The DVD Report #118: August 25, 2009

I’m of two minds about Duplicity, the new crime thriller from Tony Gilroy, the long time screenwriter who won writing and directing Oscar nominations for his directorial debut Michael Clayton.

On the one hand, it’s nice to have smart, witty dialogue delivered in high style by a cast of gifted actors. On the other hand, it’s a bit disconcerting not to be able to make neither head nor tail of what’s going on until it all comes together in the end.

Clive Owen and Julia Roberts play corporate spies who are on opposite sides of a plot to steal information from one company for another, or are they? The narrative moves back and forth between the present and the past, taking the story from five years earlier to ten days before the climax and back to the present. Sound confusing? It is, but Owen who is almost always good, and Roberts who hasn’t been this good since Erin Brockovich,make it a pleasant time killer.

The top notch supporting cast includes Tom Wilkinson, Paul Giammati, Tom McCarthy, Kathleen Chalphant and True Blood’s Carrie Preston.

Duplicity is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Two of today’s most gifted actresses, Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, turn in memorable performances as sisters in Sunshine Cleaning, written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs, neither of whom I’d heard of before, but whose work I’d like to see more of.

More of a character study than a fully fleshed out narrative, the two women start up a business in which they clean up the bio-hazards left behind after murders, suicides and decomposing bodies. The heart of the film is the familial relationships between the two women, their widowed father, played by Alan Arkin, and Adams’ young son, played by Jason Spevack. Also around are Clifton Collins Jr. as a one-armed cleaning supplies store owner, Steve Zahn as Adam’s married cop boyfriend and Amy Redford (Robert’s daughter) as Zahn’s pregnant wife. 24’s Mary Lynn Rajskub and veteran Paul Dooley have featured roles.

Sunshine Cleaning is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

The Warner Archive, which began promisingly with its initial releases of classic films from the silent era through the 1950s, has moved the clock forward a bit for its latest batch of releases. Their August releases concentrate on comedies, including several stage adaptations, from the 1960s, and cult classics from the 1970s and 80s.

The earliest release from the current batch is 1961’s A Majority of One directed by Mervyn LeRoy and starring Rosalind Russell as a Jewish widow from Brooklyn and Alec Guinness as a Tokyo widower doing business with her son-in-law’s company. Sold as a comedy of manners, it’s really a treatise on racial harmony and understanding. Russell’s son was killed in the Pacific during World War II and Guinness’ daughter was killed in the bombing of Hiroshima, making a friendship, let alone a romance, between the two, seem unlikely.

Russell was not Jewish and Guinness was certainly not Japanese, but no matter. They both bring a great theatrical dignity to their roles, rendering such concerns irrelevant. Russell, who won a Golden Globe for her performance, is particularly impressive in a role that was played on Broadway by Gertrude Berg, who was to generations of mid-century audiences the Jewish matron. Guinness’ role had been played by fellow countryman Cedric Hardwicke. A huge hit at the time and still greatly moving today, the only question is why Warner didn’t release it as a regular DVD.

The 1964 comedy Kisses for My President, directed by Curtis Reinhart and starring Polly Bergen and Fred MacMurray, is a really bad movie, but one that can be appreciated as a time capsule of what pre-feminist America was like. Bergen is a competent businesswoman who becomes the first female president. MacMurray is her befuddled husband. It starts out promisingly but ends ludicrously with Bergen resigning when she becomes pregnant. It’s as though we’re watching one of those Rosalind Russell comedies from the 1940s in which she’s a successful businesswoman who throws it all away for the love a man in the last reel. Bergen, a successful businesswoman in real life, redeemed herself decades later as the mother of “first female president” Geena Davis in the short-lived TV series Commander-in-Chief.

Maureen O’Sullivan is best remembered as Johnny Weismuller’s Jane in the still highly regarded series of 1930s and early 40s Tarzan movies and for being the mother of seven children with husband John Farrow, including superstar Mia Farrow. She, nevertheless, had a sizeable acting career beyond that which included stage and television work as well as more than ninety theatrical films, which took her all the way into the 1990s.

Despite her considerable reputation, O’Sullivan was the lead in only one film, 1965’s Never Too Late, directed by Bud Yorkin, which came at the mid-point of her long career. Adding insult to injury, Warner Bros. gave her third billing in the film behind Paul Ford who played her husband and Connie Stevens who played her daughter. Nevertheless the film belongs to O’Sullivan as the middle-aged woman who finds herself pregnant at 50. The rest of the cast, including Jim Hutton as her son-in-law and Jane Wyatt and Lloyd Nolan as family friends are fine, but it’s O’Sullivan’s gumption that shines through the shenanigans in a repeat of her acclaimed Broadway performance.

Maggie Smith had one of her first starring roles opposite Peter Ustinov in 1968’s crime caper comedy Hot Millions written by Ustinov and directed by Eric Till. The film, in which Ustinov is a bumbling ex-con trying to make one last big score, benefits immensely from the droll wit that both he and Smith as his equally bumbling secretary bring to their roles. The film has many funny set pieces including one involving a giant computer and another involving a deck of cards. Bob Newhart as Ustinov’s co-worker who has designs on Smith, Karl Malden as their dim-witted boss, Robert Morley as a man whose identity Ustinov steals and Cesar Romero in an amusing cameo add to the fun.

Regarded by many as the scariest TV movie ever, 1973’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, directed by John Newland, strikes me in these days of Supernatural and True Blood, as more creepy than scary, with supposedly intelligent people acting like downright morons in the supposedly haunted house. Kim Darby is the young bride who has inherited the house from her grandmother. Jim Hutton is her ill-tempered husband, Barbara Anderson her concerned friend and William Demarest the elderly carpenter who keeps re-sealing the fireplace in the basement from which the dangerous dwarfs emerge intent on dragging Darby in with them. My advice is to hold out for the theatrical remake due next year, which may or may not be better.

The Band’s Robbie Robertson produced, co-wrote the screenplay and composed the midway music for1980’s Carny, a one-of-a-kind film about two carnival buddies played by Robertson and Gary Busey and the girl who comes to love them both, played by Jodie Foster. The film, directed by co-writer Robert Kaylor, is based on Robertson’s real-life experiences as a carny before he became a musician. Busey plays the guy in clown make-up who taunts customers into throwing balls to dump him in a tank while Robertson drums up business and pays off the local sharks. Foster, who plays an 18-year-old was only 16 or 17 at the time of filming. Meg Foster, Kenneth McMillan and Elisha Cook Jr. co-star.

Several films through the years have been given the title Reckless, but it most appropriately fits James Foley’s 1984 film, scripted by Chris Columbus. It should have made Aidan Quinn a huge star (something he didn’t quite become despite this and his next two roles, both of which were in high profile films, Desperately Seeking Susan opposite Rosanna Arquette and Madonna, and An Early Frost, the legendary TV movie about AIDS co-starring Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara and Sylvia Sidney). His mercurial talent was certainly on display here as the 1980s rebel without a cause who romances Daryl Hannah, who also impresses in her last film before her breakout role in Ron Howard’s Splash opposite Tom Hanks.

Writer-director James Bridges’ 1984 film Mike's Murder, a tense murder mystery, reteamed him with Debra Winger who became a star in his 1980 film Urban Cowboy. Winger, riding high on back-to-back Oscar nominations for An Officer and a Gentleman and Terms of Endearment, was, alas, still not a big enough star to make a hit out of this nifty late film noir. She plays a twenty-something bank officer looking into the murder of her former tennis coach, with whom she’d been having an off-and-on affair, coming close to being murdered herself as her investigation takes her deeper and deeper into the L.A. drug underworld. Paul Winfield, the only other name player in the film, makes a strong impression as a corrupt gay record producer.

On the TV front, House, M.D. - Season Five has been released. This is the season in which one of the main characters dies so that the actor playing him can go to work for the Obama White House. No, it’s not series star Hugh Laurie nor one of his original co-stars Lisa Edelstein, Omar Epps, Robert Sean Leonard, Jennifer Morrison or Jesse Spencer.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 25, 2009)

The DVD Report #117: August 18, 2009

For years now, Hollywood comedies have either had to be raunchy or sentimental or both to sell. The latest case in point is the March hit, I Love You, Man which walks a fine line between the two elements. Written by John Hamburg and Larry Levin and directed by Hamburg, the film starts with the wobbly premise that nice guy Paul Rudd has no male friends and needs to find one in a hurry to be his best man at his upcoming nuptials. That sets him off on a frenzy of “dates” with guys such as the 89-year-old man who lies about his age on the internet and the new-to-Los Angeles son of a friend of his mother’s neither knew was gay.

Just when the film seems in danger of drowning in clichés along comes overgrown kid Jason Segel to liven things up. The two meet at an open house for Lou Ferigno’s digs which real estate agent Rudd is trying to sell. They quickly bond, but there is an edge to Segel’s character that you can’t tell whether or not his friendship is sincere. Even more of a problem is that the character of Rudd’s fiancé, played by Rashida Jones, is under-developed. It’s odd that Rudd’s family and Jones’ friends attend the engagement dinner thrown by Rudd’s parents, Jane Curtin and J.K. Simmons, but Jones’ family is not even mentioned. Nor do they attend the wedding in which no one gives the bride away. Not to worry, though, the yucks are there and everyone seems bound to live happily ever after at the film’s finish. If you watch it though, don’t turn it off until after the end credits. The film’s funniest scene takes place over them.

I Love You, Man is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

A real curiosity, 1952’s Actors and Sin was the last film directed by the legendary Ben Hecht, better known for his writing. It was in fact co-directed by cinematographer Lee Garmes with whom Hecht had co-directed Angels Over Broadway twelve years earlier.

The film is two, short 45-minute stories, Actor's Blood and Woman of Sin, combined into one movie.

The first segment stars Edward G. Robinson as a hammy stage actor who discovers his actress daughter Marsha Hunt’s body and proceeds to help the police solve her murder. Aside from Robinson and Hunt, the only actor of any consequence in the film is Dan O’Herlihy who plays Hunt’s ex-husband. He is also the only one who doesn’t overact in this melodramatic hodgepodge.

The second story is a sillier-than-need-be screwball comedy about a young girl who writes adult love stories for the radio, Eddie Albert and Hecht’s nine-year-old daughter Jenny star in this one.

Better than either segment is the delightful thirty-minute DVD interview of Marsha Hunt who talks about her film career cut short by the blacklist, her subsequent twenty-five years of service to the U.N. and stage work, her Hollywood friendships with everyone from Bing Crosby to Paul Newman to Harry Belafonte and the now-91-year-old star’s current career as a record producer. Unlike the film, she’s a total delight.

Actors and Sin is available on standard DVD only.

Divided into five hour-long segments that make it look like a TV special, Richard Schickel’s You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story was in fact a theatrical film release first presented at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and subsequently shown in limited release in theatres last fall.

The documentary follows the changing trends of films from the silent era to the present day. Its many generous clips have almost all been restored, but if you’ve seen any of the TCM documentaries that have accompanied many of Warner Bros. DVD releases over the years you will recognize many of the included interviews with stars and directors long gone. Still, it’s nice to see and hear the likes of Busby Berkeley, James Cagney, Stanley Cortez, Julius J. Epstein, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Kim Hunter, Elia Kazan, Howard Koch, Mervyn LeRoy, Pat O’Brien, William T. Orr, Ronald Reagan, Edward G. Robinson, Vincent Sherman, Alexis Smith, Claire Trevor, Hal B. Wallis, Raoul Walsh, Jack Warner and William A. Wellman once more.

Still living interviewees include Carroll Baker, Warren Beatty, George Clooney, Stanley Donen, Molly Haskell, Robert Redford, Andrew Sarris, David Thompson and Richard Zanuck. Clint Eastwood narrates.

Among the films now available for order from the Warner archive are a number of Al Jolson films. Jolson’s The Jazz Singer was, as everybody knows, the first talking picture. Actually it’s a mostly silent film with very little spoken dialogue that bursts into song now and then.

When The Jazz Singer opened in October 1927, only 200 theatres across the U.S. were equipped with sound which meant that more people heard about the film at the time than actually saw it. The Singing Fool, released almost a year later in September 1928, after most theatres were so equipped, was the first mostly-talking picture that most people were able to see, making it the most financially successful film at the box-office until Gone With the Wind.

It had to have been the novelty. The film itself creaks. It probably creaked then, but audiences didn't mind as long as they could see and hear Jolson sing "There's a Rainbow Round My Shoulder", "I'm Sitting on Top of the World” and other hit songs.

The plot has aspiring singer Jolson married to two-timing Josephine Dunn who leaves him after both become stars and takes his beloved three year old son, "Sonny Boy" (picture-stealing Davey Lee) with her. It doesn't help that Jolson has more chemistry with little Davey Lee than he does with either Dunn or Betty Bronson as the perky waitress who waits for him.

It’s a film that’s worth seeing primarily for its historic value.

Whereas the plot of The Singing Fool doesn't turn maudlin until the last act, 1929’s Say It With Songs starts out that way and doesn't let up. Radio star Jolson spends the better part of the film behind bars for accidentally killing his boss for having lecherous designs on his wife, Marion Nixon. There's even a Stella Dallas-type scene near the end with Jolson peering through the window at his now-estranged wife and his beloved "Little Pal", the same Davey Lee who climbed upon his knee as "Sonny Boy". Worst of all, the songs here aren't even interesting. The wretched "Little Pal" is heard at least three times, and that’s three too many. Like The Singing Fool, Say It With Songs is worth seeing more for its historic value than its content.

Other Jolson titles available through the archive include Big Boy, about a horse, not another little kid; the all-star Wonder Bar featuring Kay Francis, Dolores Del Rio, Dick Powell and more; Go Into Your Dance, his only film opposite wife Ruby Keeler; and The Singing Kid, his last starring role.

It’s been out for a while now, but with the Emmy awards approaching this may be the best time to catch up with Breaking Bad - The Complete First Season. The entire season was only seven episodes long. Played back-to-back, the running time is approximately 5 ½ hours, making it seem more like a long, absorbing film.

Bryan Cranston won a surprise Emmy for this last year and has been nominated again this year along with co-star Aaron Paul. Both are terrific.

A description of the comedy-drama series probably sounds awful to those who haven’t seen it, but it’s far from that. Cranston plays a high school chemistry teacher who learns he is dying of lung cancer and, with the help of failed former student Paul, buys an RV which he turns into a meth lab in order to make enough money to take care of his pregnant wife and handicapped son after he’s gone.

Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the small regular cast also includes Anna Gunn as Cranston’s wife, Dean Norris as his loud-mouthed brother-in-law in charge of the local DEA, Betsy Brandt as Gunn’s bitchy sister and Norris’ wife, and 16-year-old newcomer RJ Mitte as Cranston’s son. Mitte, who has a mild case of cerebral palsy in real life, plays the more severely afflicted character with a charm that has already made him something of a teen idol.

Give it a chance. You’ll be hooked.

Breaking Bad - The Complete First Season is available on standard DVD only.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 18, 2009)

The DVD Report #116: August 11, 2009

While DVD companies continue to rush recent releases into the marketplace, classic films become harder and harder to find.

While we get a few crumbs here and there - the recent screwball comedy sets, the hits and misses form the Warner archives - there are still way too many classics languishing unreleased on commercial DVD in the U.S. and Canada and, indeed, most of the world. Here are a few of the films released between 1931 and 1970 that are among the most conspicuous by their absence:

Every few years Paramount reissues George Stevens’ Oscar winning 1951 film A Place in the Sun, which continues to be a cash cow for them, but neither Paramount nor Universal, which owns the rights to older Paramount films, has seen fit to release the original 1931 film of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy filmed in 1931 under that title.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express) with all the intensity that was typical of the director, Phillips Holmes is every bit as strong as Montgomery Clift in the remake and Sylvia Sidney excels as the pathetic poor girl who clings to him. Sidney’s performance is much more nuanced, less whiny and annoying than Shelley Winters’ in the remake. Lovely Frances Dee is only on screen for ten minutes or so as the rich girl with whom he becomes infatuated, but makes as indelible an impression as Elizabeth Taylor did twenty years later.

Come to think of it, why hasn’t Universal released von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express in Region 1? It’s been available in Region 2 in the U.K. for years.

Oscar’s only Best Picture winner never released on DVD is 1933’s Cavalcade and there’s no excuse for it. Fox promised the film as far back as 1997, but apparently has never been satisfied with the look and sound of the transfer and now probably feels there’s no market for it. That’s just plain ridiculous. The film, which follows a British upper-class couple from the Boer War through World War I, is of significant historical value for its content as well as its Oscar win. Based on Noel Coward’s enormously successful stage and radio play, the faithful film version ends with the same prophetic warning of the coming of World War II.

Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook’s stiff upper-lip style of acting has long gone out of style, but Una O’Connor and Herbert Mundin as their servants remain as delightful as ever. The film, directed by Frank Lloyd (Mutiny on the Bounty) deserves a major DVD release.

A year after winning her Oscar for It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert was nominated for an even better performance as a naïve young psychiatrist in Private Worlds, a film few today have seen. What a pity. The film, which was directed by Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) remains fresh and appealing as do the performances, not only of Colbert, but of Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, Helen Vinson and especially Joan Bennett as McCrea’s mentally challenged bride. Universal owns the rights to the film which has been shown in a restored print in special screenings within the last few years. Where’s the DVD?

There have been three film versions of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat, the immortal musical that is constantly revived on Broadway and throughout the musical world. The best of these, by far, was the 1936 version directed by James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein). Whale fully captures the nuances of Edna Ferber’s novel as well as presenting the glorious songs to best advantage. The impeccable cast is comprised almost entirely of actors who originally played their roles on stage. Irene Dunne, who starred as Magnolia, was the understudy to the original leading lady and headed the touring version, which made her an overnight sensation. Helen Morgan famously originated the second female lead of Julie on Broadway. Allan Jones (Gaylord Ravenal) Charles Winninger (Cap’n Andy), Paul Robeson (Joe) and Hattie McDaniel (Queenie) had all previously played their roles in various stage versions. Only Helen Westley, subbing for Edna May Oliver as Parthy Ann, was new to the project.

Warner Bros. has supposedly been working on restoring the inferior 1929 version to release all three versions in a box set, but who needs all that? The 1951 version has long been available. We just want the great 1936 version.

When Leo McCarey won his first Oscar for directing 1937’s The Awful Truth, he reportedly said “you gave it to me for the wrong picture”. The film he was referring to was that year’s Make Way for Tomorrow, which a handful of critics, then, and every major historian now, agree was indeed the film he should have won for.

One of the rare films to deal with the travails of old age, Make Way for Tomorrow is the poignant story of an elderly New York couple, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, who are about to lose their home to foreclosure. Two of their four children agree to take one of them. Bondi goes to live with son Thomas Mitchell, his wife Fay Bainter and their daughter. Moore goes to live with daughter Elisabeth Risdon. Eventually the two reunite for a brief time before Moore is shipped off to another daughter in California and Bondi, unbeknownst to Moore, goes to live out the remainder of her life in a nursing home.

What makes the film so great is that there are no villains. The elderly couple is seen as difficult as well as sweet and charming and the children put upon rather than selfish. Bondi, Bainter and Mitchell who would be reteamed to great effect in Our Town three years later are especially memorable. Six years after that, Mitchell could be seen as Bondi’s brother-in-law in It's a Wonderful Life.

Criterion has been rumored to be working on a DVD release but thus far there has been no confirmation.

For years the TCM website has been conducting a survey to determine which films its viewers want to see released on DVD. 1940’s The Mortal Storm, directed by Frank Borzage (7th Heaven, A Farewell to Arms) has consistently been at or near the top of that survey yet Warner Bros. still hasn’t released it either as a standard DVD or as part of its archive program where one would have thought it would be among its first releases.

Set in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, it was one of the first and best of the anti-Nazi movies to come out of Hollywood before the U.S. entered the war. Frank Morgan gives what is arguably his greatest performance as the beloved professor who is arrested by the Nazis for being a non-Aryan. Margaret Sullavan as his daughter; James Stewart as her friend and presumed lover; Robert Young, Robert Stack and Dan Dailey as young Nazis; Irene Rich as Morgan’s wife; Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart’s mother; and Bonita Granville as her young ward all excel in a film that deserves to be seen by everyone.

One of the best films about growing up, 1945’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, directed by Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront) from Betty Smith’s acclaimed novel, netted two acting Oscars for Peggy Ann Garner’s Francie and James Dunn’s Johnny Nolan. It has long been available on DVD in Region 2, but not Region 1. Why not, Fox?

Six of Greer Garson’s seven Oscar-nominated performances have been released on Region 1 DVDs, but not 1945’s The Valley of Decision, directed by Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice). This grand film version of Marcia Davenport’s bestseller is the only film in which the Irish-born Garson actually played Irish instead of British. It paired her with Gregory Peck in one of his best early roles and surrounded her with a superb supporting cast including Gladys Cooper, Donald Crisp, Lionel Barrymore, Dean Stockwell and Jessica Tandy, so why isn’t it available, Warner Bros.?

Olivia de Havilland won a celebrated court case against Warner Bros. by starring in two superb 1946 films, neither of which are on DVD. The Dark Mirror, directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase, The Killers), a suspense thriller in which she plays twins, one good, one evil, was scheduled for release by Paramount a few years ago but pulled at the last minute due to a regime change. The even better To Each His Own, directed by Mitchell Leisen (Remember the Night, The Mating Season) whose many wonderful films are mostly missing on DVD, is the one that won de Havilland the first of her two Oscars for what amounts to another dual role as a naïve girl and her later middle-aged self. De Havilland, who was only thirty at the time, is especially engaging as the gruff, fiftyish character she plays for much of the film. Universal owns the rights to this one. Rights to The Dark Mirror, originally released by Republic, have shifted to Lionsgate which doesn’t seem to be in any more of a hurry to release it than Paramount was.

Jane Wyman won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her marvelous performance in 1951’s The Blue Veil, directed by Curtis Bernhardt (A Stolen Life, Interrupted Melody), a film that hasn’t even been shown on TV in decades. It was an RKO film, so if we keep our fingers crossed, Warner Archive will eventually release it.

In it Wyman plays a World War I widow whose fatherless baby dies a few hours after being born. Against her better judgment she takes a job as a nanny for widower Charles Laughton which begins a lifelong odyssey of caring for other people’s children, all of whom she becomes a bit too attached to for her own good. Laughton and the rest of the supporting cast including Joan Blondell (another Oscar nominee), Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Richard Carlson and Agnes Moorehead are first rate.

Nominated for seven Oscars, winner of one and the New York Film Critics Best Picture co-winner with The Apartment, 1960’s Sons and Lovers, directed by Jack Cardiff, deserves to be on DVD and is in Region 2, is, but is shamefully among the missing in the U.S. and Canada. The film version of the D.H. Lawrence novel gave us career high performances by Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell, Wendy Hiller, Mary Ure and Heather Sears. Howard, as the gruff coal miner father of sensitive artist Stockwell, and Ure as the older woman with whom Stockwell has his first affair were nominated for their performances. Master cinematographer Cardiff (Black Narcissus, The African Queen) directs with a painter’s eye, though it was the film’s credited cinematographer, Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man, Glory), who won the film’s only Oscar. Fox is to blame for the film’s absence on DVD.

An actor’s showcase, 1960’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, directed by Delbert Mann (Marty, Separate Tables) from the play by William Inge (Picnic, Splendor in the Grass), was an exquisite study of a 1920s dysfunctional family headed by a womanizing traveling salesman played by Robert Preston and his put-upon wife played by Dorothy McGuire. Shirley Knight won an Oscar nomination as their daughter. Knight and Lee Kinsolving as the suicidal boy she loves won Golden Globe nominations, while Eve Arden as McGuire’s opinionated sister won a Laurel nomination. Angela Lansbury was also unforgettable as Preston’s on-again, off-again mistress. Warner Bros. owns this one so maybe we’ll see it soon as an archive release.

Jean Simmons was an early contender for a Best Actress Oscar for her grieving widow in 1963’s All the Way Home, directed by Alex Segal from James Agee’s novel, A Death in the Family, and Tad Mosel’s play, but the film was a box office disappointment and Paramount pulled it from its L.A. showcase after just six days. Oscar qualifying rules stipulate that a film must play seven consecutive days in L.A. Subsequently produced for TV in three separate versions, this remains the best and most difficult to find. In addition to Simmons at her best, the film features strong performances by Robert Preston, Aline MacMahon, Pat Hingle and young Michael Kearney.

Dame Edith Evans gave one of the greatest performances of all time as a lonely old lady who talks to her teacups in 1967’s The Whisperers, directed by Bryan Forbes (The L-Shaped Room, Séance on a Wet Afternoon), for which she won practically every acting award in the world except for the Oscar. The suspense story involving stolen money is secondary here to the rich character portrait provided by Evans. This one has never been given a DVD release even in the U.K. It’s a United Artists film so the rights belong to MGM/Fox now.

Patricia Neal returned to the screen with much fanfare after her near fatal series of strokes in 1968’s The Subject Was Roses, directed by Ulu Grosbard (True Confessions, The Deep End of the Ocean), as a strong-willed Bronx wife and mother just after World War II. Neal was nominated for an Oscar for her moving performance and Jack Albertson as her miserly husband won for Best Supporting Actor trophy while Martin Sheen as their conflicted homecoming G.I. son greatly advanced his career in what was largely a faithful transfer of the three-character Broadway play which starred Irene Dailey opposite Albertson and Sheen. An MGM film, Warner Bros, now owns the rights so let’s keep our fingers crossed for an archive release.

Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman won Oscar nominations for their corrosive performances in 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father, directed by Gilbert Cates (Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams). An unsparing look at aging and death, Douglas is the mean old man that son Hackman and daughter Parsons must cope with after the death of their put-upon mother, the lovely Dorothy Stickney. Columbia was rumored to be putting this out as one of their no-frills Martini movie DVDs but it has yet to happen.

That’s just seventeen of the gems still missing on DVD. I could easily come up with another eighteen more, but that’s enough food for thought for now.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 11, 2009)

The DVD Report #115: August 4, 2009

Expectations ran high for The Soloist throughout 2008. Then the film was pulled by Paramount at the last minute and bumped to an April 2009 release date giving the impression there was something wrong with the film. There isn’t. What’s wrong is the proliferation of Oscar prognosticators on the internet who build up expectations for films sight unseen and then pounce on those very same films which can’t possibly live up to the high expectations they themselves brought to them.

Granted the true story of an L.A. Times reporter who befriends a schizophrenic genius homeless musician seems like something Oscar would embrace, but the film goes for authenticity, not heart-tugging melodramatics. Director Joe Wright (Atonement) cast hundreds of the 90,000 L.A. homeless as extras in the film, giving it a “you are there” feeling. Jamie Foxx, who gets top billing, nails a difficult role in which he has to act crazy yet play the violin and cello beautifully at the same time. The revelation, though, is Robert Downey Jr. who just keeps getting better with every role.

Downey, whose role is actually larger than Foxx’s, plays writer Steve Lopez who makes you feel he needs his friendship with musician Nathaniel Ayers more than Ayers needs him. It is very much an Oscar worthy performance that will probably be overlooked this year due to the lingering stench over Paramount’s marketing decision and the film’s resultant box office failure.

Catherine Keener as Downey’s ex-wife and current boss, and Marcia Gay Harden as Foxx’s estranged sister co-star. Blu-ray and DVD extras include a making-of documentary and interviews with the real Lopez, Ayers and Ayers’ sister.

Columbia has released two sets of classic comedies from the 1930s and 40s called Icons of Screwball Comedy - Volume One and Volume Two. Each features two films from each of a total of four of the screen’s greatest female stars of the era, a total of eight films overall retailing for $5-6 each. It’s the buy of the year.

The stars are Jean Arthur, Rosalind Russell, Irene Dunne and Loretta Young.

Arthur and Young, whose film careers began in the silent era, both saw their last theatrical film released in 1953 while Dunne, whose first film was released in 1930, ended her big screen the a year earlier in 1952. While all three had some success in television, Young was the only one of the three whose award-winning post-film television career could be considered a major success. Russell, who made her first film in 1934, remained a major film star until her death in 1976.

Arthur is represented in the collection by 1935’s If You Could Only Cook, directed by William A. Seiter, and 1940’s Too Many Husbands, directed by Wesley Ruggles. Russell is represented by her Oscar-nominated performance in 1942’s My Sister Eileen, directed by Alexander Hall, and 1945’s She Wouldn’t Say Yes, also directed by Hall.

Dunne is represented by her Oscar-nominated performance in 1936’s Theodora Goes Wild, directed by Richard Bowleslawski, and 1944’s Together Again, directed by Charles Vidor. Young is represented by 1940’s The Doctor Takes a Wife, directed by Alexander Hall, and 1942’s A Night to Remember, directed by Richard Wallace.

Arthur is paired with Herbert Marshall in If You Could Only Cook, in which she plays an out-of-work girl who meets millionaire Marshall sitting on a park bench and assumes he’s also in need of work. The two become maid and butler to an affable gangster played by Leo Carrillo. The film is slight but pleasant. My big problem with it, though, is that Marshall, who only a few years later would become one of Hollywood’s most dependable character actors, is not my idea of a romantic leading man. Arthur was 35 at the time, but looked 25. Marshall was 45, but looked 55. It seems to me he should have been playing her father, not her eventual lover.

Arthur is showcased to much better advantage opposite Fred MacMurray and Melvyn Douglas in the naughty-but-nice Too Many Husbands from a play by Somerset Maugham, whom Marshall would ironically play as an old fogey in a few years’ time in The Razor's Edge.

The plot of Too Many Husbands is similar to the same year’s My Favorite Wife in which Irene Dunne returns home after being presumed dead just as husband Cary Grant remarries. In Husbands, MacMurray, presumed dead, returns home six months after Arthur remarries his best friend and business partner, Douglas. Unlike Grant whose marriage to Gail Patrick in My Favorite Wife has not yet been consummated, Arthur’s marriage to Douglas clearly has. She has slept with both men and both men want to spend the rest of their lives sleeping with her. She can’t make up her mind which one she wants and even after a judge tells her which husband she is legally married to, she ends up dining and dancing with both of them, the film ending very much on an ambiguous note with a strong hint of a ménage-a-trois in the making.

Russell played many memorable characters over the years but is best remembered for two of them: Mame Dennis in Auntie Mame, of course, and years earlier as Ruth Sherwood in My Sister Eileen.

The play and later film were based on the real life Ruth McKenney’s adventures in 1935 Greenwich Village with her younger, more attractive sister. Shirley Booth originated the role on Broadway, but Russell played it on screen and reprised it in the 1953 Broadway musical, Wonderful Town, which she performed on live TV just as Auntie Mame was hitting the big screen in 1958.

Russell and Janet Blair in the title role are both in top form and are ably supported by Brian Aherne, George Tobias and the Three Stooges among others. Though the film ends hilariously, the real-life Eileen McKenney didn’t fare so well. She married acclaimed author Nathaniel West in 1937 and died with him in a fatal car crash in 1940.

Russell’s forté in the 40s was playing smart businesswomen who were eventually brought to heel by a man. In She Wouldn’t Say Yes, she’s a lady psychiatrist who’s seen too many women end up badly because of a man and wants no part of romance. Enter Lee Bowman as the cartoonist who won’t take no for an answer and with the help of Russell’s physician father (Charles Winninger) and wandering hobo-turned-butler (Harry Davenport) gets his way. It’s a pleasant time killer with a good Russell performance and amiable ones by the rest of the cast.

Dunne was best known in the early 1930s for her roles in tearjerkers such as Back Street and Magnificent Obsession and musicals like Roberta and Show Boat. Although she played comedic scenes in many of her films, it wasn’t known whether she could pull off an out-and-out comedy, but pull it off she did in her very first, the hilarious gem, Theodora Goes Wild.

As the niece of two prim spinsters, Theodora Lynn has to watch her step in her small Connecticut home town, but as Caroline Adams in the big city she could write a racy novel exposing small town hypocrisy and cause a scandal when the locals see themselves in her book.

Melvyn Douglas and Thomas Mitchell make fine comic foils, but best of all, next to Dunne, of course, is Spring Byington as the town gossip who is put to shame by Dunne in the film’s gut-busting finale.

Dunne and Charles Boyer, who made movie magic in Leo McCarey’s 1939 classic Love Affair, were reunited in the aptly titled Together Again. The title, though, is a play on words. It refers to putting the statue of the town’s former mayor back together after a bolt of lightning has severed its head. The catch: current mayor Dunne is the former mayor’s widow and she wants the statue put back together while Charles Coburn as the former’s mayor’s father would rather see Dunne together with sculptor Charles Boyer whom she hires to do the job.

Young and Ray Milland hate one another at first sight in The Doctor Takes a Wife but due to false reporting they are forced to pretend to be married in order to avoid scandal. Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense, but that’s the premise of screwball comedy - preposterous situations made seemingly plausible by sharp writing, deft direction and charismatic star turns and that’s exactly what you get here. Reginald Gardiner and Gail Patrick co-star as the pair’s discarded lovers.

A breezy murder mystery-comedy in The Thin Man mold, A Night to Remember, not to be confused with the film about the sinking of the Titanic with the same name, pairs Young with Brian Aherne. The two are amiable together and the zany goings-on are mildly entertaining, but this is without question the weakest of the eight films.

On the TV front, the second season of Early Edition has been released. Kyle Chandler is still getting tomorrow’s news today in order to effect the outcome of some very perilous situations, but he no longer lives in a hotel room. He now has a pretty swank bachelor apartment over the restaurant he was given by a wealthy businessman for saving his life in the season opener.

Buddy-narrator Fisher Stevens has quit his job as a stock broker and become the manager of the restaurant and blind friend Sheenisia Davis-Williams assists in the running of the restaurant as well, thus allowing Chandler to perform his good deeds without worrying about where his next meal is going to come from.

 

-Peter J. Patrick (August 4, 2009)