Strick, Joseph

Ulysses

A day in the life of Leopold Bloom in turn-of-the century Dublin.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 9-JAN-2007
Media Type: DVD

Road Movie

REVENGE ON THE ROAD
This cult favorite from one of cinema's richest eras directed by Academy Award-winning director Joseph Strick stars Barry Bostwick (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and Robert Drivas Cool Hand Luke) delivering bravura performances as a pair of brutish truck drivers who pick up a prostitute on a trip across America. Regina Baff (The Paper Chase) tears at the heart as the beaten and furious hooker who exchanges her body for a ride to Chicago, only to be further abused. Rejected and scorned, she becomes determined to seek revenge.

A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man

This film is a beautiful adaptation of James Joyce's autobiographical novel in which the author, through the character of Stephen Dedalus, portrays his youth, his Irish Catholic upbringing, and his coming of age at a Dublin university. Stephen, an intense, serious young man, questions the tyranny of family, state and religion in their attempt to control his body, mind and soul. The young artist chooses a lonely exile in his search for freedom and truth.

The Savage Eye

The Savage Eye is somewhere between documentary and poetry. The story is of one Judith (Barbara Baxley), recently divorced, who's trying for a fresh start and dealing with her own sense of desolation. Her inner state, and that of the society we see in the documentary-style footage, is revealed completely in voice-over dialogue with an incisive and sometimes cruel-sounding interviewer the credits identify as "The Poet" (Gary Merrill), though he seems more like a guardian angel. The tone of this piece is achieved through the dialogue, which is always fashionably bitter and disdainful. Here's an example:

The Poet: On the morning of the sixth day, the stars declined, and the sun rose, and out of a handful of fire and dust, garbage and alcohol, God created man.

Judith: He made a big mistake.

It always stays just this side of overbearing, so you keep waiting for it to stumble, but it never does. A fascinating look at '50s-era emptiness. Also included is the Oscar-winning documentary short Interviews with My Lai Veterans, directed in 1970 by Joseph Strick, one of the directors of The Savage Eye. You couldn't ask for a more privileged look into what happened at the My Lai massacre than these interviews with five veterans who were there, though it's unlikely you would ask. The atrocities as recounted are very hard to listen to. One veteran rationalizes the killing this way: "The Vietnamese are funny people.... They seem to have no understanding of life. They don't care whether they live or die." An indispensable 20 minutes of history. --Jim Gay

THE DARK SIDE OF THE '50s!
This multiple award-winning drama takes the form of a documentary to tell the story of Judith, a newly divorced woman who moves to Los Angeles to get a fresh start. In this journey through the dark side of 1950s urban life, the camera acts as a character that follows Judith through the streets as she encounters the strange denizens of the city, ranging from trendsetters to religious fanatics. All the tawdry and desperate faces of this world become a mirror for Judith's personal failures and struggles to claim her new life. As an added bonus, Interviews With My Lai Veterans is included on this video. This Academy Award-winning documentary makes an unflinching exploration of the 1968 massacre of the Vietnamese village of My Lai by U.S. armed forces.

Criminals

This unusual documentary consists mostly of criminals talking openly and apparently honestly about their crimes. The film begins by showing hapless smalltime miscreants, such as a dimwitted woman who talks about how she had enough experience "prostituting" not to have gotten picked up in a police sting operation. Most of the interview subjects are unapologetic, and things become disturbing as muggers talk about their violent rampages and how the feelings of their victims simply never entered their minds. The point is made that crime permeates society, and in a brief break from interviews, surveillance tapes are shown of church elders stealing thousands of dollars while counting money taken in collection plates, and airport baggage handlers rifling through luggage. As the interview material continues, the crimes being confessed become increasingly more serious, and the proceedings take on a much darker tone. A videotaped jailhouse interrogation with an obscenely defiant rapist is a startling and sickening look at someone who can only be described as pathological. In a later segment, the lack of emotion shown by a murderer is equally disturbing. As a relatively unfiltered look at how criminals see themselves, their victims, and their crimes, this is a fascinating, though often troubling piece of work. --Robert J. McNamara

The Balcony

In a very special brothel known as "The Balcony," the customers live out their wildest dreams, oblivious to a revolution that is going on outside. Directed by the award-winning Joseph Strick and based on acclaimed French avant-garde dramatist Jean Genet's play, this star-packed film features Shelley Winters as the brothel's madam and Peter Falk as her occasional lover, who enlists her help in halting the revolution. A young Leonard Nimoy heads the rebels, and Lee Grant is the madam's executive assistant who longs to return to her former role as just "one of the girls." With its insightfulness and delightfully fresh sense of humor, "The Balcony" continues to provide a great view of the world's ironies.

Ulysses [Region 2]

The Balcony [Region 2]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [Region 2]