Bronston's moviemaking adventures in Spain.

The Weinstein Company, which did a fine job with the "El Cid" DVD set earlier this year, returns with another outstanding Bronston video using basically the same format. While "The Fall of the Roman Empire" disappoints on many levels, this DVD presentation does not. Fans of the "El Cid" set will want this one as well.

"The Fall of the Roman Empire" movie has its moments, no doubt, starting with the magnificent scenes shot in its to-scale version of the Forum, built on the plains outside Madrid.

Stars Boyd and Loren suffer from zero chemistry, but the second tier of international film stars come through. Bronston thought big in casting, too: Many of the supporting actors could have opened a movie in those days. Stealing the show were old pro Alec Guinness and newcomer Christopher Plummer.

Guinness played the ruler Marcus Aurelius, a visionary emperor dedicated to furthering Pax Romana (Roman peace). It's a goody-goody role that Guinness complained about, but he sells it like free togas and carries the talky first act.

Plummer, then a TV actor, played the emperor's nasty but charming son Commodus, who ascends to the throne upon the old man's murder. Plummer plays the youthful despot like a cross between the seductive snake in "The Jungle Book" and Mr. Rogers. Eerie and entertaining every second Plummer's on stage.

Marcus Aurelius and Commodus were real Romans, of course, as was Aurelius' daughter, played by Loren. Our hero Livius (Boyd) was a creation of the script. The true and bogus are all sorted out for us in the extras, by the same gang of biographers, witnesses and historians who worked the "El Cid" DVD extras.

The historians have two extra features in which to point out the film's inaccuracies and fabrications, taking the attitude that, hey, it's a movie not a classroom lesson. Those lessons can be found on disc 3, which features educational shorts made on the "Roman Empire" sets by the Encyclopedia Britanica company.

Bronston and the reference giant saw it as win-win -- instant academic credibility for the epic in exchange for the opportunity to make educational films in the Roman Forum replica. These awkward but pleasing shorts will bring back some memories for kids of the era. (This being the '60s, it appeared that everyone in Rome was kind of chubby, even the poor.)

The "Roman Empire" making-of feature benefits from crisp color footage of the production. The docu centers on the re-creation of the Forum, stressing the film's incredible attention to detail in costuming and production design. Buildings were finished inside and out, front and back, even if they weren't utilized. Some of this over-the-top dedication came from shady execs making busy work in order to fuel the production's gravy train.

"In this era of computer-generated images ... I think it is impossible to fully appreciate the colossal, almost unfathomable size of ambition of 'The Fall of the Roman Empire' set," one Bronston biographer says.

The docu continues into the fall of the Bronston empire, recycling footage from the "El Cid" extras.

"Roman Empire's" 2.35:1 widescreen images look good overall, but there are problems with contrasts going both ways. In some scenes, facial detail looks wiped out by the hard contrast, with the actors' eyes and teeth creepy chalk white. In other scenes, the backgrounds appear soft and mushy.

The 5.1 audio mix sounds superior, with aggressive front-centered separation that sometimes recalls the ping-pong days of 1960s stereo experimentation.

The bracing horn-heavy score comes from Dimitri Tiomkin, who merits a DVD docu similar to the for Miklos Rozsa on "El Cid." People who know their film music consider this one of Tiomkin's best works, but I found it repetitive and occasionally headache-inducing.

The DVD commentary comes from Bronston's son, Bill, a friend of this DVD blog, and the Samuel Bronston biographer Mel Martin. Bronston explains that the missing footage found a few months back came too late for this edition. (DVD Spin Doctor broke that story, BTW.)

The "Limited Collector's Edition" includes a reproduction of the booklet sold to theatrical audiences as well as some postcards. The educational shorts are exclusive to this edition, on a third disc. The standard edition of "Fall of the Roman Empire" has the two discs that matter and saves you $10.

Still to come from the Weinsteins' Bronston series: "55 Days at Peking" and "Circus World."

New Dirty Harry DVDs: We're in luck

Clint Eastwood's "Dirty Harry" films return to duty June 3, retooled and reloaded for the DVD and Blu-ray formats.

Warner Home Video's special edition of "Dirty Harry" merits a separate Blu-ray release, but you'll have to spring for the box set to get the other four Harry films in high definition.

All of the action movies have been remastered and come with new commentaries, Warner said. An earlier version of this box set came out in 2001. Some of those extras are being ported over to the new discs.

"The Dirty Harry Ultimate Collector's Edition" set includes the five films -- from the seminal "Dirty Harry" (1971) to the godawful "The Dead Pool" (1988) -- as well as the feature-length docu "Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows." The DVD box set has seven discs; the Blu-ray five.

Collectors may or may not get excited about a 40-page book, a wallet with badge and I.D. card; some 5x7-inch lobby card repros; a map tracking Harry's hunt across San Francisco for the Scorpio killer; and "never before seen" production correspondence.

I like a couple of these movies, notably "Dirty Harry," even though most of the films are quite dated in that ghastly '70s way. Don't mind the clunky right-wing moralizing that freaks out some folks (even though I'm a Clinton Democrat). DVD Savant, however, had some major issues with the ugliness of "Dirty Harry" back in 2001.

Here's the rundown on the separate DVDs' commentaries and the new extras:

Dirty Harry: Commentary by (the ever-reliable) Eastwood biographer Richard Schickel. New featurette "The Long Shadow of Dirty Harry," about the movie's legacy. The respected docu "Dirty Harry: The Original" with Robert Urlich, repeats from the 2001 DVD.
Magnum Force: Commentary by writer and man of action John Milius. New featurette: "A Moral Right: The Politics of Dirty Harry."
The Enforcer: Commentary by director James Fargo. New featurette "The Business End: Violence in Cinema."
Sudden Impact: Commentary again by Schickel. New featurette: "The Evolution of Clint Eastwood," about the star's career as a director (he helmed this film).
The Dead Pool: Commentary by producer David Valdes and Cinematographer Jack N. Green. New featurette: "The Craft of Dirty Harry."

The standard DVD box set will street for $75; the Blu-ray box's bail is set at $130.

Indiana Jones DVDs discover new extras

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" opens the summer blockbuster season on Thursday, May 22. Old-guy action hero Harrison Ford cracks the whip and mumbles something about whipper-snappers. We'll all be there.

Update 5/14: Read the DVD review of "Indiana Jones: The Adventure Collection."

The week before, on May 13, Paramount Home Entertainment rereleases the original three Indiana Jones films on DVD. No word about high-definition releases, but of course they won't be in the studio's former format, HD DVD. For now, Indy is a casualty of the high-def war.

The movies have not been remastered for this release. The selling point here is the titles are available individually; you don't have to buy the entire box set that came out in 2003. The films have individual bonus features, unlike on the box set, which had a fourth disc dedicated to extras.

Par promises "all-new bonus content that delves into the making of the legendary series as the filmmakers and cast look back and a new world of adventure opens up with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and others offering hints about what to expect in the newest installment."

Owners of "The Adventures of Indiana Jones: The Complete DVD Movie Collection" probably won't want to upgrade, unless fandom makes these features irresistible:

Raiders of the Lost Ark: Introduction by Steven Spielberg & George Lucas; "Indiana Jones: An Appreciation": The cast and crew of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" pay tribute to the original trilogy. "The Melting Face": A re-creation of the showstopper effect from "Raiders," with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas commenting on the evolution of visual effects and CGI.

The Temple of Doom: Introduction by Spielberg and Lucas. "Creepy Crawlies": Spielberg, Lucas and producer Frank Marshall reminisce about snakes, bugs and rats. What appears to be a now-and-then locations feature.

The Last Crusade: Introduction by Spielberg and Lucas. "The Women": The American Film Institute Tribute with the three Indiana Jones women (Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw and Alison Doody) talking about their roles. "Friends and Enemies": Spielberg, Lucas and Indiana Jones writers discuss their iconic characters, including a look at new faces in "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

All three discs have storyboards, galleries, effects, marketing and a Lego game demo.

Lost 'Fall of Roman Empire' footage found

“Lost” footage from “The Fall of the Roman Empire” apparently has been found in London, perhaps in time for this year’s DVD release.

(Update: Read "The Fall of the Roman Empire" DVD review.)

At Monday’s screening of “El Cid” in Hollywood, the son of producer William Bronston told the audience of seeing a prerelease version of the epic as a boy. He later wondered why some of the best lines and scenes were edited out of the movie when it premiered in 1964.

An audience member told William Bronston he thought he could find the missing footage. A few days later, Bill emailed me with this good news:

“I just got word that one of the members of the audience followed through on my direction to contact the Weinsteins about his confidence in being able to find the 30 minutes of missing footage cut from the release print of ‘The Fall.’ He did and the next day found the footage in London, which he has offered to get for the Weinsteins. Amazing!”

The Weinstein Company/Genius Products has “The Fall of the Roman Empire” scheduled for an April 29 release, as part of its Samuel Bronston epics slate. There two two-disc sets: a "limited collector's edition" and a "deluxe edition."

“Maybe there'll be a superb additional ‘special feature’ of the directors cut with the most dramatic pieces in the DVD package,” William Bronston wrote. “What is missing made the movie for me.”

The complete Bronston release slate: “El Cid,” “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” “55 Days at Peking” and “Circus World.” Disney released "Roman Empire" on DVD in 2001, to mixed reviews.

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The mighty 'El Cid': DVD review, interview

The long-awaited DVD release of “El Cid” marks the return of one of the 1960s’ most-remarkable film epics.

The restored three-hour adventure screened the other night in Hollywood, on the eve of the DVD release, courtesy of the Weinstein Company/Genius Products and the American Film Institute.

When a presenter noted that the widescreen movie was produced decades before CGI -- that those seas of warriors were brimming with real human beings -- the full house applauded. Here was your basic Cast of Thousands. We're not likely to see another one like "El Cid."

(Update: Read "The Fall of the Roman Empire" DVD review.)

The stars were Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. They couldn’t stand each other, according to the extras in the Miriam Collection’s double-disc release of “El Cid.” (Miriam is a new Weinstein label named in honor of the founding brothers’ mother.) Heston apparently was embittered by Loren's salary of $1 million while he received $800,000. Heston was known for being hard on his leading ladies.

"El Cid" is no "Becket," but for an epic packed with troop movements and battle scenes, the movie does pretty well with the drama. A love-hate romance and fact-based political intrigue are at its center. " 'Ben Hur' was a chariot movie," Heston says. "This was a drama."

The film about Spain’s unifying hero of the 11th century is beautifully rendered in 2:35 widescreen. “El Cid” was restored in the 1990s by Martin Scorsese and now worked more completely in the new century. Many elements have been lost or damaged, resulting in some off-color tints.

The story of “El Cid's” making is almost as captivating as the movie itself. The producer, Samuel Bronston (“King of Kings”), was making his epics out of Spain for various reasons, including freedom from bureaucratic Hollywood. He hired blacklisted writers -- such as Ben Barzman for "El Cid" -- while the film studios fired them. Unfortunately, Barzman's name isn't on the new print, his widow pointed out at the prescreening party. (Copyright issues got the blame.)

Bronston’s sideline business of crude-oil arbitrage and Spanish government's extraordinary cooperation kept the project afloat. The gamble paid off, as “El Cid” became a blockbuster. Bronston, unfortunately, wasn't able to repeat that success with "The Fall of the Roman Empire" and his film operation collapsed four years later. ("Roman Empire" is expected on DVD in the spring.)

DVD extras include a fine feature-length making-of docu and profiles of three off-camera forces: Bronston, director Anthony Mann and composer Miklos Rozsa. You’re lucky to get one good bio on most DVD sets -- here we have three. Fascinating men with underappreciated roles in movie history.

The DVD comes in a roadshow-ready collector's edition -- including a reprint of the movie's souvenir program and a 1961 comic book -- as well as a standard DVD. Both have the same on-screen content.

Samuel Bronston’s son William was one of the filmmakers' family members who attended the screening. We talked in an Arclight lobby under photos of Mardi Gras revelry.

I asked about his involvement in bringing “El Cid” to DVD:

William Bronston: I haven’t been part of that loop. My family has no holdings on any of the properties. My dad lost everything in the (late 1960s) bankruptcy. … What really shocked me was there was there was no DVD of (“El Cid”).

In 1993, Harvey Weinstein bought the rights for the four last movies that my dad did: “El Cid,” “The Fall of the Roman Empire,” “55 Days in Peking” and “Circus World.” Weinstein was going to bring them back to market then but … (shrugs).

So it has now been a decade since Martin Scorsese did the laserdisc -- which was a very beautiful piece of work, but it was not meaningfully able to reach the market (in that format). … It turns out that this is one of the leading movies that the market wants on DVD.

Glenn Abel: Right, it’s always been listed in DVD aficionado polls as the No. 1, 2 or 3 most-wanted discs.

Were you happy with the portrait of your dad that came out on the DVD?

WB: Very much. It was beautifully edited.

He was a mystery to me. And there’s a real yearning to get to know where we’re from and what is our patrimony. And to know who that was. And to have strangers tell us who he was. It’s extremely powerful to have a stranger who knew him talk to me about him. …

It’s just a beautiful job that they did (on the DVD profiles). It’s very personal (with children of the producer, director and composer participating as witnesses). I thought the commentaries were very special, particularly Paul Nagle’s. He’s been studying my dad for a dozen years.

GA: Were the older clips of your sister from the laserdisc extras?

WB: Yes. What was happening was my sister was dying of cancer this past year. And I wanted very much to have the job done and contribute that work of hers before she died. She died Christmas Eve.

On the 22nd of December I talked to (project publicist) Tawna Boucher and I said listen, my sister’s really at the end. If you have a copy, please, please FedEx it to her. She FedEx’d it that day.

My sister sat up in bed with a smile and watched that one-hour special feature. And was just enchanted. And told her husband how wonderful it was. 36 hours later she died.

GA: You learned a lot from this DVD, it seems.

WB: My dad was an extraordinarily original man. When you’re a kid you just take that for granted. He did things that were brilliant. I never gave him credit for that.

When my dad and I started to finally get together (as adults), he was losing his mind from Alzheimer’s already. … I didn’t understand the commitment he made, the integrity he brought, the showmanship and the originality. To see the stuff in the movie and to have the story told is sweet beyond words. I’m so proud of him. He lived a great creative life that was not without suffering.

Update 2/2/08: An audience member at the "El Cid" screening listened to Bronston talk about great missing footage from the prerelease version of "The Fall of the Roman Empire," and realized he knew where to find the reels. They were quickly located in London.

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DVD review: 'Taxi Driver'

An imaginative extra on Sony's new "Taxi Driver" rounds up hacks who worked Manhattan in the 1970s, just like the movie's sicko antihero Travis Bickle. Some of the taxi drivers remember it as "a great adventure"; others start their stories with something like, "The guy pulls out an ax. ..."

One of the hacks thinks back on the pre-Disney Times Square and comes to this conclusion about the street life: "Mr. Bickle wasn't wrong."

Bickle, of course, is the man who couldn't take it any more, who'd had enough of "all the animals" that came out at night. Thirty years later, Martin Scorsese and Paul Schraeder's portrait of a lonely paranoid driven to multiple murders retains all of its punch. The movie holds up 100%.

Scorsese, unfortunately, doesn't do a director's commentary on Sony's fine new double-disc set of "Taxi Driver: Limited Collector's Edition." He already did one, a decade ago, on Criterion's laserdisc. (The track is out there somewhere in bitstream land.) Not having one of the great directors (and movie commentators) talk about one of his greatest movies is a shame, but there's plenty on this two-disc set here to bring "Taxi Driver" into focus -- starting with Scorsese's 17-minute intro to the movie.

"It was a film that we though wasn't going to be seen by anybody," Scorsese recalls. Still an unproven filmmaker, he was willing to shoot "Taxi Driver" on video tape. "We just had to make it." Then came "Mean Streets" and De Niro's performance in "Godfather II."

Scorsese says part of the pull was his and Schraeder's identification with "loser" Bickle -- who declares solemnly in the script, "I believe that someone should become a person like other people."

"We knew how he felt," Scorsese says. "Maybe it (was) a coming of age thing. ... There's a certain truth that Schraeder hit upon. ... I still can't verbalize it."

Schraeder says in his new feature-length commentary that one of several uncomfortable truths about the character is, "He's not an alien. He's an American kid. ... He's one of us."

Also doing a commentary is Robert Kolker, a film professor who talks about the influences of John Ford and Albert Hitchcock. (Bernard Hermann, Hitchcock's music man, did the unsettling, deeply urban score. Unfortunately the DVD extras don't examine Hermann's role beyond images of his written score.)

Other extras include the solid docu "Making Taxi Driver" (also on the last DVD), "Producing Taxi Driver" with Michael Phillips, an interview with the cinematographer Michael Chapman and a fun interactive visit with the Big Apple locations as they looked in the '70s and today. Sorry, the diner's gone.

The surround audio has plenty of punch if not much of a soundstage itinerary. Hermann's music oozes dread with the strong subwoofer track. All that classic dialogue sounds unusually distinct for films of this era.

The 1:85.1 images look as they should -- few signs of wear; city-streets grain but no unintentional murk. Owners of the previous DVD should pay the upgrade fare without hestitation.