Digital Week – October 28

Filmmaker William Greaves pointed his revealing camera at a starry group of dignitaries from the 1920s Harlem Renaissance—including musician Eubie Blake, lyricist Noble Sissle and artist Romare Bearden—whom he invited to Duke Ellington’s uptown townhouse in 1972 for honest,  informative and illuminating conversations about their memories of that era and how it helped to transform American culture. Greaves’ son David took his father’s footage and has made a compelling and fresh portrait that ensures that these artists and intellectuals not only get a chance to speak their minds but also to—even more importantly—be identified.

In Pawel Pawlikowski’s chamber film, Nobel laureate Thomas Mann—the greatest German writer of the first half of the 20th century—returns home four years after Hitler’s defeat to claim plaudits from his native country with his daughter Erika—whose own demons include the suicide of her beloved brother, writer Klaus Mann—driving him in what becomes a metaphorical and poetic journey. There’s a lot stuffed into this 80-minute drama from German literary and cultural history to the fraught relationship of Mann and his children. Although Pawlikowski glosses over some of this rich ore, the excellent central performances of Hanns Zischler as Thomas and Sandra Hüller as Erika make this near-essential viewing. Too bad the resourceful August Diehl only gets one scene as Klaus, but it’s a dark scene-setter for this chronicle of a broken family and nation, beautifully photographed in rich greys by Łukasz Żal.

Ludovico Rampoldi wrote and directed this a one-note comedy-drama about two people who meet cute one night and reluctantly fall into an adulterous affair, managing to keep their illicit encounters secret—at least until a couple of unsurprising plot twists end up bringing everything into the open. It’s all attractively acted by Pilar Fogliati, Adriano Giannini, Andrea Carpenzano and Valeria Golino, but Rampoldi’s derivative script and direction prevent this from becoming a true guilty pleasure. Too bad the costume film “Primavera,” directed by Damiano Michieletto from Rampoldi’s flavorful script, hasn’t been released yet hereabouts.

Samuel Fuller (1912–97) was a director who was best-known for making low-budget films in many different genres mainly outside studio interference, although his first three features (collected here) are primary examples of his takes on the western and the war film. His debut was the myth-busting western “I Shot Jesse James” (1949), followed by the darkly comic “The Baron of Arizona” (1950) and gritty Korean War drama “The Steel Helmet” (1951). Fuller’s films were raw and often crude but nearly as often original; on Blu-ray, these black and white films look vividly striking.

Czech composer Antonín Dvořák’s most dramatic and enticing stage work is this “lyric fairy tale” about the titular mermaid who becomes human when she falls in love with a man but her decision leads to tragedy. Dvořák’s gorgeously melodic music includes one of the most stirring arias ever written, the “Song to the Moon,” sung here in Philipp Stölzl and Philipp M. Krenn’s otherwise misguided modern production by the beguiling Dutch soprano Johanni van Oostrum. Although the rest of the cast impresses—as is the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Dutch National Opera Chorus under conductor Joana Mallwitz—it’s van Oostrum who makes this strangely impersonal staging attractive. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.