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DVD 1900 (Special Collector's Edition)
1900 is one of Bernardo Bertolucci's adventures in epic filmmaking that never found the reception he had hoped for. Originally more than six hours long, it was chopped down to four hours for its U.S. release and as a result looked, well, choppy. Eventually, he restored it to five hours--but one wonders at all the effort on behalf of this alternately muddled and stunning story. The film, with a decidedly socialist agenda, examines two lives that begin the same year in rural Italy: the weak-willed son of the aristocracy (Robert De Niro) and the hardy, courageous son of peasants (Gerard Depardieu). They grow up as best friends on the same estate, until class differences pull them apart and then the era's fascist politics divide them for good. Despite strong performances by both leads, as well as Sterling Hayden, Donald Sutherland, Dominique Sanda, and Burt Lancaster, this one is strictly for Bertolucci's most avid fans. --Marshall Fine
Excellent edition in his original 5 hours and 15 minutes lenth.
Paramount edited the first really restored edition.
In my country (Italy) have been issued even recently only very very bad editions.
Congratulations to Paramount.
Enrico Giordani (italy)
A magnificent Marxist soap opera with moments of greatness
1900 is a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly of Italian cinema. Bertolucci's defiantly left wing political epic at times plays like a Sidney Sheldon doorstop novel as written by a disciple of Karl Marx, has a laughable first hour and some performances that are so far over the top they've circumnavigate the globe and come back again. Yet it also has moments of genuine power, a sweeping ambition to it and is one of the most beautifully photographed films ever made due to Vittorio Storaro's wondrous combination of natural light, backlighting and the `magic hour' as the situation demands. Ennio Morricone's score is consistently one of his best as well, ensuring that the film sounds as good as it looks.
Chief debit is Burt Lancaster's senile padrone, hanging himself because he can't even get the stimulation he needs to rape the child of one of his employees: no Leopard he. Donald Sutherland's socially mobile foreman-turned-fascist thug veers between plus and minus - it's a broad performance, as you'd expect from a character whose idea of political debate is to headbutt a kitten to death (it's an extremely tough film on animals: the kitten's death may be faked but none of the other animal killings are), although there are moments that ring true in the latter section.
It's an interesting experiment to try to gauge the actors original intent by flitting between the various soundtracks on the uncut DVD - the preferred English soundtrack gives you De Niro, Sutherland, Lancaster, Stirling Hayden and Dominique Sanda talking for themselves, the French offers Depardieu's voice while the Italian gives you more natural vocalisation for the majority of the smaller parts.
Ultimately it doesn't amount to much - the basic thesis can be reduced to "Fascism, socialism - huh. Both as bad as each other," with paradise postponed once again at the very moment of liberation and the status quo more or less restored for the rest of the century. But there's a side of me that can't help thinking that for the most part it's a movie about peasants' rights made by a group of people who are now multi-millionaires who'll make almost anything if you write them a big enough check...
Bertolucci's epic masterpiece restored....
This is, in fact, Bertolucci's original cut of 315 (!) minutes. Having seen both the 255 minute version and the director's cut, one may actually say what kind of difference can there possibly be between these 2 versions? One is 4 1/4 hours, the other is 5 1/4 hours. They are both incredibly long versions, so what's the point? The point is that there is a huge difference. As incredible as it may sound, the shorter version seems longer, as it doesn't have the same narrative flow as the longer version does. There are subtle differences between the versions that make certain scenes different. For example, there is a scene where the leaders of the town go duck hunting (warning! Bertolucci shows the actual killing of ducks here, along with animals being slaughtered for food). They then go into a church to discuss bringing a new fascist order to the town. In the short version, the church scene only consists of the men talking. In the longer version, Bertolucci intercuts the dead ducks with the men talking, giving the scene a graver effect. The sex scenes are longer and more explicit in the longer version as well. I saw this long version at a Bertolucci retrospective, and there were college kids in the audience who were laughing at the sex scenes! The sex scenes, like in all of Bertolucci's work, are meant to be serious and natural, which they are. I suppose the young people of America have a difficult time taking sex seriously after a decade or so of lowbrow, childish, teenage "comedies". Some of the magnificent camera work got lost in the shorter version, because Bertolucci cut some of the beginnings and ends of scenes, where they would be a wonderful camera move opening or closing the scene. As for the film itself, it is incredibly ambitious and amazing to behold. Bertolucci just came off the amazingly successful Last Tango in Paris, and did something grandly ambitious. He should be commended for that. Many current day filmmakers would probably do a sequel to their already successful film to fill their pockets, and not give a hoot about anything else. Bertolucci originally wanted to release it in 2 parts, but the producer Alberto Grimaldi, who was reeling from the financial failure of Fellini's Cassanova (a film he produced), wanted no part of a 2 part film. So Bertolucci compromised. He only cut one entire scene. He made cuts within scenes (a technique that Terry Gilliam used on his film Brazil, when he had to trim his film from 142 minutes to 131). While this film is magnificent, it took a ton out of Bertolucci. He never worked with Grimaldi again (Grimaldi had produced Last Tango in addition to this film), and he didn't really recover his reputation as a great filmmaker until 10 years later with another epic, The Last Emperor. Since then, he's been erratic, but he can still make great cinema (watch The Dreamers, one of Bertolucci's best films). Since this is in fact the director's cut, by all means see it, rent it, buy it.
many thanks to paramount, the edition is very very good and the bonus interesting. finally one of the most important italian fims of all time has been edited. More Info about this DVD Director(s): Bernardo Bertolucci DVD Release Date: Released the 05 December 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Seven lesser-known movies from Newman's heyday, all released on DVD for the first time. The most familiar is probably Harper, based on author Ross MacDonald's famous Lew Archer detective (Newman had the name changed to "Lew Harper" to fit in with his other hit movies - like Hud - which began with the letter H.) He reprised the character nine years later in The Drowning Pool. Other standouts in the set include Newman's breakthrough role as boxer Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There, which was supposed to be James Dean's next role after Giant. My personal favorite is The Young Philadelphians, high-gloss soap opera with Newman as an ambitious lawyer from the wrong side of the tracks. Among the many people he's expected to please: his fiancée (Barbara Rush), his mother (Diane Brewster,... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jack Smight - Stuart Rosenberg - Arthur Penn DVD Release Date: Released the 14 November 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Warren Beatty's lengthy 1981 drama about American Communist John Reed and his relationships with both the Russian Revolution and a writer named Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton) is a compelling piece of little-known history told in a uniquely personal way. Beatty plays Reed as he did the title gangster in Bugsy and Senator in Bulworth, as a visionary likely to die before anyone fully recognizes the progressiveness of the vision, including those who are supposed to be on the same page. Jack Nicholson has an interesting part as fellow intellectual Eugene O'Neill, and the late author Jerzy Kosinski--himself a refugee from then-Soviet-controlled Poland--makes a strong impression as Reed's problematic Russian liaison. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD DVD Release Date: Released the 17 October 2006 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Here are three films that couldn't and wouldn't have been made at any other time. Contrary to popular belief, the history of Hollywood permissiveness, what filmmakers could "get away with" on screen, is not a steadily rising graph from puritanical early days to the party-hearty present. In the early 1930s, a national mood of shock over the stock market crash and impatience with Prohibition licensed a relaxation of the movie industry's self-censorship policies. Sexuality--always a driving force in movie plots and characterizations, even when repressed--became a more explicit presence, with costuming that sometimes pushed the envelope for exposure of epidermis and dialogue that could be shockingly blunt.
