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From Paramount: “The Godfather Box” – All 3 Godfather films + a feature length (Godfather feature length!) DVD of supplementary materials including a locations featurette, a cinematography featurette, The Music of the Godfather, a Corleone Family Tree, Academy Award acceptance speeches, plus much more. Feature length commentary tracks on all three films by Francis Ford Coppola. Enhanced for 16X9 screens. Dolby Digital: English 5.1 Surround.

These films have appeared often and in many forms over the years, on VHS and Laserdisc, but it seems DVD was needed to bring out the true information contained on the negatives. Director of Photography Gordon Willis, dubbed the ‘Prince of Darkness’ after this expedition, proved a tough cinematographer to capture correctly on home media. Until now. (And for further testimony to his virtues, check out Visions of Light, on DVD from Image Entertainment.)

All the operatic dramas connected with the original film are reminisced by Coppola on the commentary track. He makes it through all three, which is a feat, and if you haven’t had enough, there’s yet another DVD of supplementary material. I’ve been seeing buses around New York City with posters on their sides proclaiming that the Godfather boxed set is the reason DVD was created. Ya know…

Also from Paramount: Apocalypse Now Redux – 2001, 202 mins, Dolby Digital. No supplementary materials except for a trailer and 16:9 TV enhancement.

It’s been a long time coming. For years I heard that ace restorationist Robert A. Harris was after Coppola to get the director’s cut released, to no avail. Here, finally, it is, and for what reasons one can only conjecture. Was the wine business faltering and in need of a cash infusion? Whatever, it’s a pleasure to see this one, though it has no frills and isn’t really a Christmas special. It doesn’t even feature Coppola in commentary, something you’d think he might have mustered himself to do after summoning twelve hours for the collection above.

I was in a priveledged position at the FIR DVD screening. I didn’t need to trust my memory in regards to which scenes were added for the Redux edition: you see Rocco, who’d seen the original several times and who was proudly and distractingly calling out almost every line prior to its being spoken, would stop cold when the new footage appeared. For those of you who don’t have Rocco in their screening committee, the chapter listing on the program insert color codes the appearances of restored material. Of the restored material, what drew the most praise was a bit of additional Robert Duvall, and another scene with Brando at the end. Everyone except myself felt the plantation sequence was another film altogether and didn’t belong — I felt it belonged just fine in the DVD which could be watched under more leisurely home conditions and didn’t disrupt the pace the way the theatrical experience would have been broken. Similarly, all the nudity of which we were deprived when the second ‘Playboy centerfold’ sequence was cut was a welcome addition. I agreed with my comrades that it felt a bit extraneous and exploitative, but then again it made a point about the arc of things in that part of the world during that particular conflict.

What Roc felt had been the major deletion, infinitesimal in comparison to the forty-nine minutes added in toto, were the occasional glimpses of Martin Sheen’s character smiling or laughing. Coppola’s original theatrical cut completely deprived him of any light moments, a very telling editorial choice. We’re talking less than a half a minute, and yet it alters the mood of the film more than the other 48 1/2 minutes combined. In the original, the intent was to make Sheen’s character a kind of low-rent counterpart of Brando’s, sobered and shellshocked by the madness of war. In the longer version his flashes of levity and group involvement mitigate that analogy.

Most people feel that neither version is as successful as the documentary on the making of the film, Hearts of Darkness, released in 1992, from footage taken by Eleanor Coppola on the set but never completed by her.

From A&E: Secret Agent/Danger Man, Set 1, a two volume 2 disc case running approximately 312 minutes. Dolby Digital. Featuring 6 complete B&W episodes: ‘The Battle of the Cameras’, ‘A Room in the Basement’, ‘Fair Exchange’, ‘Fish on the Hook’, ‘No Marks for Servility’, and ‘Yesterday’s Enemies’. Other features: Patrick McGoohan Biography/filmography, Photo Gallery.

Remember this one from the cold-war-cynical 60s, accompanied by Johnny Rivers’ song ‘Secret Agent Man’. Well these episodes predate the title song, though it is included on the discs. McGoohan later tinkered his British spy character, Jonathon Drake, into the existential tv series of the 60s, The Prisoner, also released by A&E. In that brief but immortal 16 episode series, he turned the spy game upside down, obviously hot to comment on the state of things on a deeper level than mainstream tv would tolerate. But, pleased to report, these first episodes of the original series are actually as good as The Prisoner was in its own, surrealistic way. Magnificently shot for the most part, the indented episodes above in particular are baffling reminders of how great a loss B&W cinematography was to the world after tv insisted on color shows only. McGoohan’s character is strikingly highlighted in every frame of these, with lighting choices and art direction uncommon for television episodes, which generally left no time in their shooting schedules for such artistry. Further, the condition of these prints will leave you breathless. There isn’t a blemish to be found.

In relation to American counterparts of the day, much time is spent watching Drake, droll both at rest and play. McGoohan is so taken with his own eccentric technique, and it takes so long to get to the chase, that a few of the installments actually seem like features, though they are not boring. And once you get into the spirit of the pace, it’s a unique and extremely pleasant place to be.

In addition, top continental actors were recruited as costars. In ‘The Battle of the Cameras’ I was thrilled to recognize Nial McGinnes as the facially-scarred villain. You may remember his velvety-voiced devil cult leader in Tourneur’s Night of the Demon. He’s equally good here, though there’s no demon hand puppet raking his enemies to shreds. Dawn Addams appears in two of the episodes (what’s up with that…?). And a number of actors reappear later in various episodes of The Prisoner.

Three of the episodes in this collection are directed by Don (Nearly a Nasty Accident, Jason and the Argonauts) Chaffey, and two by Charles (The Lavender Hill Mob, A Fish Called Wanda) Crichton. It was a dream team!

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