Michael Dwyer recommends recent DVD box sets and classics
THE ESSENTIAL STEVE McQUEEN COLLECTION
The special features in this fine five-film set include a documentary, Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool, which perfectly summarises the actor's effortless screen presence. Pick of the movies in this collection has to be the outstanding thriller Bullitt (1968), in which McQueen plays the title role, a detective assigned to protect a star witness for an important trial. The movie's extended car chase through San Francisco justly has been accorded classic status.
The set features one of McQueen's earliest leading roles, opposite Frank Sinatra in the war movie, Never So Few (1959); his title role in The Cincinnati Kid (1969) as an up-and-coming poker player challenging the champ, played by Edward G Robinson; and Sam Peckinpah's terrific thriller, The Getaway (1972), co-starring Ali McGraw, who became McQueen's second wife. Completing the collection is the elegiac western Tom Horn (1980), released shortly before his untimely death at the age of 50.
GRETA GARBO: THE SIGNATURE COLLECTION
The personification of mystique on screen - and for decades after her early retirement from movies in 1941 - Garbo is celebrated in all her radiant star quality in this splendid six-film box set. Born in Stockholm in 1905, Garbo was lured to Hollywood in the mid-1920s. Her first talkie, the Eugene O'Neill adaptation of Anna Christie (1930) was emblazoned with the publicity slogan, "Garbo talks!" That film is included here, along with such gems as Mata Hari (1931), in which Garbo played the eponymous dancer-turned-spy; Anna Karenina (1935), in what is arguably her finest performance; Queen Christina (1933), famously in drag; Camille (1936), said to be her personal favourite; and her penultimate movie, Ninotchka (1939), in which she revealed her flair for comedy. Bonus features include trailers and the 1921 silent version of Camille, starring Rudolph Valentino and Alla Nazimova.
THE CLAUDE CHABROL COLLECTION
Now 75 and as prolific as ever, Chabrol was a film critic with Cahiers du Cinéma before he started to direct his own movies in 1958. He has specialised in the thriller genre and in examining the indiscreet hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie. Seven of the eight films in this fine box set were made in the 1968-74 period, when Chabrol produced some of his finest work, most of them featuring the incomparable Stéphane Audran, to whom he was married for more than 20 years.
The films, most of which have never been available here on video or DVD, are Les Biches, La Femme Infidèle, Que la Bête Meure, Le Boucher (perhaps his best film), Juste Avant la Nuit, Les Noces Rouges, Nada and his 1991 Madame Bovary, which stars Isabelle Huppert.
IRISH DESTINY
Restored by the Irish Film Archive, George Dewhurst's film, a fascinating curio, was first released in 1926, timed to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the Easter Rising, when it broke box-office records at the Corinthian cinema in Dublin. It was banned in Britain at the time. Now available on DVD for the first time, Irish Destiny sets a fictional love affair against the War of Independence, employing actual footage of the Black and Tans and the burning of Cork, and reconstructing a mass escape from the Curragh internment camp.
The DVD features a stirring new score composed by Michael Ó Suilleabhain and performed by the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, conducted by Proinnsias Ó Duinn. An accompanying 16-page booklet includes notes by the composer and comments by Irish Times journalist Kevin Myers.
RYAN'S DAUGHTER
The subject of a wealth of myths and gossip in west Kerry, where it was shooting for a year and did wonders for tourism in the area, David Lean's 1970 film takes a simple story of marital infidelity and plays it out on an epic scale against the turbulent political events of 1916. Written by Robert Bolt, it features his wife Sarah Miles in the title role, a young woman unhappily married to the village schoolteacher (Robert Mitchum, interestingly cast against type) and becoming involved with a British soldier (Christopher Jones). Trevor Howard is the parish priest and John Mills won an Oscar as the village idiot. However, it is the movie's visual quality that is most striking and which has been handsomely captured in this new digital transfer from the restored 65mm picture.
Special features include three documentaries and a range of commentaries. Lean was so taken aback by the critical reaction to the movie that he waited 14 years before making his next - and final - film, A Passage to India.
BEN-HUR
As any self-respecting film quiz participant will know, William Wyler's accomplished 1959 epic was the first movie to win 11 Oscars, including best picture, and although later equalled by Titanic and The Return of the King, that record has never been broken. Charlton Heston plays the Jewish prince betrayed and sold into slavery, with Belfast native Stephen Boyd as his nemesis and competitor in the thrilling chariot race. The 214-minute film is spread across two discs; a third disc contains two making-of documentaries, screen tests and other features. As a very special bonus, the fourth disc carries the impeccably restored version of the 1925 Ben-Hur, with a new orchestral score by Carl Davis and with Ramon Novarro heading a cast of thousands - 125,000, legend has it.
THE WILD BUNCH
Four years ago, undertaking the mindbending task of selecting my 10 favourite films for a Sight & Sound magazine poll of international critics, I had no hesitation about including the late Sam Peckinpah's towering achievement, arguably the greatest western of them all. A masterpiece that has been hugely influential on countless other directors, The Wild Bunch (1969) is set in the early 20th century as an ageing band of outlaws tackle that narrative staple, one last job.
This jolting, powerful and supremely stylish movie features a superlative cast led by William Holden, Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez and Ben Johnson. The restored version of the film is now available in a new anamorphic transfer, with a second disc featuring three documentaries and previously unseen outtakes.