A Sensitive, Articulate Look at Filmmaking

Director Martha Coolidge’s commentary on Pioneer’s special laser-disc edition of “Rambling Rose” ($75) reveals a sure command of her craft and an understanding of film and its ability to tell affecting, touching stories that tell us something about ourselves.

Her sensitive, articulate discussion, plus a series of important deleted scenes seen here for the first time, make this one of the most valuable laser-disc releases of the year.

It’s obvious that this laser-disc package was produced with the same care and attention to detail as the 1991 film, a warm, moving story centered on the impact a free-spirited 19-year-old makes on the lives of a Georgia family in the mid-1930s. “Rambling Rose” features Oscar-nominated performances, for the first time in the same year by a daughter (Laura Dern) and a mother (Diane Ladd), for best actress and best supporting actress.

Coolidge’s commitment to narrating the track and her clear articulation of her choices and the difficulties she faced in making them, are a marked contrast to Barbra Streisand, the only other woman director whose work was to be the subject of a special-edition laser disc with a second audio track. Unfortunately, Streisand was unable to come to an accord with the Voyager Co. in its release of a Criterion disc of “The Prince of Tides.” That loss is clearly underlined by Coolidge’s warm, sure discussion of filmmaking and her directorial philosophy.

“I read Calder Willingham’s remarkable script years ago, and from the first moment I knew I had to make this movie,” she writes in an introductory letter accompanying the two-disc release. “Usually directors make a wish list of actors they would like, and then settle for whoever is available or whomever they can afford,” she adds. The actors who ultimately played the roles--Dern, Lane, Robert Duvall as Daddy and Lukas Haas--”were my wish list.”

It’s clear what a different film would have been made by another director, from the list of other actors--Walter Matthau, Goldie Hawn and Lily Tomlin among them--Coolidge reveals were once considered by other potential directors.

More than anything else, Coolidge’s audio track and separate interview offer evidence that there are filmmakers deeply committed to their art who exhibit a real understanding of what they want to say and how to say it. As she explains what drew her to the project, viewers also draw from it a deeper understanding of the film itself: “the incredible poetry of the dialogue, in terms of humanity, of love, forgiveness, sexuality.”

Coolidge saw the film in very personal terms that dealt with “loss, of remembering family that is gone, of first love, of moral questions faced and answered. It spoke to me in so many ways, I felt I just had to make it.”

In making it, however, she ultimately eliminated “several sequences that I had to take out for time . . . that are worth looking at.” Some are offered on the disc and are indeed worth looking at, including an alternate ending that slightly changes the tone of the final scenes. For both viewers and potential filmmakers, these scenes are extremely valuable in analyzing the filmmaker’s art.

A handsome pictorial brochure, with unnecessary loving quotes from critics, accompanies the two-disc letterboxed set; the first two sides are extended play (CLV), the third standard play (CAV). There are 43 chapter stops, including outtakes and looks at set design and location choices.