The Milky Way Criterion
directed by Luis Buñuel
starring Paul Frankeur, Laurent Terzieff, Alain Cuny, Edith Scob, Bernard Verley
Private Fears in Public Places Ifc
directed by Alain Resnais
starring Sabine Azéma, Lambert Wilson, André Dussollier, Pierre Arditi
Cría cuervos Criterion
directed by Carlos Saura
starring Geraldine Chaplin, Mónica Randall, Florinda Chico, Ana Torrent
Gran Casino
The Young One
LionsGate
directed by Luis Buñuel
starring Libertad Lamarque, Jorge Negrete, Meche Barba, Agustín Isunza
 Luis Buñuel's "The Milky Way" (1969) gets a new Criterion Collection release this month on DVD  Carlos Saura's masterpiece, "The Garden of Delights," is not yet on DVD, but "Cria Cuervos" makes a great introduction  Alain Resnais newest film "Private Fears in Public Places" made a big splash at last year's New York Film Festival  Two obscure Buñuels get the package treatment: "Gran Casino" and "The Young One"
Since Bergman and Antonioni were 89 and 94, respectively–and had retired from filmmaking–it’s thought that their passing signals the end of an era of film as art. But does it really? Nearly two dozen Bergman films and a dozen Antonioni titles are available on DVD in America, which is how most people watch classic films anyway nowadays. (For those with a DVD player that can play discs from other countries, another dozen Bergmans are available.)
Of course, old master classics are still being released on DVD: Bergman’s “Sawdust and Tinsel” is coming from the Criterion Collection later this year or early next, and there have long been rumblings that Antonioni’s long-unavailable “Zabriskie Point” will be released by Warners.
Recently, Criterion released Buñuel’s “The Milky Way” and LionsGate released a two-disc set of two obscure Buñuels, “Gran Casino” and “The Young One.” As for my living legends, Alain Resnais’ latest, “Private Fears in Public Places,” is out from IFC/Genius, and Carlos Saura’s “Cria Cuervos,” is available from Criterion.
The 85-year-old Alain Resnais is still making spry, probing comedies of manners; after two musicals (the Dennis Potter-inspired “Same Old Song” and filmed operetta “Not on the Lips”), the French director returns to the durably elastic work of the great English playwright Alan Ayckbourn, whose eight full-length plays “Intimate Exchanges”–recently at off-Broadway’s 59 E 59 Theaters–were transformed into Resnais’ delightful 1993 films, “Smoking” and “No Smoking.”
“Private Fears in Public Places”–a hit at last year’s New York Film Festival–is Resnais’ lovely adaptation of Ayckbourn’s heartbreakingly funny play (also presented at 59 E 59 in 2005) about six people and their romantic foibles. The cast–Resnais regulars Sabine Azema, Pierre Arditti, Andre Dussolier and Lambert Wilson are joined by Laura Morante and Isabelle Carre–is absolute perfection, as are Resnais’ subtle reminders of romance past and present, i.e., Paris’s perpetual snowfall and the melancholic musical score. “Private Fears in Public Places” is a true masterpiece in a world starving for them; if Resnais isn’t our greatest living director, who is?
How about Carlos Saura? The Spanish director first gained international attention with his 1966 allegory about life under fascist dictator Francisco Franco, “The Hunt.” Saura’s best films covertly dramatized life under Franco, whose censorship didn’t allow upfront criticism; his masterpiece, 1970's “The Garden of Delights,” is still not on DVD–I wish Criterion had released that masterly, bitingly witty dissection of Spanish life haunted by fascism.
Still, Criterion’s “Cria Cuervos” is good enough: its intimate story of a young girl visited by the ghost of her beloved mother gives Saura ample opportunity to explore ordinary people’s lives in a fascist state. (“Cria” was made during the last days of the Franco regime.)
As usual with Criterion, extras galore place the movie and Saura’s career in context. Included is the hour-long “Portrait of Carlos Saura,” a 2004 documentary about the master director, with interviews with his son, actors, crew, and Saura himself; there are also two new interviews with the stars of “Cria”: Geraldine Chaplin, who plays the mother; and Ana Torrent, who plays the daughter. Add to that another pristine transfer of the film and you have another must-own Criterion package.
Another Spaniard, Luis Buñuel died in 1983, after making dozens of films of wildly varying quality in a career spanning six decades. At their best, his deliciously satirical and surreal films attacked sacred cows of all kinds, especially religion; at their worst, they didn’t. We get both sides of Buñuel in current releases.
First, LionsGate continues its important partnership with French distributor StudioCanal, which has already borne fruit in boxed sets of Hitchcock and Renoir films, with a Godard set upcoming. The films in the LionsGate set were made during Buñuel’s Mexican sojourn from the end of WWII until his return to Spain in 1961. Contrary to legend, not all of Buñuel’s Mexican-era films were inferior–“Los Olvidados” and “El” are among his most memorable–but they were mostly melodramatic, cheaply-made and flimsily-scripted.
“Gran Casino” (1947) tells the tale of an oil magnate’s disappearance and its consequences for his sister and several workers; “The Young One” (1960) is a “Lolita”-ish story of an innocent teenage beauty whose befriending of a black fugitive on a remote Carolina island upsets the racist warden of the island–who, natch, has designs on her himself.
Buñuel doesn’t do much with these soap operas (not even subverting melodramatic conventions as he did in entertaining potboilers like “Susana” and “Illusion Travels by Streetcar”), but the LionsGate movies provide a needed glimpse at Buñuel’s activity during his “lost” period.
Criterion’s release of “The Milky Way” (1969) allows us to revisit Buñuel’s last great film. Although “Tristana,” “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” “The Phantom of Liberty” and “That Obscure Object of Desire” would be more popular, “The Milky Way” was the final Buñuel film to have that irrepressibly irreverent spirit of gleeful shocks and mocking of conventional behavior that could only be described as Buñuelian.
“The Milky Way” is dense with allusions to Christianity through the ages, and one of the movie’s pleasures is how it mercilessly mocks those using God for their own ends; seen that way, of course, the movie remains poignantly relevant. But Buñuel has more up his diabolical sleeve, and it’s disappointing that Criterion’s selection of bonus material–interviews with screenwriter Jean-Claude Carriere and critic Ian Christie, the aptly-titled half-hour documentary “Luis Buñuel: Atheist Thanks to God”–only skims the surface.
The genius of Buñuel–along with Bergman, Antonioni, Resnais and Saura, among other great filmmakers–was that their best films continually defied traditional analysis. So just sit down, watch and enjoy their masterworks on DVD.
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