The DVD Report #149: March 30, 2010

The Academy in its fourth year of awards, honoring films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1930 and July 31, 1931, completely snubbed the two films most of us consider the two best films of the year – City Lights and The Blue Angel, and almost completely ignored the two we consider the next best - Little Caesar and The Public Enemy. How did this happen?

Clearly the Academy was sending messages. The message to Charlie Chaplin, the writer, producer, director, composer and star of City Lights was “no more silent films”. Never mind that the film was artistically the highlight of his career. Never mind that the story of the little tramp who pays for the operation to make the blind girl see only to be rebuffed in the end, is one of the most poignant love stories in cinema history. It was a silent film. Shame on him!

City Lights was released on DVD but has been discontinued by its distributor. However, you can still find copies at Amazon and other outlets, albeit at exorbitant collectors’ prices.

The message they were sending The Blue Angel was don’t give us a hand-me-down. The version of Josef von Sternberg’s masterpiece released in the U.S. was a watered down English language version of the great German film. Not only that, it wasn’t released in the U.S. until after Marlene Dietrich’s second von Sternberg film, Morocco,which had established her persona with American audiences. Moroccowas nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Actress and Best Director.

Both The Blue Angel and Moroccoare available on DVD.

The message to Warner Bros., the studio that made both Mervyn LeRoy’s Little Caesar and William A. Wellman’s The Public Enemy,was tone down the violence. The public ate up the gangster films that established the careers of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, respectively, but nominated them only for their writing – The Public Enemy for Original Story, Little Caesar for Adapted Screenplay.

Both Little Caesar and The Public Enemy are available on DVD.

Also of note were two films directed by Howard Hawks, the aviation drama, The Dawn Patrol with Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., which won the award for Original Story and the prison drama, The Criminal Code with Walter Huston and Phillips Holmes, which was nominated for Adapted Screenplay.

Neither has yet been released on commercial DVD, though The Dawn Patrol is owned by Warner Bros. and will likely be a future Archive release. Rights to The Criminal Code are owned by Columbia.

Instead of these fondly remembered films, the Academy nominated the adult themed western, Cimarron; the well received stage to screen transfer, The Front Page; the family movie, Skippy; the adventure film, Trader Horn and that old warhorse of a soap opera, East Lynne.

The winner, Wesley Ruggles’ Cimarron was ostensibly a western, but the story of Oklahoma settlers over a forty year period (1889-1929) veered more into the area of soap opera as it centered on the marital problems of stars Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, the latter in the first of many roles in which her character ages from a young woman to an old lady.

Cimarron, which won three of the seven Oscars it was nominated for,is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

A fast paced, expertly done film version of the classic newspaper play, The Front Page, directed by Lewis Milestone, was brought to the screen with Pat O’Brien in his star making role as the ace reporter and Adolphe Menjou, Oscar nominated as Best Actor as his editor.

The Front Page, which failed to win any of the three Oscars it was nominated for, is in the public domain and is available from several DVD distributors. It has been remade three times, most notably by Howard Hawks as the even better His Girl Friday, a 1940 film, in which the character of the ace reporter (Rosalind Russell) was given a female slant.

His Girl Friday is also a public domain title, but its original studio, Columbia has an official release version that is a thousand times better than any of the public domain travesties of this great film out there.

None of the other three Best Picture nominees are available on commercial DVD. Rights to Trader Horn, whose sole nomination was for Best Picture, are owned by Warner Bros., who one presumes will eventually release it as part of its Archive program. The Harry Carey starrer, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, is notable as the first narrative film to be filmed on location in Africa.

An endearing film about boys and their dogs, Norman Taurog’s Skippy was nominated for four Oscars, winning Taurog one as Best Director. Jackie Cooper, who was 8 when he made the film, remains the youngest performer nominated for an Oscar in a leading role. Both he and Robert Coogan as his friend Sooky are terrific. Universal owns the rights. Perhaps one day they will see their way clear to making it available on DVD.

Though not technically a lost film, Frank Lloyd’s East Lynne,a weepie about a long suffering adulteress,has never been shown on television or released to home video. The existing print, controlled by UCLA, is missing its final reel. Ann Harding and Clive Brook are the stars of the film which did not receive any other nominations.

With Chaplin, Robinson and Cagney all snubbed, the Best Actor race was fairly tepid. Only 8 year old Cooper in Skippy had a substantial role among the nominees. Fredric March as a thinly disguised John Barrymore had to take a back seat to three women, Ina Claire, Mary Brian and Henrietta Crosman in The Royal Family of Broadway. Richard Dix, nominated for Cimarron, was missing from the film for much of its screen time. Adolphe Menjou was the second lead in The Front Page and Lionel Barrymore was one of three actors supporting Norma Shearer in A Free Soul . The others were Clark Gable and Leslie Howard. Barrymore, the most veteran of the nominees, was the winner.

A Free Soul is available from Warner Home Video as part of its Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2. The Royal Family of Broadway is another Paramount film controlled by Universal that is not available on DVD.

The Best Actress race was a bit livelier with Marlene Dietrich nominated for Morocco; Irene Dunne nominated for Cimarron; Ann Harding nominated for Holiday (in the role played by Katharine Hepburn in the better known 1938 version); Norma Shearer nominated for A Free Soul and veteran Marie Dressler, then the nation’s number one box office star, nominated for Min and Bill.

It’s unclear who has the rights to Holiday, which has never been released on commercial DVD. It was produced by Pathe, which was acquired by RKO, but the rights may have been sold to Columbia when they remade the film in 1938. If it’s RKO, we may eventually see it released as part of the Warner Archive. If it’s Columbia, chances are it will remain unreleased.

Dressler, whose star had been in the ascendant for the last two years, was at her career peak in her early 60s. Min and Bill, a comedy-drama in which she teamed with Wallace Beery for the first time, was a huge box office success. Her role as the owner of a dockside hotel wasn’t much different from the character she played in the previous year’s Anna Christie or the one she’d play in Tugboat Annie opposite Beery in 1933, but it was everything Depression audiences wanted.

Min and Bill and Min and Bill are Warner Archive releases. Anna Christie is a Warner Home Video release.

Among new DVD releases worth checking out are An Education and Sherlock Holmes.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 30, 2010)

The DVD Report #148: March 23, 2010

It’s been nearly eighty years since audiences first beheld Lewis Milestone’s film of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, yet the anti-war classic remains as powerful today as it was then.

The film’s narrative follows a young German student, who with six of his classmates, joins the Kaiser’s Army in World War I at the urging of their jingoistic professor. One by one, the young men become disillusioned by the horrors they see all around them. Right and wrong become blurred. Soldiers weep when they take a life. Some will become older and wiser very quickly, but most will be dead before their time.

The film is beautifully shot and acted, particularly by Lew Ayres, who was so moved by the concepts employed in the film that he became a conscientious objector during World War II, albeit serving admirably as a medic.

The film, which won Oscars for Best Picture and Director at the 1929/30 Academy Awards was also nominated for Best Screenplay, losing to The Big House and Cinematography to the documentary classic, With Byrd at the South Pole. It remains one of the few Best Picture winners that no one ever seems to have a beef with.

All Quiet on the Western Front is available on DVD from Universal.

The four films that were nominated in contention with All Quiet on the Western Front were The Big House; Disraeli; The Divorcee and The Love Parade.

The best of these is arguably Ernst Lubitsch’s lighter than air musical, The Love Parade, a deft charmer about European royals played by Best Actor nominee Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald in the first of several pairings.

The Love Parade was one of three legendary eligible musicals. The others were Rouben Mamoulian’s Applause and King Vidor’s Hallelujah.

Stylistically The Love Parade may be the best of the three but Applause is certainly noteworthy as the first sound film shot on location. The Helen Morgan starrer included numerous scenes on Manhattan’s bridges and atop skyscrapers. Hallelujah is noteworthy as the first musical featuring a cast entirely made up of African-Americans. Vidor won a nomination as Best Director for the latter. Alas, Applause was completely shut out of the nominations.

All three films are available on DVD. The Love Parade is available as part of Criterion’s Eclipse Series 8 - Lubitsch Musicals along with The Smiling Lieutenant; One Hour With You and Monte Carlo. Applause was released by Kino Entertainment and Hallelujah by Warner Bros. Hallelujah is technically out of print but you can still find it.

The archetypal prison film, George Hill’s The Big House is superbly acted by its entire cast, Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Robert Montgomery and Lewis Stone among them. Best Actor nominee Beery is especially good as the viscous leader of the prison break, a role intended for Lon Chaney who died while the film was in pre-production. It revitalized character actor Beery’s career and made him a major star.

The Big House is available from the Warner Archive.

Slightly risqué, Robert Z. Leonard’s The Divorcee is a frivolous comedy-drama with Norma Shearer in her Oscar winning role as the wife who defies the double standard by entering into an affair with another man to thumb her nose at both her husband and society. Chester Morris and Robert Montgomery co-star.

The Divorcee is available from Warner Bros. as part of TCM Archives – Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 which also features A Free Soul; Night Nurse; Three on a Match and Female.

A fictionalized biography of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Alfred E Green’s Disraeli was the second film version of the play with Best Actor winner George Arliss (1868-1946) who had previously starred in a silent film version of his stage success in 1921.

Arliss was not really suited to the screen. He always performed as though he were playing to the second or third balcony, but he had an unmistakable authority, and in fact once referred to himself as “the greatest living actor” under oath in a court appearance. He was the first in a long line of Oscar winners who won for playing real life people.

Disraeli has not yet been released on commercial DVD.

Nominated for three Oscars, Greta Garbo’s legendary first talkie, Anna Christie, won none. Though a bit stagey, it nevertheless earned its nods for Best Actress, Director (Clarence Brown) and Cinematography and would have been a more satisfying contender for Best Picture than either The Divorcee or Disraeli.

Garbo’s first talkie had been much anticipated. Would she prove to be as thrilling a screen presence in the new medium as she had been in the waning days of silents, or would she, like so many of her contemporaries, be all but laughed off the screen the moment she opened her mouth? Brown frames her in such a way as she enters the waterfront tavern about a half hour into the film, walks up to the bar and says her first line, that she still sends shivers down the spine of audiences who may or may not be familiar with her other films. It was immediately clear that she was here to stay.

Also making movie magic in Anna Christie was Marie Dressler, the former stage star and silent screen comedienne, who had been getting plenty of attention in minor screen roles of late. Here she had her most substantial role yet as Marthy, the waterfront hag with a heart of gold. She and Garbo together make movie magic. Not one, but two stars were reborn with this film.

Anna Christie is available on DVD as part of Warner Bros. Greta Garbo - The Signature Collection, along with Mata Hari; Grand Hotel; Queen Christina; Anna Karenina; Camille; Ninotchka and three silents, Flesh and the Devil; The Temptress and The Mysterious Lady.

Howard Hughes’ Hell's Angels was justly nominated for its spectacular aerial cinematography. It’s available on DVD from Universal. The film it lost to, the superb With Byrd at the South Pole is available from Image Entertainment as part of their Milestone Collection.

Films of note which Oscar overlooked this year include City Girl; Lucky Star; The River; Pandora's Box; Blackmail and Journey’s End.

Three of these, F.W. Murmau’s City Girl and Frank Borzage’s Lucky Star and The River are included in Fox’s sublime Murnau, Borzage and Fox Box Set, which I rated as the best DVD release of 2008. The films are reviewed at length in my DVD Report of December 16, 2008. The River is a partial reconstruction of a lost film.

G.W. Pabst was a master of the German silent cinema, producing a number of provocative films dealing frankly with social issues and sexuality, none more so than Pandora's Box starring American actress Louise Brooks.

Brooks plays Lulu, an ambitious actress who becomes a rich man’s mistress and then turns to prostitution to support herself. She sinks lower and lower into depravity, her last client being Jack the Ripper.

The original score to Pandora’s Box has been lost. The Criterion DVD offers a choice between four scores: an orchestral score; a cabaret score; a modern orchestral score and a score composed of piano improvisations.

An important film in the development of Alfred Hitchcock’s career, Blackmail was filmed twice, first as a silent film, then as England and Hitchcock’s first talkie, though that version, the one most of us are familiar with, is actually a partial talkie in which non-English leading lady Anny Ondry’s voice is dubbed. Sara Allgood and Cyril Ritchard are the film’s best known actors and they walk away with the film.

Blackmail, which is in the public domain, has had numerous DVD releases, none of them particularly striking.

The first Anglo-American co-production, James Whale’s Journey’s End was the film version of a celebrated play that portrays the horrors of World War I in the same vein as All Quiet on the Western Front, but is not as cinematic.

Colin Clive, Ian McLaren and David Manners have the principal roles and they are each first rate. In bad need of reconstruction, this film has never been released on commercial DVD, even in light of its highly successful Tony award winning Broadway revival in 2007.

New DVD releases worth checking out includes The Blind Side featuring Sandra Bullock’s Oscar winning performance and tons of extras including interviews with the real Michael Oher and the actor who played him; Jim Sheridan’s Hollywood remake of the Danish film, Brothers and two 1950s classics making their long awaited release on Region 1 Blu-ray and standard DVD: John Huston’s The African Queen and Nicholas Ray’s Bigger Than Life.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 23, 2010)

The DVD Report #147: March 16, 2010

By the end of the 1928/29 Oscar eligibility year, talkies had firmly taken hold in Hollywood. Silent films were all but dead on arrival at the box office. Panicked studios were forced to insert sound sequences into silent films already in production in order to increase audience interest in their films. Artistically, however, the last gasp of the silent era produced films that were far superior to the primitive early talkies.

The eligible films from this year that are most fondly recalled include The Passion of Joan of Arc; The Docks of New York; The Wind; Nosferatu (a 1922 German film film finally making it to the U.S.); The Man With the Movie Camera; Steamboat Bill, Jr.; Show People and Our Dancing Daughters, silent films all, not the clunky Oscar winning musical, The Broadway Melody.

To be fair, The Broadway Melody was the best of the nominated talkies, which also included The Hollywood Revue; In Old Arizona and Alibi. The fifth nominee, The Patriot, Ernst Lubitch’s silent epic about Czarist Russia, is the only film nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that is considered lost.

Long thought to be a lost film as well, a perfect print of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc was found in a Danish mental institution in 1981 resulting in the discovery of the film by new generations. The film, about the trial and burning at the stake of the French saint, is known for its breathtaking close-ups of the trial judges and St. Joan herself, unforgettably portrayed by stage star Maria Falconetti in one of only three film appearances. Originally released with organ accompaniment at the theatres in which it played, the film was re-scored by Ole Schmidt for its 1982 theatrical release and again by Jesper Kyd in 2007, but the DVD version, as well as the print that shows up occasionally on TCM, is accompanied by Richard Einhorn’s Voices of Light, a magnificent choral and orchestral work performed by vocal group Anonymous 4, soloist Susan Narucki and the Radio Netherlands Philharmonic and Choir. Will Gregory of Pitchfork and Adrian Utley of Portishead are rescoring the film once again for yet another release. What is old is new again.

The seedy waterfront setting of Josef von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York provides the backdrop for one of the most haunting films of the silent era. George Bancroft as the sailor and Betty Compson as the girl he rescues from a suicide attempt are simply unforgettable. Both were nominated for Oscars, albeit for other films that year – he for the early talkie gangster melodrama, Thunderbolt, and she for her carnival worker in another early talkie, The Barker, but it’s their flawless work here for which they are both rightly best remembered.

The Docks of New York has not yet been released on commercial DVD, though it was previously released on VHS.

One of the most harrowing films about mental illness, Victor Sjostrom’s The Wind is a showcase for Lillian Gish as the rancher’s wife left alone on the prairie with nothing but the howling wind for company. It’s easily her best performance ever. The Wind is another film that was released on VHS, but has so far not shown up on DVD.

There have been several DVD releases of F.W. Maurnau’s Nosferatu, the first, though uncredited, film version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Released in Germany in 1922, the film was not released in the U.S. until after Sunrise made Murnau a household name in this country.

The film is highly regarded for its morbid atmosphere which has never been quite equaled, and for character actor Max Schreck’s portrayal of the vampire. Although the actor had appeared in many other films and died in 1936 at the age of 56, rumors persisted even after his death that he was in actuality, a vampire. Willem Dafoe played him as such in his Oscar nominated performance in 2001’s Shadow of the Vampire.

A stunning achievement, Dziga Vertov’s The Man With the Movie Camera is basically a Soviet propaganda film ostensibly showing how life under Lenin was harmonious for all. As a work of art, however, it stands head and shoulders above most films of its era, conveying its ideas without plot, without title cards, just marvelous imagery set to music. The score on the DVD is performed by the Alloy Orchestra based on detailed notes by Vertov.

One of Buster Keaton’s funniest films, Steamboat Bill, Jr. features some of the comedian’s best set pieces as he plays the effete son of a river boat captain who saves the day when a cyclone nearly kills his father and his rival, the father of the girl he loves. Direction is credited to Charles Reisner, but it’s obvious that Keaton improvised and directed his own stunts. It’s available in several DVD versions.

Not yet on DVD, King Vidor’s Show People, a comedyabout the denizens of a Hollywood studio starring Marion Davies and William Haines, and Harry Beaumont’s Our Dancing Daughters, a melodrama about jazz age flippers starring Joan Crawford and Anita Page, were previously released on VHS.

Beaumont’s Oscar winning The Broadway Melody is, however, available on DVD.

The story of two vaudeville sisters, Bessie Love and Anita Page, and the man who comes between them, The Broadway Melody spawned a series of similarly titled films but its primitive use of sound quickly dated it. Songs include “The Broadway Melody”; “You Were Meant for Me” and “The Wedding of the Painted Dolls”. Love, as the older sister, was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar.

There is no plot connected to The Hollywood Revue which was a revue of MGM talent of the day from Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford to Marie Dessler, Polly Moran and Bessie Love. The musical highlight is the introduction of “Singin’ in the Rain” sung by Ukulele Ike (Cliff Edwards). It has been released on DVD by the Warner Archive.

The first talkie western as well as the first sound film to be made outside of a sound stage, Irving Cummings’ In Old Arizona, based on a short story by O. Henry, becomes tiresome very fast. Warner Baxter’s rich speaking voice is likely what won him the Best Actor Oscar. There is nothing at all distinguished about his portrayal of the Cisco Kid, played to much better effect by Duncan Renaldo in eh TV series of the 1950s.

In Old Arizona is available on DVD.

Another early talkie, Roland West’s Alibi features a good starring performance by Chester Morris in this otherwise standard gangster melodrama, which is available on DVD.

Frank Lloyd was nominated for Best Director for three films, The Divine Lady, Weary Riverand Drag, winning for The Divine Lady, a well mounted version of the love story of Lady Hamilton and Lord Nelson better remembered from the 1941 film, That Hamilton Woman. Both The Divine Lady and the curious combination gangster film and musical, Weary River are avialble from the Warner Archive. The melodrama, Drag, is a lost film.

The big controversy of the second Oscars was Mary Pickford’s Best Actress win over Ruth Chatterton and Jeanne Eagels, two accomplished stage actresses giving standout performances in the tearjerkers Madame X and The Letter, respectively, while Pickford was clearly out of her depth as a flirtatious Southern belle in Coquette, a stage vehicle for Helen Hayes.

Pickford, the most powerful woman in Hollywood, legend has it, turned down an intended nomination for My Best Girl, a charming silent comedy, at the 1927/28 Awards because she felt she was above such things. However, when she saw the excitement that surrounded newcomer Janet Gaynor’s win, she decided she might like one after all and invited the Academy’s Board of Governors to tea at Pickfair, the legendary mansion she shared with then husband Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., to inform them she would be amenable this time around.

Pickford, America’s Sweetheart of the silent era, then pushing forty, was way too old for the part and looks ridiculous throughout. Moreover her declamatory acting style is something that would have been laughed off the stage at the turn-of-the-century.

Neither Coquette; Madame X nor The Letter have been released on commercial DVD. Coquette was previously available on VHS and Madame X, for which Lionel Barrymroe earned a Best Director nomination,was available on laser disc. The Letter was promised as an extra on the DVD of the 1940 remake with Bette Davis, but it was not included in the actual release.

New DVD releases worth checking out include Broken Embraces and The Princess and the Frog.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 16, 2010)

The DVD Report #146: March 9, 2010

Now that the 82nd Academy Awards have come and gone, it’s time to take a look back at previous Oscar years and the nominated and award winning films of each year available on DVD.

We begin with the Oscar year 1927/28 honoring films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928.

The most successful film released in the first year was The Jazz Singer, but because it was the first sound film, the Academy’s award committee thinking it would have an unfair advantage over silent films decided to give it a Special Award out of competition.

The five films nominated for Best Picture in the first year of eligibility were The Last Command; The Racket; 7th Heaven; The Way of All Flesh and Wings. A second award for Best Unique and Artistic Picture was also given this year. The nominees for this award were Chang; The Crowd and Sunrise. The winners were Wings and Sunrise.

An epic war film, William A. Wellman’s Wings set the standard for aviation epics for years to come. In fact, stock footage of its numerous aerial battles was used in numerous subsequent films.

The love triangle between stars Clara Bow, Richard Arlen and Charles “Buddy” Rogers may have been old hat even then, but numerous other plot details that have since become clichés were quite fresh at the time. One of the film’s most moving sequences, in which a homecoming soldier visits the father of a man he killed, was echoed sixty-two years later by Oliver Stone in Born on the Fourth of July.

Sadly there still hasn’t been a DVD release of Wings in the U.S., but the film is available on a fairly decent Hong Kong import that plays on U.S. equipment.

F. W. Murnau’s Sunrise, which is still regarded as one of the most exquisitely photographed films of all time, also won Oscars for its cinematography and for Janet Gaynor’s performance as the naïve farm wife whose husband plans to drown her and run off with another woman. It was one of three performances for which Gaynor won the first Best Actress award. Frank Borzage’s 7th Heaven and Street Angel were the others. All three are available as part of the Murnau, Borzage and Fox Box Set.

Borzage, whose style on those two films was heavily influenced by Murnau, won the award for Best Director for 7th Heaven. Murnau, ironically, wasn’t even nominated.

German actor Emil Jannings won the award for Best Actor for two films, The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh. Josef von Sternberg’s The Last Command, in which he plays a formerRussian General reduced to playing one in a Hollywood movie, had been available on VHS but is not yet on DVD. The Way of All Flesh is a lost film but a 1940 remake of the heated melodrama with Akim Tamiroff exists. Alas, it had never been released on commercial home video.

One of the first major gangster films, Lewis Milestone’s The Racket has fallen into obscurity mainly because it has been eclipsed by so many films of the genre beginning with several the following year of eligibility. It has never been released on commercial home video.

A cinematic masterpiece long held in the same high regard as Wings and Sunrise, King Vidor’s The Crowd about the life of an ordinary man and is beloved wife played by James Murray and Eleanor Boardman (Vidor’s real life wife) who become disillusioned when their reality falls just short of their expectations.

The scene in which Murray is seen in a sea of desks was famously later used to for comic effect by Billy Wilder and Jack Lemmon in The Apartment.

The Crowd, like Wings, still hasn’t had a DVD release in the U.S., but is available on a fairly decent Hong Kong import that plays on U.S. equipment. However, even that is rare that the starting price at Amazon.com is a prohibitive $89.00.

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schodesack, who would later become immortalized with King Kong, proved to be masters of action films with Chang. Called a dramatic documentary, the scenes of attacking leopards, elephants tearing down houses and stampeding were obviously staged, though not quite in the way the directors had envisioned.

The Thai native responsible for handling the attacking leopard released the animal before Cooper’s signal, causing it to run for the two kids resulting in Cooper shooting and killing the leopard within an inch of his life. The elephant mother of the baby taken as a pet by the family was supposed to rescue her offspring but not tear the house down in doing so. The well orchestrated stampede was filmed in part by Schoedsack, who also doubled as cameraman, concealed under heavy logs which the elephants were expected to step around but actually walked over nearly causing him to be crushed to death.

Many elements of the exciting film can be seen as primers not only for King Kong, but for most of the MGM Johnny Weismuller Tarzan films of the 1930s and 40s.

Chang is available in an excellent DVD from Image Entertainment with a vibrant new score by Bangkok composer Bruce Gaston, performed by Thailand’s world famous Fong Naam orchestra. Rudy Behlmer’s informative commentary includes excerpts from a 1965 interview he conducted with Merian C. Cooper.

Though it was given an honorary award to keep it out of Best Picture competition, The Jazz Singer was eligible for other awards and was, in fact, nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay which it lost to 7th Heaven.

Though the story of the cantor’s son who becomes a show business phenomenon in defiance of his father’s wishes may seem to be something that had whiskers even then, it was nevertheless remade successfully twice, with Danny Thomas essaying Al Jolson’s role in 1952 and Neil Diamond taking it on in 1980.

Fox’s Three-Disc Deluxe Edition includes commentary by film historians Ron Hutchinson and Vince Giordano, a documentary on the early sound era and a collection of vintage shorts with Jolson.

Charlie Chaplin was a triple nominee for writing, directing and starring in The Circus, but as they did with The Jazz Singer, the awards committee felt all those nominations gave him an unfair advantage so they were withdrawn and he too, was presented with a Special Oscar for his latest incarnation of the Little Tramp.

A two disc Special Edition of The Circus was released by Warner Bros. in 2003 along with Chaplin’s other masterworks, but has since been discontinued.

Among the films Oscar overlooked in its first year were Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (on VHS, but not DVD); John Ford’s Four Sons (included in the great Ford at Fox Box Set) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis available on DVD in several versions.

New DVD releases worth checking out include the Oscar winning Precious (Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenplay); Up in the Air; The Stoning of Soraya M. and The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 9, 2010)

The DVD Report #145: March 2, 2010

Two recent children’s films dominate this week’s new releases.

Maurice Sendak’s once controversial Where the Wild Things Are had previously been filmed as an animated short in 1973 and re-released with new narration in 1988. Spike Jonze’s new film stretches the thin story to the breaking point, but nonetheless has legions of admirers.

The original controversy stemmed from the 1963 book’s depiction of a violent child who is sent to bed without his supper, conquers some imaginary monsters and goes downstairs to eat his still hot supper. Librarians of the day thought it unseemly and refused to stock it. When children found it anyway, they took another look and decided it had a wholesome message after all. It wasn’t about a boy overcoming monsters, it was about a boy overcoming his anger.

In any event, the film has a lovely nostalgic opening and an equally lovely ending. What comes between is a matter of taste, but even if you’re not enthralled by the story you can’t help but be taken in by Carter Burwell and Karen O’s lovely score.

Max Records is quite natural as the boy, Max, and a genuine find. Catherine Keener does her usual strong work as his mother. Mark Ruffalo has a throwaway role as her new boyfriend whose presence precipitates the boy’s tantrum.

There is solid voice work from James Galdofini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker and others as the monsters, some of whom are so tame, the word “animal” might be more befitting than “monster”. They are, in fact, described in the film’s press release as “creatures”.

Where the Wild Things Are is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The Blu-ray edition includes the standard DVD as a second disc. Extras on both discs include several making-of documentaries are in my estimation more fascinating than the film itself, including one on the children of the crew who were present during filming to keep star Max Records company. Max’s little brother, Sam, steals the show.

Exclusive to the Blu-ray is the 23 1/3 minute Higglety Pigglety Pop! Or There Must Be More about a dog who runs away from home. Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker and Spike Jonze are among those supplying the voices in this live action-animated hybrid from another of Sendak’s books.

Master Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki won an Oscar for Spirited Away and another nomination for Howl's Moivng Castle, two of his trademark films noted for their vivid style and edge of the seat excitement. His latest, Ponyo, is taken from Hans Christian Anderson’s The Little Mermaid, which has been filmed many times, most notably by Disney in 1989.

In this latest version, also produced by Disney, the little mermaid is a goldfish who risks her life for the five year old boy who finds her. Pixar’s John Lasseter directed the English language version which features strong voice work by Noah Cyrus (Miley’s little sister) as Ponyo (the mermaid), Frankie Jonas (the youngest of the Jonas Brothers) as Sosuke (the boy), Tina Fey as the boy’s mother, Matt Damon as his seafaring father, Cate Blanchett as Ponyo’s mermaid mother, Liam Neeson as her sorcerer father and Betty White, Cloris Leachman and Lily Tomlin as a trio of lovable old ladies, excuse me, senior citizens.

Ponyo is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD. The Blu-ray edition includes the standard DVD as a second disc.

Criterion has released Eclipse Series 20 – George Bernard Shaw on Film. The Eclipse series is a bare bones collection of releases – films only, no extras. The films included here are Major Barbara; Caesar and Cleopatra and Androcles and the Lion.

Shaw liked what producer Gabriel Pascal did with the film version of Pygmalion, which won the Irish playwright an Oscar for Adapted Screenplay even though five other writers actually had a hand in reshaping Shaw’s scenario and dialogue for the screen. The result, though, was that Shaw (1956-1950) gave Pascal (1894-1954) a lifetime contract to film his other works. The contract was for Pascal’s lifetime, not Shaw’s, but it resulted in only three of Shaw’s works being filmed by Pascal, two before Shaw’s death and one after.

Because Shaw was a control freak, he insisted on approving the casting for both Major Barbara and Caesar and Cleopatra as well as insisting that no dialogue be cut. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that the casting was a great strength of the two films, a curse because the uncut dialogue resulted in overlong films that the public stayed clear of. Freed from Shaw’s control after his death, Androcles and the Lion suffers from somewhat questionable casting but clocks in at less than two hours. Alas, it too was a flop at the box-office.

Pascal himself directed the first two films.

Though it may have been a flop at the time, Major Barbara was a critical success, landing on numerous top ten lists of 1941 and remains a favorite of many today. The story is about a zealous Salvation Army lass (Wendy Hiller) and her fiancé (Rex Harrison) who agree to spend a day working in her father’s (Robert Morley) munitions plant if he will spend a day working for the Salvation Army. Each hopes to convert the other. Filled with droll dialogue and interesting characters, the film is a showcase for its actors, particularly Morley. The supporting cast includes Sybil Thorndike, Emlyn Williams and in her screen debut, a luminous Deborah Kerr.

Major Barbara was a rare anti-war comedy released smack in the middle of World War II. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t successful at the time.

The most costly film yet then made in England, Caesar and Cleopatra cost five million pounds to make and lost three.

Claude Rains was Caesar, Vivien Leigh was Cleopatra and the Technicolor production used sand imported from Egypt to give the post-war film as authentic a look as possible.

Rains is good as usual, though to see him romantically paired with Leigh stretches credulity. The thirty-something Leigh herself is a bit of a stretch playing a teenager. Despite this, they have great chemistry together. The strong supporting cast includes Flora Robson, Stewart Granger and Francis L. Sullivan.

Pascal stuck to producing Androcles and the Lion, putting theatre director Chester Erskine at the helm of the only one of the films to be made in Hollywood.

Released after Quo Vadis and before the highly anticipated first Cinemascope film, The Robe, Androcles and the Lion had none of the success of those two megahits about the early Christians. For one, the film was based on one of Shaw’s weaker plays. For another it was in black and white. Audiences of the day were not interested in ostensibly seeing Christians eaten by lions unless it was in vivid color. Then there was the clash of acting styles.

Lovely Jean Simmons is top billed and does admirably as the beautiful Christian girl even the hardnosed Centurians love. Victor Mature is the stoic Army captain. Robert Newton is his usual larger than life self as a burly turn-the-other-cheek convert. Maurice Evans is a thinking man’s Antonius Caesar. Alan Young is a light comedian cast as the gentle Christian who pulls a huge thorn from a lion’s paw. Fortunately the lion remembers him in the arena and dances with him instead of eating him.

The Christians are not only content, but happy to go their martyrdom, singing as they march along. It’s meant to be witty, but comes across as somewhat incongruous. Still, it’s a treat to see so many great actors including Elsa Lanchester, Reginald Gardiner and Alan Mowbray among them, have their moment in the limelight.

At the time of his death in 1954, Pascal was working on a musical version of Pygmalion. It was to be called My Fair Lady.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 2, 2010)