Bela Tarr or Frank Capra box set?

I just heard about the Tarr set from Curzon, and i think it might be a worthwhile set unlike the Curzon Tarkovsky. Hitherto i was planning on the Capra set as my next film purchase, as it contains some silents, BUT Tarr as a director is way higher imo ... gloomy, melancholic, and slow goodness. Which would you go for first, if you would plan on getting both, or is the warm Capra recipe more to your liking?

It's not a matter of warm or cold. Capra is miles ahead as an important and influential filmmaker.

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HEI guys.

There you go being all objective about it

As box sets the Capra seems way better, and i do need to see more of his films, i think i've seen 2 or 3, and films from that period in general. So i predict that at the earliest i'll get Frank around February, and Bela around April, i have to save money though, the devil himself brought these to my attention, and i have to fit them in along with the occasional 5 credit bundle on Audible. When i get FC, i'll have to listen to the films too!!

Director box sets are the best things ever for collecting films, i really really hope i live to see sets for others, and there needs to be a kind of utopianism with rights etc, so bodies of work can be brought together regardless of anti-artistic legalities.

But if they go out of stock before i'm fiscally ready, that will be GOD saying, stick with your audiobooks, those will last until thy tongue cleaveth unto the roof of thy mouth.

Capra might be more influential, but that's because he's older and his work is closer to cinema's infancy, and it's always easier to be influential if you're (one of the) first.

Now, Bela Tarr's work was very influential for the last two generations of arthouse directors like Hu Bo.

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San Franciscan lesbian dwarves and their tomato orgies.

Capra

I'd pick the Capra for completely greedy reasons AKA there are more movies.

Also, because the Capra set has some very early films, and the chance of getting earlier, particularly silent, films in such high quality seems much less common than having high quality versions of modern arthouse darlings.

But you should probably buy the Tarr set next.

Thanks for all the replies, for me personally i am through with buying physical media, this was just the last temptation, if there was a complete set for Fassbinder, Godard, Dreyer, Bresson, or Werner Schroeter, that would be a new temptation, i hope physical media outlives me, but i feel i must live as if it won't so i operate out of a fatalistic giving up, i shall watch what i had accumulated for close to 2 decades of collecting in my 2025 Journey, in 2026 we'll see, maybe i'll be player-less and hence listening to books while watching 1990's school videos to re-live those years again via clothes, hair and architectural styles.

Capra is the better director IMO, but Tarr is the rarer breed. You'll often find cheap Capra movies on sale, but I've never seen Tarr outside the Criterion shelf at Barnes and Noble.

love the boxset art