With so many classic movies and vintage TV series now available in DVD box sets, there's hardly a moment left to watch new stuff. Michael Dwyer picks the best out of the box
Most of these box sets and classic movies on DVD should be easily available from the main music and DVD stores, and prices will vary. For the best value and the widest possible choice, I recommend purchasing on-line. Three very efficient sites I recommend, all of which provide free postage for Irish customers, are www.play.com www.sendit.com and www.blahdvd.com
HEIMAT: SERIES ONE
Now available on DVD in a six-disc box set, Edgar Reitz's enthralling 1984 epic follows life in a German village across the generations from 1919 to 1982. Over 11 episodes and running for close on 16 hours, this captivating human drama artfully takes its fictional characters through periods of great historical turbulence and change. Reitz produced a second series in 1994, and recently completed a third, following events since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
THE JAMES CAGNEY DVD COLLECTION
The versatile talent that was Cagney is celebrated in this fine four-film DVD box set. It includes his breakthrough performance in The Public Enemy (1931), for which he had been cast in a supporting role until director William Wellman, impressed by what he saw, switched Cagney with the original lead, Edward Woods, after just three days of shooting. The set also includes The Roaring Twenties (1939), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and best of all, Raoul Walsh's gripping White Heat (1949), in which Cagney vividly portrayed the mother-fixated mobster, Cody Jarrett, and uttered the memorable closing line: "Made it ma. Top of the world."
THE GEORGE STEVENS COLLECTION
A two-time winner of the best director Oscar in the 1950s (for A Place in the Sun and Giant), Stevens is the subject of a fascinating documentary, George Stevens: A Film-maker's Journey, directed and narrated by his son George Stevens Jr and featuring interviews with over 20 actors and directors and a wealth of clips. It is one of four films in this five-disc box set, which also includes Stevens Jr's documentary, D-Day to Berlin, featuring rare colour footage shot on the frontlines by his father. Completing the set are the scintillating 1942 comedy, Woman of the Year, which first paired Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and the enthralling 1956 epic, Giant, which featured James Dean's third and final starring role. Running for 200 minutes and never flagging, and spanning over 20 years in the lives of wealthy and nouveau riche Texans, Giant also features Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, Mercedes McCambridge, Sal Mineo, Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper. The two-disc DVD of Giant contains a wealth of extra features.
FOUR JACQUES TATI FILMS
Tati, who died in 1982, was a truly distinctive talent, a writer, actor and director with a terrific flair for slapstick, generally involving his recurring character, the well-meaning but hopelessly accident-prone M. Hulot. Tati's four best films are now available on separate DVDs in restored versions from the British Film Institute. Jour de Fête (1949), in which he plays a self-deluded postman trying to introduce modern methods to the postal system of rural France, was first released in black-and-white and is here in its original colour version. Tati plays M. Hulot in all three of the other movies: Les Vacances de M. Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle (1958) and his most radical and ambitious production, Playtime (1967).
THE OLIVER STONE COLLECTION
This bumper 13-disc set features 10 of Stone's movies from the powerful Salvador (1986) onwards, omitting only Talk Radio, Nixon and Alexander, which has yet to be released on DVD. The earlier films provide a welcome reminder of Stone's skills as a filmmaker: Salvador, Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK, available here in the director's cut. Any Given Sunday (1999), in which Jamie Foxx first showed his ability as a serious actor, is the best of the later films, which include The Doors, Heaven on Earth, U-Turn and the once highly controversial Natural Born Killers. Completing the set are Stone's documentaries on Fidel Castro (Looking For Fidel) and the Israel-Palestine conflict (Persona Non Grata), along with another documentary, Oliver Stone's America, and his student film, Last Year in Vietnam.
THE CHASE
Now available on DVD for the first time, Arthur Penn's superb 1966 drama is a neglected masterpiece of anxiety, bigotry and duplicity in a Texas town. It is charged with Penn's disillusionment with the death of the American Dream in the aftermath of the JFK assassination, and one key sequence is clearly modelled on the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Marlon Brando is at his most masochistic as the incorruptible sheriff, Robert Redford is an escaped prisoner seeking to prove his innocence, and Jane Fonda plays his wife, who is having an affair with the local power and money heir, played by James Fox.
THE LEOPARD
Filmed on locations in Sicily, Luchino Visconti's towering 1963 epic is handsomely mounted as it captures the turbulent period of Italian unification in the early 1860s. Burt Lancaster is outstanding as the ageing prince whose nephew (Alain Delon) goes off to fight with Garibaldi's revolutionaries and falls in love with a merchant's daughter (Claudia Cardinale). The DVD features the complete three-hour version in an impeccable high-definition transfer from the film's original 70mm negative, with fully restored image and sound, and it is presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio.
BAMBI
Arguably the finest production from Walt Disney's heyday, the 1942 animated classic has an enduring quality that few films can match. Scary, moving and beautifully drawn, it has been fully restored and remastered on a two-disc DVD set crammed with extras. A 50-minute documentary on its production features insightful commentaries from, among others, Pixar's guiding light John Lasseter. Another segment explains the restoration process, while Disney himself takes a behind-the-scenes look at his work in the 1957 featurette, Tricks of the Trade.
