It's a great week to take a look back at three essential classics with the Criterion Collection's release of Jean-Luc Godard's nouvelle vague masterpiece Breathless, Terrence Malick's sumptuous tragedy Days of Heaven, and John Huston's Malcolm Lowry adaptation Under The Volcano.
1. Breathless
Jean-Luc Godard's seminal film Breathless (A bout de souffle) helped launch the French New Wave. The uber hip Jean-Paul Belmondo and then-unknown Jean Seberg starred in the anything-goes crime narrative that helped redefine the rules of cinema. The Criterion special edition double DVD features a newly restored high-definition digital transfer and enough special features to make any cinemaniac swoon.
2. Days of Heaven
Our second Criterion pick of the week, and it's another doozy: Set in the midst of golden fields of wheat, Terrence Malick's Days Of Heaven takes a slow, mesmerizing hold until its inevitably tragic end. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams play young lovers who hide from the law, finding work on a farm. Gere's impish little sister (Linda Manz's husky voice will leave an impression) narrates the group's fall from happiness. With dreamlike authenticity, Malick captures a timeless American idyll while also providing an honest look at turn of the century America.
3. Under the Volcano
Under the Volcano follows the self-destructive British consul Geoffrey Firmin (Albert Finney, in an Oscar-nominated tour de force) during his last day on the eve of World War II. Withering from alcoholism, Firmin stumbles through a small Mexican village amidst the Day of the Dead fiesta, attempting to reconnect with his estranged wife (Jacqueline Bisset), but only further alienating himself. John Huston's ambitious tackling of Malcolm Lowry's towering "unadaptable" novel gave the incomparable Finney one of his finest roles.
