The film suggests a genre take on Scorsese's own The King of Comedy. The well-to-do Bowden, Cady's erstwhile legal representation, gave the alleged rapist an inch; Cady intends to take his rightful mile. The two characters are flipsides of a moral dilemma that's also a fallacy of redemption: Bowden withheld evidence that would've guaranteed his ignominious client Cady a reduced sentence, and so Cady's wrath springs from Bowden's betrayal. Neither man is interested in delivering himself from guilt, he just wants his moral superiority over the other acknowledged. Leave it to Scorsese to turn an archetypal mano-a-mano climax on a lake into an identifiably religious metaphor: as Bowden and Cady hold each other's heads under water, they're engaged in a violent mutual baptism.

Scorsese is all over Cape Fear's themes, but he doesn't begrudge the film of crowd-pleasing conventions. (He has said in interviews that he knew his tendency towards revisionism could get him into trouble at Cape Fear's helm, but instead it makes the picture's thriller chestnuts palatably abstract.) Set in the 'gator state on and around--in an oblique homage to Jaws, perhaps--the Fourth of July, it's not a sweaty movie like Body Heat, but something more evocative of summertime humidity thanks to cotton wardrobes and such fleeting moments as the dysfunctional Bowden family going to see a terrible flick (Problem Child) for the cool environment and ordering a round of ice cream cones afterwards. Cape Fear is an efficient goosebump-generator sweetened by this scrupulous sense of place, some dynamo acting (De Niro and co-star Juliette Lewis, as Bowden's daughter, might owe their Oscar nods for the film to their ingenious scene together in "the black forest," though literal "bit" player Illeana Douglas delivers Cape Fear's most revelatory performance), and Scorsese's cinematic impulsiveness.

If anything, Scorsese is a simultaneously more and less invasive presence behind the camera on The Age of Innocence, a scarlet adaptation of Edith Wharton's novel. He plays anthropologist here, weaving a tale through the tribal customs of Old New York's upper-crust--the film is reminiscent of those NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC specials in which drama transpires beneath observations of behaviour and ritual. In The Age of Innocence, the love triangle between lawyer Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis), his debutante fiancé May (Winona Ryder), and May's cousin, the countess Olenska (Michelle Pfeiffer), becomes a casualty of Victorian etiquette.

While this synopsis suggests one of Merchant Ivory's costume dramas, The Age of Innocence is more vital than virtually any of that pair's period pieces. Scorsese gooses the repression farce by employing hyperlush dissolves and using the stage gimmick of altering the lighting (mid-shot) to punctuate a mood. Unfortunately, there's a built-in disengagement to these pre-modern social critiques: their suppressed passions are our frustrations. That hitch is intensified by the point-of-view from which the The Age of Innocence is told--Newland's: a pivotal reversal of expectations, contingent upon his constant underestimation of May and us seeing what he perceives, costs us the Countess Olenska, who is filtered through, and thus objectified by, Newland's tempered worship. Reciting portions of Wharton's text, Joanne Woodward's omniscient narrator further estranges the viewer from what little emotion The Age of Innocence is allowed to exhibit, although this additional dressing is more ironic than opaque and thus effective as wry commentary.

Scorsese's Cape Fear arrives on DVD as a Collector's Edition from Universal. I must confess I was surprised to open the case and find a couple of discs inside, and almost as taken aback when the THX logo preceded the film. A 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer renders the 1991 elements beautifully. While the image is clear and smooth and colours pop without looking exaggerated, black level could've used the slightest boost. The audio is a 5.1 remix robust, if small in bass, in either DTS or Dolby Digital. Elmer Bernstein's recapitulation of Bernard Herrmann's original compositions has a predictable fervour while numerous aural swoops, timed to accompany cinematographer Freddie Francis' hyperactive whip pans, put the discrete channels to work. Dialogue has a tendency to fall out of audible range at anything below reference volume.

Aside from a portion of DVD-ROM content (a script-to-scene option and weblinks), Disc One contains only Cape Fear itself. Disc Two has a heaping helping of bonus material, most significantly Laurent Bouzereau's (who else?) "The Making of Cape Fear" (79 mins.), a collection of recent and not-so-recent interviews with Scorsese, De Niro, Nolte, Jessica Lange, Lewis, screenwriter Wesley Strick, and many others. Prior to watching this doc, I was under the false impression that I knew Cape Fear's backstory thoroughly; the film has heretofore-unsung virtuoso special effects and features Herrmann music besides his Cape Fear score--if you think you've never heard Herrmann's unused arrangements for Torn Curtain, think again!

Moving on, I felt especially privileged to have access to Scorsese's trim bin--the second platter features a block of nine scenes of varying lengths that were deleted from Cape Fear. In the best of them, the sight of an empty doggy dish provokes palpable sadness from Lange. "Behind the Scenes of the Fourth of July Parade" (2 mins.) is a superfluous montage alternating finished and behind-the-scenes footage; and the less slick "On the Set of the Houseboat" (2 mins.) shows Scorsese in good spirits amongst a soaking wet cast. Three "Photograph Montage"s mix stills and live-action except the last, a slideshow of auteur poses called "Martin Scorsese Directs Cape Fear." "Matte Paintings" (1 min.) isolates those publicized in the making-of. The second-coolest (and last major) supplement is a section that tributes, albeit with attention to corporate synergy, the late title designer Saul Bass by encompassing his opening credits sequences for Vertigo, Psycho, Spartacus, and Casino! The theatrical trailer (how I remember the excitement leading up to Cape Fear's theatrical release based on this teaser), production notes, several cast and filmmaker filmographies, and the requisite DVD Newsletter and Recommendations pages cap things off.

By all accounts, Scorsese prefers The Age of Innocence to Cape Fear. It's therefore disappointing that the former has gone out into the DVD world as a bare bones disc, with too little attention lavished on audio/video quality besides. Columbia Tri-Star's 2.35:1, 16x9-enhanced transfer lacks deep contrast and shadow detail, hampering the occasionally striking interplay of brightness and dark. Late in the film, there is a painfully obvious scratch in the print that remains on screen for the duration of a voice-over passage. That being said, superior colour renderings almost save everything. As for the stereophonic 5.1 Dolby Digital track, its surround information is weak, and a near-absence of bass cripples the returning Elmer Bernstein's orchestrations. Bios for Scorsese, Day-Lewis, Pfeiffer, and Ryder plus trailers for The Age of Innocence, Sense and Sensibility, Gandhi, and Bram Stoker's Dracula round out the disc.-Bill Chambers

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
128 minutes
MPAA
R
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY,
16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English DTS 5.1,
Spanish Dolby Surround,
French Dolby Surround
CC
No
Subtitles
English
2 DVD-9s
Region One
Universal

Buy at Amazon USA
Buy at Amazon Canada

DVD VITALS:
Running Time
138 minutes
MPAA
PG
Aspect Ratio(s)
2.35:1 ONLY,
16x9-enhanced
Languages
English DD 5.1,
English Dolby Surround,
French Dolby Surround
CC
Yes
Subtitles
English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Thai, Portuguese
DVD-9
Region One
Columbia Tri-Star

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Published: November 5, 2001