For the week of June 22nd, the Criterion Collection is bringing Céline Sciamma's rapturous Portrait of a Lady on Fire to Blu-ray. It has been a long time since I have seen anything as powerfully affecting as this drama, which resists any attempts to classify it in traditional genre framework. Ostensibly, Sciamma is crafting a kind of emotionally contemporary bodice-ripper: the whole film sparks around the palpable chemistry between Noémie Merlant's painter Marianne and Adèle Haenel's regal French aristocrat Héloïse. I suppose there's a touch of Brokeback Mountain here. We're meeting these characters in the late 1800s, and even if Héloïse wasn't trapped in an impending arranged marriage, she and Marianne would still have to contend with the era's regressive attitudes towards same-sex relationships. Yet this is no mere polemic about tolerance and the importance of following your heart. No, what brings Marianne and Héloïse together in the first place is art. Héloïse's mother (Valeria Golino) has been trying to have someone paint her daughter's portrait, but Héloïse keeps resisting every artist's attempts to capture her likeness. Marianne, then, enters Héloïse's world as if a spy in enemy territory - Marianne can't let her subject know her true intentions lest she risk compromising the mission. I'm reminded of how Martin Scorsese classified his masterful Silence - he thought of it as an "undercover cop" story - and while far less physically violent, Portrait of a Lady on Fire has the same heightened, agonizingly tense atmosphere of deception. Every gesture takes on weighted significance as Marianne tries to study her quarry as thoroughly as possible so she can surreptitiously recreate Héloïse behind closed doors, yet it's that same focus that causes Marianne's heart to ache every time she sees Héloïse. This is one of the great films ever made about the creative process, and the role that full-throated obsession plays when transmuting the physical into the transcendent. All that, and still the film is funny, and wry, and gorgeous (Claire Mathon's cinematography makes everything look like a Vermeer painting), and sad, and deeply sexy. And while I initially bristled at the "Years later..." coda that follows the main action, Sciamma uses this section to reinforce the film's delicate sense of mystery rather than to explain it. She concludes on a stunning final shot that's the whole movie in microcosm, only this time, we get to share in her characters' obsessions. Portrait of a Lady on Fire may have only come out last year, but it's a strong contender for Best Film of the 2010s.
Almost as revelatory a viewing experience is Criterion's Blu-ray of the Kon Ichikawa masterpiece Tokyo Olympiad. Previously, the only way to own a physical copy of Tokyo Olympiad was either on DVD or in Criterion's massive 100 Years of Olympic Films Blu-ray set; in the context of that larger set, Ichikawa chronicles the 1964 Summer Olympics. Certainly, there is thrilling sports footage, from the tense pole-vaulting showdown between Germany and the United States to the grueling 800-meter race, with its last-minute rally from UK contestant Ann Packer. If nothing else, this film is a balm for anyone needing a fix after this year's high-profile postponement of the most recent Olympic Games. Yet what makes Tokyo Olympiad such a singular experience - and what largely justifies this standalone release - is that it's the rare sports movie that's probably more arresting to those who couldn't care less about the technical and competitive challenges of the various Olympic events. In his director's cut (just under three hours), Ichikawa uses the framework of the Olympics to create a full-fledged, expressionistic art film. I thought of Leviathan while watching this, of Stan Brakhage's short films, so willing is Ichikawa to fragment his images into something abstract and illusive. His editing rhythms are elliptical, discursive. Sometimes he'll film an event in impossibly long takes (like the foot races), while other times, he'll dice some competition into a fresco-like collage of images and sounds. His rendition of releasing the doves at the opening ceremony plays like a WWII bomber attack, with the birds' erratic flight patterns and discordant cries slashing through the mise-en-scene. Ichikawa will vary frame rates, slowing things down to the point where we can see the athletes involuntarily trembling, or he'll splice in still frames for fractions of seconds, creating a sense impression like flash photography. We get black-and-white interludes and striking telephoto-lens work and little human digressions we'd never expect in a traditional sports reel: it's one thing to show the crowd cheering on their favorites, but Ichikawa is just as likely to cut to an infant sleeping. This might sound unbearably pretentious, but it's anything but. Ichikawa has used the Olympics as a grand metaphor for the totality of human experience - the good, the bad, and everything in between - and by the end, his work lingers like a sense memory, a grand journey. Virtuoso filmmaking.
In his Blu-ray review, Svet Atanasov wrote that "there is a substantial amount of new and archival bonus features on this upcoming release of Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad that fans of the film would want to see. I spent two days with them and in my opinion a few are actually essential viewing material. (The restored footage from the Czechoslovakia vs. Hungary soccer clash, for instance, is outstanding, and there is a lot more). The release is sourced from the beautiful 4K restoration of the film that was introduced on Blu-ray a couple of years ago, so the technical presentation is predictably excellent."
Finally, Warner Archive is bringing a new pressing of André De Toth's schlock classic House of Wax. For those viewers only familiar with the gory remake, the 1953 House of Wax might seem tame. The great Vincent Price hams it up as deranged wax museum creator Henry Jarrod, and De Toth gooses the mayhem with 3D camerawork that is, at its best, fairly gimmicky. Early on in the film, De Toth even has a street performer send paddleballs right into the camera to demonstrate the 3D effect. Avatar, this is not. However, as quaint as the proceedings can get, House of Wax still maintains a certain charm. Price is an over-the-top delight as the villain, and while the 3D gags are pretty goofy, they enhance the funhouse appeal of the movie. If nothing else, House of Wax is a carnival "House of Horrors" come to life, with the 3D scares working in much the same manner as a Styrofoam ghoul on a time-release spring, wired to jump right into our faces. However, this new WAC edition is most notable for a "special feature" of sorts: House of Wax's 1933 predecessor Mystery of the Wax Museum. As a movie itself, Mystery of the Wax Museum is even goofier than House of Wax - it throws in some unnecessary intentional comic relief to leaven the otherwise horrifying premise of entombing dead bodies in wax. And on this disc, Mystery of the Wax Museum doesn't look great. Warner mastered it in SD, thus rendering the film's striking two-color Technicolor effects muddy and indistinct. But might I direct you to the distributor's restored Mystery of the Wax Museum from earlier this year? The film is just as silly, but it looks gorgeous. Bundle that standalone edition with this new House of Wax, and enjoy a hellzapoppin' horror double-feature from Hollywood's Golden Age.