ShareThis"BAD LIEUTENANT." (1992. NC-17. LIONSGATE. $19.98.)
When the history of American cinema is written, "Bad Lieutenant" will stand out as one of the best films of the 1990s. It contains without question one of the decade's greatest performances. Harvey Keitel plays a New York police lieutenant with every possible addiction: He's a sex addict, a gambling addict, a drug addict, a heavy drinker, and he's also a corrupt cop, a thief and a murderer.
The film takes place at a collision point, as his personal and professional lives are reaching a crisis. He is in debt to the mob and is betting huge sums (and losing) during a playoff series between the Dodgers and the Mets. And he's involved in a case that is pressing all of his latent Roman Catholic buttons: He is investigating the brutal rape of a nun and the desecration of a Catholic church. He wants to find these rapists and put them under a rock, but the nun won't cooperate. She says that she has forgiven her assailants.
So the movie becomes the story of a man who considers himself beyond redemption awakening in a tortured way to the persistent existence of his own soul and conscience.
So many artists concern themselves with little things. In "Bad Lieutenant," Abel Ferrara deals with life, death, good, evil, the spirit, the flesh, salvation and damnation, and he gives Keitel free rein to bare himself onscreen as few actors have ever done, before or since.
The Special Edition DVD contains a new documentary about the making of the film, which demonstrates the intelligence, commitment and integrity of the people behind this project.
"BERGMAN ISLAND." (2006. NOT RATED. THE CRITERION COLLECTION. $19.95.)
Swedish television reporter and documentarian Marie Nyrerod became friends with Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) over the course of some 20 years and took about that long to persuade him to become the subject of a feature-length documentary.
Originally shot for Swedish television as three one-hour episodes, the footage has been edited into one 83-minute film, encompassing the whole of Bergman's personal and professional life, including his work in theater as well as film.
It is daunting to see Bergman at 85 years old and to contemplate the riches that came out of that one man's imagination. In his sly and seemingly self-effacing way, he was always a good interview, full of ideas and with a sense of himself as a screen presence with an obligation to be entertaining. The old man, though, seems a bit more trustworthy than the middle-aged Bergman. With nothing to lose, he opens up about his origins, his guilt and regrets, and his artistic process.
Along the way we get a glimpse of Bergman's life as an octogenarian, and it looks like something out of a Bergman movie: He lived on Faro, an island of only 500 residents, in a house near the water's edge. A widower -- the loss of his wife years earlier remained a fresh source of pain -- he lived in solitude, working a set number of hours each day and, at night, watching the waves and listening to the persistent ticking of clocks.
(Contact Mick LaSalle at mlasalle(at)sfchronicle.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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