The Peter Greenaway
Collection (1982 – 1999/Draughtsman’s Contract/Zed & Two
Noughts/Drowning By Numbers/Prospero’s Books/Baby Of Macon/Pillow Book/8½ Women/Region 4 PAL Import/Umbrella DVD Set/Australia)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D (B- on Contract and Zed) Films: B-
PLEASE NOTE: This DVD set can only be operated
on machines capable of playing back DVDs that can handle Region Four/4 PAL
format software, though all but the first three DVDs are R4 (the rest are
Region Zero/Free PAL) and can be ordered from our friends at Umbrella
Entertainment at the website address provided at the end of the review.
Peter
Greenaway is an important filmmaker with a unique catalog of films, including
narrative films he began making in 1982 with The Draughtsman’s Contract, a film in the Barry Lyndon/Duelists
mode about exchange, manners, art and suppressed sexuality in the 17th
Century. The line between nature
controlled and uncontrolled starts with people deluded into thinking what they
make can be somehow permanent and the reality of mortality (human, animal and
nature) always subtly thwarts everything around the characters, no matter their
efforts. With only a few key films
absent (namely Belly Of An Architect
and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife &
Her Lover) Umbrella Entertainment in Australia has issued an 8-DVD Peter Greenaway Collection and it makes
for a decent set, especially if you have not seen his work.
Contract stars Anthony Higgins (Vampire Circus, Raiders Of The Lost Ark) as an artist hired by a rich woman (Janet
Suzman of The Singing Detective U.K.
Mini-series) to make 12 drawing for her in his complex, advanced style. This will include money, luxury and sex! Then things become wilder as the arrangement
is affected by other factors. Shot in Super
16mm, this restored edition is from an HD master prepared by BFI and the
improvements are even noticeable here, made more so by the featurette comparing
several earlier, inferior video editions.
You can see grain, but you can also see color and intent by Director of
Photography Curtis Clark (Dominick &
Eugene) worth catching. This is the
best version we’ll have outside of film prints until a Blu-ray edition. Greenaway’s comical script is impressive for
his first time out and supporting cast members include Hugh Fraser (The Duelists), David Gant (Brazil) and Lydia La Plante.
Other
extras include stills, trailers for this and Zed, Deleted Scenes of interest, On-Set Interviews,
Behind-The-Scenes Footage, Interview with Composer Michael Nyman, intro and feature
length audio commentary by Greenaway.
A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) is his second film and second he
did for BFI, but we just covered the superior Blu-ray edition and film at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/10250/A+Zed+&+Two+Noughts+(1985/BFI
Drowning By Numbers (1988) began his long association
with Film 4 in getting his films made. This
debut with them is his fourth feature and stars Joan Plowright as a woman who
drowns her husband, something her two daughters (Juliet Stevenson (Mona Lisa Smile, Bend It Like Beckham) and Joely Richardson (Event Horizon)) also do to their husbands. They also share the same name, Cissie
Colpitts, and water becomes a great theme in the film, along with science and
calculation. When an investigator
(Bernard Hill of Cameron’s Titanic
and Donaldson’s The Bounty) tries to
find out what has happened, the women do what they can to “persuade him to
write all the murders up as accidents.
Trevor Cooper, Bryan Pringle (Brazil,
Cromwell) and David Morrissey (Red Riding Trilogy) play the husbands.
Prospero’s Books (1991) show Greenaway moving more
towards other media and artifice that calls attention to itself. Between his use of set framing that literally
frames scenes like paintings and plastering books in all their forms all over
the place, he mixed 35mm film with early High Definition video with his
Director of Photography Sasha Vierny, whose collaboration has been non-stop on
the narrative features since Zed. Sir John Gielgud is Prospero, wandering
through a world he has lost control of and though the printed page, tries to
regain control of it to take it over… at least enough to have peace and maybe
happiness and balance. Besides
reclaiming Gielgud from Caligula
(Gielgud reportedly fled the U.S.
to avoid post-production on that mess) in some weird way (the two compete as
the Gielgud film with the most nudity), it also is Greenaway trying to twist
the visual medium. It is a smart work,
but unless you catch onto it early, you will get lost.
It would
be nice if the HD could be redone, because it always looked weak and sabotaged
too many viewer’s entry into what he was trying to do, but it is a bold enough
work (many will think of Fellini) and also stars Tom Bell (Prime Suspect), Michael Clark, Isabelle Pasco, Ute Lemper and
Deborah Conway. This is a shorter 121
minutes long version.
Baby Of Macon (1993) is a reverse of the previous film in interesting
ways; an obvious stage play, but shot in real anamorphic 35mm 2.35 X 1
Panavision. This continues the
deconstructive exploration on how stage and screen (film and video) function in
this version of a 1659 play that may remind some of Godard’s Hail Mary (1985) about the birth of a
baby. An unattractive woman gives birth
to a baby so beautiful that no one believes it is hers, especially when another
young, pretty woman (Julia Ormond of Smilla’s
Sense of Snow, Temple Grandin)
steps in and says it is not only hers, but is an Immaculate Conception! This has The Vatican climbing the walls,
investigating and is as accessible as any film Greenaway has made to date, save
the controversy. The supporting cast is
also good, including Ralph Fiennes and Tony Vogel (Prime Suspect).
Pillow Book (1996) received one of the better
U.S.
launches of any of his films when Sony Pictures Classics picked it up and even
issued it on DVD for a time. Once
described as a look at two worlds, East (Japan, et al) through the eyes of
Nagiko (Vivian Wu) who likes to write on everything, including human skin,
which gets more interesting when she meets a Englishman (Ewan McGregor) who she
falls for. To say more would give things
away. But it is what we would definitely call postmodernist as much as any of
his works and holds up well enough.
8½ Women (1999) is the final feature film
in the set and includes its characters going to a screening of Fellini’s 8 ½ as well as brings Vivian Wu back in
an interesting tale (expanding on some of the themes of Pillow) as the Swiss father (John Standing of All The Right Noises and V
For Vendetta) and son Emmenthal businessmen buy a gaming chain in Japan,
but it comes with a higher price as they have to negotiate their own needs,
ill-advised behaviors and culture clashes.
The son (Matthew Delamere of Shadowlands)
becomes a widow, leaving him to join his father in a new, strange exile that
goes over the edge. Godard is also
referenced here and the contrasts are the most interesting part of this, with
Greenaway and Vierny mixing video (now of better quality than before) with
film. Amanda Plummer, Elizabeth
Barrington (Vera Drake, Quills) and Toni Collette (Muriel’s
Wedding) also star.
A documentary made
around the time Prospero’s Books was on the verge of being released
simply called Peter Greenaway – A
Documentary has the creator of these films discussing his work on film, in
shorts, videos, paintings and other media for what is a pretty decent hour-long
program. This disc also has no extras,
but is worth seeing after you have
seen these films.
The anamorphically enhanced image on all the feature films
(save Pillow, see next sentences)
are 1.78 X 1 (save 2.35 X 1 on Baby
and 1.66 on Drowning (where it is
more extreme) and Women) and are all
shot by Sasha Vierny save the first film (See notes above). They all look good and the first two from BFI
have been restored, but they could all look a bit better, but with the way
Vierny and Greenaway make their films, only Blu-ray might do as the ultimate
way to see them. The 1.33 X 1 full
color, PAL, full frame image on Pillow
mixes aspect ratios of all kinds captured on film and low definition video
liberally, but was shot in Super 35mm film, so how this framing was done is a
story I will be interested in hearing about.
Finally, the 1.33 X 1 full color, PAL, full frame image for the
documentary was shot on PAL video and has
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
on all the films until he starts to use Dolby Stereo on Drowning and that ranges from the advanced analog SR (Spectral Recording)
system to Dolby Digital, but they are all here as 2.0 Dolby Stereo with limited
Pro Logic surrounds at best. Guess we’ll
have to wait for Blu-rays for sound truer to Greenaway’s sound intents. Extras are only on the first two
films as noted above.
Greenaway’s films are more complex than even my summaries
suggest, all deserving the kind of coverage I gave the Zed Blu-ray and even more, yet I also do not want to give anything
away and want to encourage our readers to see more challenging films by suggesting
what they offer and setting them up. I
like his work, but still need to see more (some of them again and in better
editions), so this is not the last I will say about him or his work and he has
more work on the way. The Peter Greenaway Collection is as good a place as any to start.
As noted
above, you can order this PAL DVD import set exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
