Insights From Jewison and Frankenheimer

No two film directors have the exact same style and technique. The same can be said for their audio commentaries on DVD editions of their movies.

Take Norman Jewison and John Frankenheimer, for example.

Jewison--the veteran director of the 1967 Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” along with “Moonstruck” and “Fiddler on the Roof”--is an absolute chatterbox on the special edition of his 1968 hit “The Thomas Crown Affair” (MGM, $25).

Steve McQueen stars in this romantic fluff as a suave, brilliant Boston millionaire who pulls off the perfect bank heist, only to meet his match when a coolly beautiful insurance investigator (Faye Dunaway) enters the picture. The film includes the Oscar-winning song “The Windmills of Your Mind.”

There’s been lot of renewed interest in “Thomas Crown” because a remake starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo is due to hit theaters later this year.

Jewison has such an engaging and low-key delivery, it’s fun to listen to such tidbits as how McQueen lobbied him for the chance to play a sophisticate and why Jewison decided Dunaway should smile only once in the film.

“Thomas Crown” is more an exercise in style than substance because the screenplay was under 90 pages. So Jewison took full advantage of that fact to gussy up the film with multi-images on screen and imaginatively mounted action sequences.

Besides Jewison’s commentary, the DVD edition also features the trailer and is available in pan-and-scan and letterbox formats.

The award-winning Frankenheimer doesn’t talk as much as Jewison, but when he does it’s pure gold. Listening to his vivid recollections of his 1964 classic “The Train” (MGM, $25), you feel like Frankenheimer is right in your living room.

“The Train,” which stars Burt Lancaster and Paul Scofield, is a riveting, intelligent, action-packed drama about a French railroad inspector and Resistance fighter (Lancaster) who is forced to save France’s most beloved artworks from the Nazis.

Frankenheimer, who began his career in live television, truly is a visual director. He explains slowly and methodically how scenes were set up, how many cameras were used to get the desired effect and just how cold the conditions were in France during the production. This letterbox edition also features the theatrical trailer and an isolated track of Maurice Jarre’s effective score.

Frankenheimer’s stories even make the forgettable 1985 thriller “The Holcroft Covenant” (MGM, $25) worth watching. Michael Caine, Victoria Tennant and Anthony Andrews star in this adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s bestseller.

Jack Cardiff is one of England’s best-known cinematographers who has directed several films, including the Oscar-nominated 1960 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers.” His 1968 erotic romance “Girl on a Motorcycle” (Anchor Bay, $30) is barely watchable, and then only for camp value. A fresh-faced Marianne Faithfull, Mick Jagger’s former flame, plays a bored newlywed who, clad only in black leather, jumps on her motorcycle and travels to see her former lover (Alain Delon). Along the way, she has erotic daydreams about Delon, as well as several tedious inner monologues.

Though it seems tame by today’s standards, this was considered so risque that it was cut to shreds and retitled “Naked Under Leather” when it was released in America. In his commentary about it, Cardiff comes across as a kindly old professor, but he pops up too sporadically on the soundtrack, and then it’s usually to whine about the fact that the film was edited here. Also included in this letterbox edition are the trailer, a still photo gallery and biographies of Cardiff, Faithfull and Delon.

DVD Releases

“The Music Man” (Warner, $25): a crisp, beautiful, letterbox DVD edition of Meredith Willson’s 1962 musical starring Robert Preston and Shirley Jones. Included is a behind-the-scenes look at the production hosted by Jones and trailers of “Music Man” and composer Willson’s 1964 hit “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”

“Fantastic Planet” (Anchor Bay, $25): letterbox edition of the truly bizarre 1971 French sci-fi animated hit from director Rene Laloux. The DVD also features three of his animated shorts.