Ray Pride

While "The Inner Landscapes of Andrei Tarkovsky," the U.S. retrospective tour of the features of Russian visionary Andrei Tarkovsky ends its Chicago leg soon, his two earliest works are out on DVD. Facets Video distributes Tarkovsky's 1960 "The Steamroller and the Violin," a forty-three-minute diploma film from the 28-year-old director. A portrait of an old friendship between a young boy who plays the violin and a macho steamroller operator, it's most memorable for the performance by the young boy, Igor Fomchenko. A more peculiar Tarkovsky entry is Criterion's three-feature double-disc "Ernest Hemingway's The Killers," which includes Robert Siodmak's fatalistic 1946 Burt Lancaster-starring noir, with an archly stylized look, swoops of flashbacks and purple dialogue, as well as Don Siegel's violent low-budget 1964 adaptation, with Lee Marvin, Clu Gallagher, John Cassavetes, and Ronald Reagan, in his last screen-acting role, who just can't help pistol-whipping Angie Dickinson. Among over a dozen other extras, Criterion has included Tarkovsky's 1956 student film version of "The Killers"; another director is credited with a third of the fifteen-minute short. It's more than a footnote. And an exciting Criterion footnote: one of their spring projects I just heard about is a five-DVD box set that contains the complete saga of Francois Truffaut's movies that star Jean-Pierre Léaud as his alter ego, Antoine Doinel. The movies include "The 400 Blows," "Bed and Board," and "Love on the Run." No word yet on extras. The movies are notable for their unique look at a character's progress from juvenile delinquency to twentysomething irresponsibility and Leaud, who the audience gets to observe as if in home movies.

(2003-02-19)

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