Also out… Hostel II, Saw III, Mr. Brooks, and more.

This week sees the Criterion DVD releases of two pictures that have already been widely, if not well, represented in varied home-video media: Terrence Malick's 1978 Days of Heaven and Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 Breathless. Not to wax too predictable on the topic, but whatever versions of these pictures you may already have in your library can be disposed of with extreme prejudice. The Criterion disc of Heaven, which rumor and internet scuttlebutt feared would be "de-prettyfied" in its transfer — but which was approved by the putatively reclusive Malick, film editor Billy Weber, and camera operator John Bailey — is among the most visually ravishing DVDs ever produced, absolutely true to the cinematographic vision realized by its two very great lensers, Nestor Almendros (who had to leave the production because of his commitment to shoot The Man Who Loved Women for Truffaut) and Haskell Wexler, and to Malick's own poetic and plangent tale.

Richard Gere and Brooke Adams in Days of Heaven

MALICK'S DAYS OF HEAVEN

Malick's simple, stark, but strangely epic period story is about a trio of itinerant workers (Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, and Linda Manz) who find themselves harvesting wheat for a wealthy, stricken farmer (Sam Shepard) who takes a shine to the adult female of the trio, believing her to be Gere's sister rather than his lover. The film has a strangeness that made it unique even in the putative salad days of '70s American moviemaking. The scene in which Gere's character accidentally kills his steel-mill boss at the very beginning — in which we see the characters screaming at each other but hear no dialogue — tips you off right away. From then on, Malick follows the prerogatives of nature as he observes it — not as radically as he does 20 years later in his follow-up film The Thin Red — but enough so that he weaves a rich skein wherein his oft-conflicted characters seem to interact directly with the seasons and the pleasures and disasters brought by them. It's an ineffable work, and the extras here illuminate its making while leaving its mysteries intact. The commentary by Weber, production designer Jack Fisk, costume designer Patricia Norris, and casting director Dianne Crittenden is excellent. Among other things, it points out the connection between this film and a certain Stevie Wonder album which you would never have guessed. An audio interview with Gere reveals the actor's frustration at seeing his best "stuff" — material from a dialogue-heavy script that was jettisoned during the film's editing — missing from the finished version, while a video interview with Shepard shows the actor/writer coming to grips with the mysterious Malick method. There's more, all of it worthwhile.

Breathless Jean Seberg in Breathless

GODARD'S BREATHLESS

The two-disc set of Godard's Breathless is, if anything, more breathtaking. Heaven looked great when I saw it in theaters back when it first opened, but I've never been able to see Breathless look so stunning. The black-and-white picture, shot by Raoul Coutard on a particular Kodak stock that could really "take" the non-movie lighting Godard wanted to use, has the evocative clarity of the best b&w still photography, as the screen grabs here should show. Previous video versions were worn, or in the case of the most recent DVD, had a greenish tint. This is pure silk all the way. The movie itself, a genre homage filtered through an intellectual/surrealist sensibility, still pops like crazy, and leads Jean Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg remain the gold standard for postmodern sexy screen couples. Disc one holds some revealing vintage interviews, including a sneakily cheeky Godard and the incredibly polite and deferential Seberg resisting a grilling from The Worst Frenchwoman In The World (at least at that time). The second disc contains pertinent new interviews with Coutard, documentarian D.A. Pennebaker, voluble "man of cinema" Pierre Rissient (an assistant director on the film), and a hilariously affected but still solid and informative documentary on the film's creation, as well as Charlotte et son Jules, Godard's 1959 short with Belmondo.