The DVD File

Shoot the Piano Player (Criterion)

This deluxe dvd edition of Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player arrives at just the moment the gatekeepers of film culture had repudiated it. The critical rejection came with all the overwrought praise for David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. I have not read a critical explanation for how Cronenberg's little genre caprice earned its elevation into a moral fable indicting primal American (Bush-era) malevolence. No one could explain it, it just got great reviews.

The reason why can be found in Shoot the Piano Player, one of the key French New Wave films that taught the world how to re-assess Hollywood genre movies. Truffaut adapted the b-movie genre's fascination with the criminal world and psychological stress to discover a new way of appreciating contemporary (1961) French society. His protagonist Charlie (Charles Aznavour) has hidden his past and attempted to live a new life away from his former obligations and regrets. Truffaut's moral rectitude is exactly what fans like about Cronenberg's perverse, piddling story of an American family man rebounding from his criminal past. Truffaut made a romantic, existential fable; Cronenberg made a tired exercise in self-loathing.

Almost 50 year's later, Truffaut's film still reigns supreme, even it is out-of-fashion among the hipoisie. Piano Player's sparkling dvd transfer should have been recognized as an occasion-an opportunity to reconnect with the verities, ammunition to reject Cronenberg's ethical insanity and dreary aesthetics. Truffaut built his film on the moral and artistic foundations of American pulp-specifically Nicholas Ray's 1953 On Dangerous Ground. That's why Piano Player's narrative is so rounded, credible and resplendent (the snowy climax is right out of Ray); Truffaut explored Charlie's engagement with contemporary life while reinforcing the emotional core. And yet this funny, romantic film surges with pathos; it is a great tragedy while Cronenberg's film is merely bathetic.

Piano Player shames today's cultural gatekeepers; it exposes that perhaps they've been lured away from life with the recent release of too many dank keyboard dramas-The Piano, The Piano Teacher, The Pianist. Compared to Truffaut's film, they're all out of tune. ?Armond White



Saraband (Sony)

Ingmar Bergman broke his promise when he came out of retirement with Saraband. Yet, he kept the faith and the film's new dvd release is the ideal place to see how. Saraband was actually made for television and was shot in video-superbly shot as a great filmmaker should if he who cares more about the look of a film than about being trendy.

Bergman is still interested in psychological anguish and Saraband revisits characters from his 1970s tv opus Scenes from a Marriage-Bergman's dullest characters who had gotten away from the spiritual mystery and glow of his greatest films. Marianne and Josef (still played by Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson) have left marital turmoil behind; now old friends their sense of mortality is increased by witnessing the anguish of Josef's son and granddaughter.



With Saraband Bergman bequeaths his malaise to the next generations but the film is most interesting for the excellent quality of acting, the rapt concentration on the human face that Bergman also bequeaths to the current generation of filmmakers. Digital-video sloths should look at Saraband and learn. Scenery-chewing actors like Charlize Theron and Philip Seymour Hoffman shold look at this cast and marvel. Bergman's filmmaking art is still intact and impressive, but this lesser tv movie appropriately offers an opportunity for fascination and study. ?