This DVD is superb. It consists of two movies: one is a documentary, "What is a Head?", featuring numerous interviews with Giacometti's models, friends, critics, and interspersed segments of Giacometti working and trying to explain what he was after.

He said, in response to a question about why he worked so much, "I can't help it. It's not something I chose." An epiphany occurred in 1945 in a movie theater in Montparnasse.

Suddenly I saw nothing but black spots on the screen, and when I looked at the other people in the theater, it was as if I were seeing for the first time. When I left the theater and went outside, it was as if I were seeing the world without a veil, at long last. Everything I have done since is an effort to understand what it is I see. I haven't even begun, really.

The title of the film derives from a heated discussion in the 1930s between Giacometti, Andre Breton, and a number of the Surrealists: Breton, in an aside that disdained the pursuit of verisimilitude, said, "Everybody knows what a head is."

Giacometti replied, "I don't; I don't know what a head is. What is a head?" After this, Giacometti broke with Surrealism to pursue his own impossible vision.

The second film on the DVD, "A Man Among Men: Alberto Giacometti," is even better than "What is a Head?" It consists of an interview with Giacometti as he walks through a massive retrospective of his work in Switzerland.

His rueful asides about how much he liked the work when he first saw it, but then was filled with second thoughts, are moving and profound.

He concluded that he hadn't really come close to understanding what he was seeing, but was very excited about getting back to Paris to work. "I see an opening," is a phrase he uses to describe the possibilities in what he's done.

For the art-lover, or someone who wants to become acquainted with one of the towering figures of 20th century art, you couldn't find a better place to drop $27.