ShareThis(SAWDUST AND TINSEL. 1953. NOT RATED. THE CRITERION COLLECTION $39.95)Ingmar Bergman made a number of films in the late '40s and early '50s, but his first masterpiece was this 1953 effort, a tale of lust and humiliation. Its arrival on DVD is particularly welcome, as it's one more of the Harriet Andersson Bergmans to become available. A story of circus performers, it features a very young Andersson as a bareback rider, the mistress of the circus manager, a lumbering man in middle age.In town one day, the young woman comes under the spell of a local theater actor, played by Gunnar Bjvrnstrand, who would become an essential actor in the Bergman filmography. The theater actor seduces and humiliates the young woman, just as the woman humiliates her aging lover, and the film becomes a hothouse of passion and bitter emotion, all of which Bergman faces and doesn't soften. It's the movie in which the director came into his mature powers.The DVD comes with a booklet, featuring a useful essay by John Simon and a compelling appreciation by the French director Catherine Breillat. Extras include a video introduction by Bergman himself, shot in 2003. The transfer is crisp, up to the Criterion Collection's exalted standard, and features five minutes not included in any previous U.S. release. The commentary by Peter Cowie is first rate. Listen to it. He's recognized as the world's premiere Bergman scholar, and his remarks enhance the viewing experience. -- MICK LASALLE(JEAN-LUC GODARD: COLLECTOR'S EDITION.1982-93. RATED R. LIONSGATE. $34.98 (FOUR DISCS)The good news about this set is that it brings together four of Godard's later films, some for the first time on DVD. The transfers are good, and while the rest is no frills -- no extras -- that's four movies for $34.98, and that's if you pay the full retail price.On the downside, these are not the best examples of Godard's art, to say the least. Godard always strikes me as a filmmaker who insists on trying to make masterpieces by accident. He is wedded to a specific method and worldview, and so at a time when his colleague, Frangois Truffaut, was continuing to grow, making movies such as "The Last Metro" and "The Woman Next Door," Godard was making whimsical, hard-to-follow, almost deliberately opaque films with little charm or drive, such as "Passion" (1982).It's included in this set, along with "First Name: Carmen" (1983), with Maruschka Detmers; "Detective" (1985), with Nathalie Baye; and "Oh, Woe is Me" (1993), with Girard Depardieu. In truth, Godard is too intrinsically interesting and cinematically adept to make a film that has no interest. The films are beautifully shot, and every few minutes there's some arresting touch that proclaims his unique eye. But, taken as a whole, these are cold, distancing, confusing and sleep-inducing works, the product of a filmmaker who could neither adapt nor transfer his 1960s vision to a later time. -- MICK LASALLE(IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA. 1955. NOT RATED. SONY PICTURES. $24.96. TWO DISCS)Hollywood's impulse to destroy beloved national monuments onscreen -- witness the beheading of the Statue of Liberty in "Cloverfield" -- is nothing new. It's what got "It Came From Beneath the Sea" made in 1955: Producer Charles H. Schneer wanted a picture in which a giant squid could be seen trashing the Golden Gate Bridge.To that basic idea was added a timely story of how this sea beast reared its ugly head after it was disrupted by atomic bomb tests. The movie is famous for its stop-motion models of the monster, created by special-effects man Ray Harryhausen. Yes, the herky-jerky effects of it attacking the bridge and the Embarcadero are hokey by today's CGI standards. But one has to admire the effort spent creating these models by hand.Plus, the squid is more likable than any of the humans onscreen, all of whom stand around spouting cornball dialogue. The movie's being released for the first time in color, along with "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers," also with effects by Harryhausen. Among the DVD features are commentary by Harryhausen and other artists, a Tim Burton talk with Harryhausen and a look at how stop-motion is done. -- JOHN MCMURTRIE(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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