Tweet Great Commentary Tracks

Richard Roberts's query as to "who listens to these things?", got me recalling some of the great commentary tracks I've heard since the dawn of the laserdisc (pre-Neolithic) era. A compelling commentary track is as much a selling point as the film or the transfer, at least to me.

David Kalat's track on Three's a Crowd is one of the best I've ever heard. So often commentators use their time to give thumbnail biographies of each and every player that strolls onto the frame. But David's commentary on 3's is nothing less than an hour-long manifesto on why the film should be considered Harry's Magnum Opus. Since it was only rarely scene-specific, it can stand alone on your MP3 player and makes entertaining listening during your exercise period. I wish he had chosen to do commentaries on American Slapstick 2. His commentary track on Submarine Pirate on the first set was wonderful.

Scott Eyman's track on Stagecoach deserves an Oscar, if there were such things. Like all his commentaries (catch Steamboat 'Round the Bend), it can stand alone as literature or dare I say, poetry. I wish Kino had contracted with him to comment on the Lubitsch silents. Maybe he will do some upcoming Pickfords for Milestone.

Sometimes star/director tracks promise more than they deliver, such as Jerry Lewis' half-hearted "commentaries" on his features (often no more than chuckles or grunts to his pal Steve Lawrence), tho to be fair he was recovering from an illness at the time they were recorded. On the plus side, Mel Brooks' track on Blazing Saddles is a full-length comic monologue on the making of the film with little to do with what's on screen at the time.

Back in the laser era, Terry Gilliam demonstrated his prodigious talents as raconteur with his commentaries on Baron Munchhausen and The Fisher King. Michael Powell was a pioneer commentator, and it's a shame he only recorded tracks for Red Shoes and Black Narcissus before he passed away.

There are many more great commentators and several contribute to this forum. Anyone else want to mention favorite tracks worth seeking out?

[Mike Gebert]

When they were a novelty of laserdisc, I used to run them while I was cleaning the house or cooking or something. Been years since I actually listened to one. But here's a few I remember:

1) Ronald Haver, King Kong. The very first one was one of the best, because it served a film which really has the detail to support scene by scene commentary, and which has been researched and documented enough to make it possible.

2) Assorted personnel, Goldfinger (Criterion). Like sitting around drinking pink gin with the guys who made it, very amusing and full of interesting Bond trivia (the guy who played Felix Leiter in the second and third Bond movies also played Blofeld in From Russia With Love-- that is, those were his arms stroking the cat).

3) Bruce Eder, The Devil and Daniel Webster. For a while Eder had the monopoly on professional, well-researched, if rather lacking in charming idiosyncrasy commentary tracks, and this is an especially interesting one about a troubled film.

4) Martin Scorsese, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, with ghostly guest appearances by a very old Michael Powell. Never actually listened all the way through, but those early appearances by Powell really do have the feel of a puckish English ghost come back to say hello.

[silentfilm]

Janine Basinger's commentary on the Criterion It's a Wonderful Life laserdisc was the only one that I listened to more than once. It inspired me to buy some of her books.

I do remember liking Lokke's commentary track on the Image Nosferatu DVD.

Frankly most commentaries bore me spitless, often I don't listen to them even once. But I have two that are favorites, Elizabeth Montgomery commenting on her dad's performance in Here Comes Mr. Jordan and John Madden's commentary on Shakespeare in Love. Favorites or not, I've only listened to them once.

Fred

Outside of the normal timerange here, but my favourite has to be the commentary on This Is Spinal Tap.....by the band, in character, mostly slagging off Marti De Bergi for misrepresenting them and making them a laughing stock...

I can't recall the name of the individual, but the commentary for 7 SAMURAI is great.

Bob

[Mike Gebert]

Outside of the normal timerange here, but my favourite has to be the commentary on This Is Spinal Tap.....by the band, in character, mostly slagging off Marti De Bergi for misrepresenting them and making them a laughing stock...

Apparently the commentary track on Battlefield Earth is a non-parodic version of the same, the director desperately trying to convince us that it's actually brilliant.

[silentfilm]

Annette Lloyd's and Suzanne Lloyd's commentaries on some of the Harold Lloyd DVDs are also pretty informative. I especially liked Haunted Spooks, which I have seen a zillion times. They point out which scenes are pre-bomb accident and post accident.

I find I buy DVD's for the commentaries. Since I'm basically replacing favorites that I once had on video tape I throw the commentaries on and listen for a new insight into a film I know and love. Yeah....the majority of them are silly and some mundane but eventually there will be at least one witty line or a tale told that I wasn't familar with. Hell, I can read film books and only find a page or two that was worthwhile but I'm a patient guy.

I find that any modern film in which the director volunteers to speak about his film usually hovers along the pretensious level. Sometimes they surprise me with a tongue-in-cheek manner but those are generally only the extremely talented ones who aren't insecure. Now Scorcese is certainly not pretensious but man does he love to talk on and on and on...

I enjoy the ones that feature silly chatter. Any silent comedy set out will inevitably have some member of the Silent Mafia yakking away on it. I love when some unknown extra walks into the scene. Well, unknown to everyone except those doing the commentaries because you will suddenly be treated to a ten minute dissertation on this person's life, loves, golfing habits and how they ended up dead in 1952 next to a used car lot in a puddle of their own vommit. In fact death comes up quite often in these little tales. Morbid fellas, these commentators.

The commentaries on the "Looney Tune" sets offer endless new hours of enjoying these gags since the cartoons themselves have been burned into my memory banks since the age of four. These animated experts love trying to identify which animator animated which scene.

......As I said.....hours of new re-invented entertainment!

PASS THE VODKA!

Gary J.

[Mike Gebert]

I mostly don't listen to ones by the actual directors; I don't need to know how fabulous you and your film are. One exception was the first Lord of the Rings film, because it really drove home how Peter Jackson was more of the CEO of a mid-sized company than the artiste, he doesn't toot his own horn about his vision but mostly talks mundane practical stuff which is pretty fascinating, and reveals that he often left the actual directing to someone else (one of the writers or producers) because, frankly, the standing on set telling the actors how to speak their lines part was only one aspect of being the filmmaker on movies like that. Often it was more important for him to be supervising the sculptors or the costume folks or whatever.

Another one, a little bit similar, is the laserdisc of Jules and Jim. Annette Insdorf tells a lot of production stuff and most of it drives home how casual Truffaut's filmmaking was; if he wanted a scene in a bar, he just went and shot at his neighborhood bar. None of this Hollywood look at pictures of 20 bars, dress the one you pick to look like the one in your head, light it carefully and full of smoke, etc. You just go and shoot! And so the film feels fresh and alive in a way that the movie that's sweated to death doesn't.

I usually enjoy listening to commentaries. There have been some bad ones, but I can usually find something interesting in them. I remember Mel Brooks commentary for Young Frankenstein, where he would see a name in the opening credits and start to tell a story and then see another name in the credits and stop mid-story and start another.
Probably the one I enjoyed the most was on the Criterion laserdisc of Raging Bull with Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker discussing why they did what they did.

I thought Jeaninie Basinger did a fine commentary on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And Shelly Stamp did a very good and informative commentary on the recent DVD of The Blot.

I thought Jeaninie Basinger did a fine commentary on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And Shelly Stamp did a very good and informative commentary on the recent DVD of The Blot.

I liked Basinger's commentary, but it was intercut with someone else's...can't remember who, I've expunged him from my memory, but within minutes I loathed him. Hint to dvd producers: when booking people to do commentaries, try to get someone who doesn't drip contempt for the film.

Fred

Hey, I hear that Schlesinger guy did a pretty good job on GODZILLA 2000 and THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA!

Mike S.
(make that Rondo winner Mike S., as long as I'm being shameless)

Hey, I hear that Schlesinger guy did a pretty good job on GODZILLA 2000 and THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA!

Mike S.
(make that Rondo winner Mike S., as long as I'm being shameless)

They're now in my Netflix queue. Oh heck! I'll just order them from DeepDiscount.

Scott Eyman's track on Stagecoach deserves an Oscar, if there were such things. Like all his commentaries (catch Steamboat 'Round the Bend), it can stand alone as literature or dare I say, poetry. I wish Kino had contracted with him to comment on the Lubitsch silents. Maybe he will do some upcoming Pickfords for Milestone.

Who is this Eyman guy?

Actually, it's kind of strange since Scott and I have talked on the phone every Monday for almost 20 years and Amy and I still haven't hired him to do a commentary. And as with the Marx Brothers, for him not to play costs us plenty.

The Pickford dvds, however, are produced by Hugh and the Pickford Institute, so let's hope Hugh reads this so I don't have to bug him about ANOTHER idea I have...

On the other side of the John Wayne coin, listen to--or better yet, don't--Richard Schickel's commentary on RIO BRAVO. Listless, didactic, full of way-long pauses (which might be considered an improvement), factually questionable and full of non-info (he mentions Walter Brennan's long-running TV series but forgets the title), it's as bad as one would expect from this self-obsessed bag of hot air. Some comments from John Carpenter are spliced in occasionally, but they're not of much help. What a shame such an extraordinary film couldn't get the commentary it deserves.

Mike S.
(who notes that the opening scene has no dialogue, thus it's sort of silent)

Todd McCarthy's commentary on HIS GIRL FRIDAY is very good, but he runs out of gas near the end. I forget who did it, but the commentary on the Image DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER is excellent.

As for directors, the commentary for POINT BLANK has Steven Soderbergh sort of guiding John Boorman through the film, asking smart questions about everything from Lee Marvin to camera lenses, and getting smart answers. If Warners had only paired Soderbergh with Richard Lester for PETULIA, too.

Francis Coppola's commentary on FINIAN'S RAINBOW is amazing because he never runs out of things to say, from the opening logo to "The End."

Todd McCarthy's commentary on HIS GIRL FRIDAY is very good, but he runs out of gas near the end. I forget who did it, but the commentary on the Image DR MABUSE, DER SPIELER is excellent.

That would be David Kalat, and I only wish it could have been ported over to the new longer version, expanded accordingly of course. I absolutely love David's commentaries, whether for silents or Godzilla films. The guy's a walking genre film encyclopedia, and has an extremely compelling way of speaking. Oh yeah, and he puts out fantastic DVDs too, through his company All Day Entertainment.

[silentfilm]

I just listened to Shelly Stamp's commentary on the Perils of the New Land DVD for Traffic in Souls (1913). She's obviously done her research and it is actually fascinating (and educational!) to hear about prostitution in the 1910s. She compares TiS to Inside the White Slave Traffic (1913) and other knock-off films about "white slavery". She finds it ironic that films featuring melodramatic kidnapping and last-minute rescues were hugely popular, while films that exposed the real dangers causing prostitution, like the entry of many women into low-paying jobs in the workforce, their disconnection from their families, and the new arenas like dance halls where men and women met for "dates". She also goes into the problems with censorship that this and other exploitation films had at the time.

Of course no prostitution is actually shown, and it is barely even implied in the film...

The only thing disappointing about the commentary was that she didn't touch on the alleged "secret" production of this film, since it was Universal's first feature and a big risk for them. She also didn't talk much about the personnel in the film either.

One thing that she pointed out was that it was the first American feature that was not based on a book like the Bible or famous novel or stage play. The story was written expressly for the film, and she gives a good analysis of how the screenplay and cross-cutting treats different characters of the story.

[Mike Gebert]

One thing that she pointed out was that it was the first American feature that was not based on a book like the Bible or famous novel or stage play. The story was written expressly for the film, and she gives a good analysis of how the screenplay and cross-cutting treats different characters of the story.

Wow, is that true?

My customary skepticism toward any claim of a first is triggered.

One thing that she pointed out was that it was the first American feature that was not based on a book like the Bible or famous novel or stage play. The story was written expressly for the film, and she gives a good analysis of how the screenplay and cross-cutting treats different characters of the story.

Wow, is that true?

My customary skepticism toward any claim of a first is triggered.

Probably not. There's a Thomas Ince film called The Battle of Gettysburg (June 1913) for which the AFI catalogue lists no literary source, unless you consider a historical event to be a source in itself. It appears that many 1913 features were produced by comparatively small companies and getting exact information on them is difficult. In some cases there's conflicting data as to whether a film is 3 or 4 reels long (and thus whether it's a feature or not). Given all this, it's probably less than wise to claim such significant firsts for pictures of this period.

-Harold

Probably not. There's a Thomas Ince film called The Battle of Gettysburg (June 1913) for which the AFI catalogue lists no literary source, unless you consider a historical event to be a source in itself.

Were there any news reports/exposes of the white female slave trade at the time? That could have triggered the story line.

Probably not. There's a Thomas Ince film called The Battle of Gettysburg (June 1913) for which the AFI catalogue lists no literary source, unless you consider a historical event to be a source in itself.

Were there any news reports/exposes of the white female slave trade at the time? That could have triggered the story line.

All over the place, especially from 1910-1915 or so, it's one of the first well-documented moral panics. A google scholar search on "white slavery" will turn up a slab o'hits, the phenomenon has been very well studied. I would have copied a few into this message but there really are a lot of them! A more recent fun read that touches on the white slave panic is Karen Abbott's Sin in the Second City, a history of Chicago's Everleigh Club.

Fred

[silentfilm]

Inside the White Slave Traffic (1913) certainly exists because it has been sold in 16mm. It is only a two-reel film though. Ms. Stamp refers to it frequently in her commentary. Apparently it also did well at the box office.

Prostitution definitely existed then, and women were certainly occasionally coerced into this line of work. The histeria was more about the changing roles of women in the work force, leading independent lives like living by themselves, and the new social circles that women attended -- sometimes alone!

The hysteria is kind of like the current newsworthiness of every case of children and teens abducted by strangers and abused. It happens and it is terrible. If you are really worried about your children though, the vast majority of sexual abuse is forced apon children by someone they know well, especially a family member.

Not like this kind of thing has gone away, it's just that it's mostly now non-white slavery so people somehow seem less shocked (though apparently there is some trafficking in eastern-European women especially). The majority are in India and Africa, but it goes on everywhere

http://www.freetheslaves.net/NETCOMMUNI ... 3&srcid=-2

Not like this kind of thing has gone away, it's just that it's mostly now non-white slavery so people somehow seem less shocked (though apparently there is some trafficking in eastern-European women especially). The majority are in India and Africa, but it goes on everywhere

http://www.freetheslaves.net/NETCOMMUNI ... 3&srcid=-2

Not just women, either, much of the slave traffic (for prostitution or other labor) involves children. And one of the biggest hubs for human trafficking is Ohio.
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG689/

Fred

One of the best commentaries I've found was on the Edison set from Kino.

I wasn't sure I'd really get around to watching the whole thing, but listening to the commentaries (short--as are the films themselves--and informative) really made it come alive, and I found the progression of the films interesting.

I recently purchased the Melies set, but without the commentaries and other supplemental material, it's turning out to be what I thought the Edison would--a bunch of old films (some very repetitive) that I'm having difficulty getting interested in overall.

Kirk

I wasn't sure I'd really get around to watching the whole thing, but listening to the commentaries (short--as are the films themselves--and informative) really made it come alive, and I found the progression of the films interesting.

I found the same of Bertrand Tavernier's commentary on the Lumiere Brothers disc. To hear him alternating between appreciation of cinematographic composition ("see how this one image has three moving stories in it,") simple pride in France's accomplishments ("This is the first tracking shot,") and self-deprecation ("this scene of soldiers attempting to vault over a horse may show why France has lost so many wars") keeps the interest and entertainment level high.

Tavernier lends his voice to quite a few projects that deal with French film history, does he not?

He is quite knowledgeable. I believe he started out as a film critic.

Gary J.