zedz wrote:Anyway, I've just noticed that there's a two-disc Rybczynski compilation available from
Raro Video, containing three hours of material. Has anybody seen this?
I have, Mr zedz!
Unfortunately, it's not great news.
The packaging and documentation is up to Raro's high standard, with a thick MoC scale book (and bonus Zbig-designed bookmark), but the transfers are generally rough and analogue. The films shared with the PWA releases (
Soup,
New Book and
Tango) look much much worse and most of the other film-based works are on the same level. The later video works fare better. The set seems to be Zbig-endorsed, so the source for the sub-standard transfers may well be himself. I'd be interested to hear whether his own DVD releases are any better.
The set is all English-friendly, but there are no sub options on the films. In practical terms, this means that the minimal dialogue in
New Book goes untranslated and the English dialogue in
Steps and the
Orchestra making-of has forced Italian subtitles.
So, disappointing presentation in general, but the films are great (and the liner notes suggest that there are greater riches to be unearthed).
Other than the classics already available on the PWA sets (which benefit from the extra info in the books - those who have already had their minds blown by the achievement of
New Book now have to deal with the information that it was filmed in three different cities), the highlights are three brilliant and very brief late seventies / early eighties shorts:
Mein Fenster - a single static shot of a birdcage, a television and bottle, the contents of which (bird, news report and wine) do a slow, elegant 360 turn before our eyes - an ingenious variation on Astaire's
Royal Wedding stunt.
Weg zum Nachbarn - a bonus short, not credited on any of the packaging or menus, but playing right after
Mein Fenster. It's almost the reverse of that film. Here, a man stands near a signpost in the landscape. The film has been treated to look like a very old, battered silent film. Gradually, the entire world starts to tilt (farm equipment slides past), turning upside down and leaving the man momentarily hanging over the abyss, clinging to the weakening wooden signpost.
Media - Even shorter and with the same ingenious minimal clarity and wit of the previous two films. Here footage of a man appears on the screen of an editing bed. He's playing with a balloon, which is 'encased' on a television screen (enacting Rybczynski's own 'suspension' between film and video at the time), so the television itself is gently bouncing around the editing equipment as the film plays. When the balloon is popped, the television comes smashing to the ground and soon after the film runs out in the gate of the editing bed. It's a completely magical, 'how-did-he-do-that' miniature.
The 'major works' on the disc, in terms of running time, are three ambitious video works Rybczynski made in the USA. For me, they're sort of a mixed bag:
Steps - this film has a gob-smackingly brilliant premise. A pushy Russian entrepreneur offers Americans a guided tour of the Odessa Steps sequence from
Battleship Potemkin - quite literally, with the contemporary colour Americans inhabiting Eisenstein's frames and montage. Unfortunately, the film doesn't live up to its potential. The video compositing technology is brilliantly deployed, but it's only barely up to the technical challenge Rybczynski presents. More damagingly, the lazy characterisations and obvious gags don't deliver. For every inspired interpolation (a bystander's ghetto blaster gets swept away by the baby carriage) there's a badly executed joke that's as dumb and crass as the behaviour it's trying to skewer.
The Fourth Dimension - a fascinating experiment that twists still compositions (including human figures) into spiralling sculptural forms, but the transfer was poor and at 30 minutes this soon turned into a glorified screen-saver.
The Orchestra - or six classical music videos. This actually worked really well, pushing pre-CGI video technology to expressive heights. My favourite sequences were Chopin's Funeral March played one note at a time by a cast of thousands along an infinite piano keyboard; Schubert's Ave Maria gracefully embodied by a naked couple floating under the roof of Chartres Cathedral; and the film's grand finale, Ravel's Bolero embodied as the glorious march of Communism (against a hellish setting sun) up an endless flight of steps. This is another cast-of-thousands affair, staged as a historical pageant-cum-relay race.
The Orchestra is nearly an hour long (the publicity all insists it's 71 minutes, but that seems to be the combined running time of the film itself and the okay making-of that's also included) but it's inventive enough to justify its length.
