Essential Art House 50 Years of Janus Films Criterion
Critic's Choice
New DVDs: Formidable fifty: A DVD Drove Drawn From the Janus Vaults
In 1909 P. F. Collier & Son published a 50-volume set of the earth's great literature as chosen past Charles William Eliot, the president of Harvard. For the ambitious, go-getting Americans of the fourth dimension, always eager to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, the collection became an immediate success, and Mr. Eliot's "5-foot shelf" constitute a identify in countless American homes as information technology was published and republished over much of the 20th century.
Nearly 100 years later, the Criterion Collection has issued a parallel compilation, "Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films." Though it requires significantly less shelf space (about three and a half inches), this collection is just as useful as Mr. Eliot's for cinematically curious Americans. Packaged in a brown material binder, the gear up includes an album of 50 DVDs drawn from the holdings of Janus Films, the distinguished distribution company founded in 1956, too as a 240-page volume of notes, credits and stills on all 50 titles.
Janus Films does not have quite the clout of Harvard, but information technology says a lot about the central role Janus has played in American film civilization that the selections fabricated past a modestly staffed for-turn a profit distribution business firm have come up to assume almost every bit much canonical authority as Mr. Eliot's choices. Jean Renoir ("The Rules of the Game") may have replaced Jean Racine, and Ingmar Bergman ("The 7th Seal") may accept stepped in for Martin Luther, only it's hard to argue with the creative significance and historical importance of the great bulk of the movies in this book, an amazing number of which continue to figure on critics' polls of the best films of all time.
There isn't enough space here to catalog every title in "Essential Art House" (a complete list, along with a disbelieve toll on the set, can exist found at the Benchmark Drove Store, at store01.prostores.com/servlet/criterionco/Detail?no=31). Suffice it to say that if you attended a repertory theater in the 1960s or '70s, took a film course in higher or take seen more than one picture show past Woody Allen, you take been exposed to at least some of the films in this collection: films similar Michelangelo Antonioni's "Avventura," François Truffaut'south "400 Blows," Fritz Lang's "Yard," Akira Kurosawa'south "Seven Samurai" and Luis Buñuel's "Viridiana," along with dozens of others that constitute the backbone of the art firm tradition.
These are movies to be returned to over again and again — justification enough for owning Janus'south three-and-a-one-half-inch shelf, even with its breathtaking suggested retail cost of $850. (In fairness, that breaks downward to $17 a title, about half of what Criterion's releases mostly go for — though the discs in this collection don't include the commentaries and other supplementary materials that give the Benchmark discs their extra value.)
Prototype
Janus Films was formed in Boston by Bryant Haliday and Cyrus Harvey. They were friends from Harvard who had caused the Brattle Theater in Cambridge, Mass., and the 55th Street Playhouse in Manhattan but were having trouble filling their schedules with the small number of films available from early specialized distributors like Walter Reade and Richard Davis.
Janus's first acquisition was Pierre Braunberger'southward documentary "Bullfight," followed past ii early films by an unknown Italian manager named Federico Fellini, "The White Sheik" and "I Vitelloni." All of them lost money (though "The White Sheik" is yet role of the Janus library and is in the current set). Janus's first striking came in 1958 in the unlikely grade of "The Seventh Seal," with its enduring prototype of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) engaged in a chess game with Death (Bengt Ekerot).
Other Bergman films followed — "Wild Strawberries" and "The Virgin Leap" are also part of the set — and so critical successes like Sergei Eisenstein'due south "Ivan the Terrible, Part II," "The 400 Blows" and "50'Avventura." Just bodily profits remained elusive.
For assistance, Mr. Haliday and Mr. Harvey turned to an old Harvard friend, William Becker, who in turn contacted an acquaintance of his ain: Saul J. Turell, a documentary filmmaker who had been working in acquisitions for Walter Reade. "I asked Saul if he wanted to join me in taking over Janus Films," said Mr. Becker, speaking from Los Angeles, where he was searching for new acquisitions at the American Film Market place. "And he said aye, and that's how it all happened."
Janus might have remained merely another contained distribution company, merely its new owners had a eureka moment. The landscape was littered with important European films that had never been distributed in the United States or had had their original licensing deals elapse. With new public telly outlets and revival theaters springing upwards effectually the country, these films seemed unlikely to lose their value over the years. At a time when rights to a strange motion-picture show in the United States could be had for less than $50,000, Mr. Becker and Mr. Turell (who died in 1986) gear up about systematically acquiring the most prestigious films bachelor, including some Hollywood classics.
"Nosotros made a bargain with RKO for a few little films like 'Citizen Kane,' 'Rex Kong' and 'Top Hat,' " Mr. Becker recalled. "The principal buyer was me, but we all put our heads together."
Armed with its formidable library, Janus no longer had to depend on theatrical bookings to practice business concern: the xvi-millimeter, nontheatrical concern — aimed at colleges and local pic societies — exploded as the 60s gave way to the 70s. In the 1980s, when the nontheatrical business collapsed in the face of contest from home video, Janus was ready again. In 1983 information technology formed a partnership with a commencement-up laser disc company, the Criterion Collection, and pioneered the use of supplementary materials and filmmakers' commentaries. By the time Jonathan Turell and Peter Becker, sons of the founders, joined Janus in 1993, DVDs were well-nigh to take off, and Criterion, thanks to its experience in light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation discs, was already ahead of the game.
Peter Becker, who became the president of Criterion in 1997 and helped to introduce the DVD line a yr later, credits his forebears with the company'southward success. "The whole Criterion thought is a straight outgrowth of the philosophy that Janus developed" over its history, he said from his New York office. "Janus had the insight that, much like the Penguin Classics or the Modern Library, there is a identify for a curated collection of classic films — that movie theater art is there to be collected like any other fine art."
"The reason we created this 50-disc prepare was equally much for ourselves every bit anything else," Mr. Becker said. "Nosotros felt that we needed to create an appropriate and substantial milestone for this legacy. In that location aren't a lot of pocket-size, independent companies, peculiarly in the media business organization, that get to be 50 years old at all."
As well OUT TODAY
WORDPLAY A look into the art and meaning of crossword puzzles as conducted by Will Shortz, the puzzle editor for The New York Times, in a documentary directed by Patrick Creadon. IFC Video, $24.95, PG.
CARS A Pixar-animated parable well-nigh a hard-charging sports car (with the voice of Owen Wilson) that learns the value of friendship from a desert town populated by lovably eccentric automobiles. Walt Disney Video, $29.99, G.
Fiddling Human Marlon Wayans, his face up digitally grafted onto that of a midget, plays a professional thief who poses every bit a child to infiltrate the household of a well-to-do man of affairs (played by Mr. Wayans'southward brother Shawn.) Brother 3, Keenen Ivory Wayans, directed. Sony, $28.95, PG-13.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/07/movies/homevideo/07dvd.html
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