One of the first post-World War II Japanese films to find international success, Teinsuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell won the Grand Prix for best film at the 1954 Cannes Film Festival and two Oscars for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Costume Design – Color. The film was noted for its outstanding use of color, which sadly faded fast and kept the film out of the public eye for decades. Gloriously restored in Tokyo in 2011, the film has just been released on Blu-ray and DVD by Criterion.

Set in mid-Twelfth Century feudal Japan, the film is about a samurai who saves the lives of the local lord and his wife by masquerading as the lord with the help of a lady-in-waiting. As his reward, he asks for the hand of the lady-in-waiting in marriage. Problem is she’s already happily married. Tragedy ensues. Lovely Machiko Kyo had one of her best roles as the woman in the middle.

Olive Films has been releasing so many film on Blu-ray and standard DVD that when the March batch of promised releases failed to materialize it was thought that perhaps they had bitten off more than they could chew. Alas, the problem was with the manufacturer who forgot to ship the items out in time for their March 25th release. Orders are only now being filled for this group of films which includes The Devil and Miss Jones; The Sun Shines Bright; McLintock!; Ironweed; Hell’s Half Acre and China Gate.

The best of the lot is the 1941 Capraesque The Devil and Miss Jones, which is not to be confused with a certain 1973 pornographic film with a title that substitutes the word “in” for “and”.

The first of three films Jean Arthur made with co-star Charles Coburn, this improbable romantic comedy has tycoon Coburn masquerading as an employee in his own department store seven decades before TV’s Undercover Boss. There he not only finds himself siding with the workers against the bosses, but helps guide the romance between union organizers Arthur and Robert Cummings along and finds a love of his own in Spring Byington. Ably supported by Edmund Gwenn and S.Z. Sakall, the film was directed by Sam Wood (Goodbye, Mr. Chips; The Pride of the Yankees. Coburn was nominated for an Oscar for his marvelous performance and Norman Krasna was nominated for his screenplay.

The legendary John Ford allegedly considered his 1953 film, The Sun Shines Bright to be his favorite among all his films, which I suppose just goes to show that even the greatest directors are not always the best judge of their own work.

Ford’s best films – The Grapes of Wrath; How Green Was My Valley; The Searchers and so on – were beautifully controlled masterworks that held Ford’s tendency to lay on the slapstick and sentimentality in check. With The Sun Shines Bright both the slapstick and sentimentality are laid on with a heavy hand.

Wrongly marketed as a remake of Ford’s 1934 film, Judge Priest, the film is actually a sequel based on three short stories written by Irwin S. Scobb that take place years after the story played out in the original film. Charles Winninger plays the now elderly judge originally played by Will Rogers. Stepin Fetchit reprises his role of the judge’s servant in what is now turn-of-the-20th Century Kentucky.

A seemingly minor Ford film, 1963’s McLintock! is actually directed by Andrew V. McLaglen,, son of frequent Ford player Victor McLaglen. It stars John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara and co-stars Wayne’s son Patrick and Stefanie Powers as Wayne and O’Hara’s daughter, along with Yvonne De Carlo. The Olive release is taken from a public domain print, not the 2005 DVD put out by Wayne’s estate. It nevertheless looks just fine.

By the time Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep made 1987’s Ironweed, they had both received two of their three Oscars to date. The film, which is based on William Kennedy’s 1984 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, brought Nicholson his ninth nomination and Streep her seventh, so why is it not better known? Perhaps its downbeat story about depression era bums. Perhaps it’s the shoddy treatment the film has been given on prior home video releases. That problem has been rectified by Olive’s proper framing of the film in its first letterbox formatting on home video. Hector Babenco directed from Kennedy’s screenplay.

John H. Auer’s 1954 film noir, Hell’s Half Acre is a nifty thriller about a sailor who fakes his death in the attack on Pearl Harbor and creates a new identity in Honolulu. Years later, the wife he left behind hears his voice on a recording in which he uses a familiar phrase and goes to the island to search for him. She finds him in jail, accused of murdering a man who was actually killed by his current mistress, who is then also murdered. Wendell Corey and Evelyn Keyes are good in the leads with a stellar supporting cast led by Keye Luke as the Chief of Police; Philip Ahn as Corey’s duplicitous partner; Marie Windsor as a wicked femme fatale; Nancy Gates as the ill-fated mistress and Elsa Lanchester as a cabbie.

Not one of his major successes, 1957’s China Gate is nevertheless a strong Samuel Fuller entry about an incident near the end of the French involvement in Vietnam. Gene Barry plays a racist legionnaire who left Eurasian wife Angie Dickinson when their son was born with Chinese features instead of the Caucasian features he was expecting. They’re uneasily reunited years later. Nat “King” Cole, Lee Van Cleef and Warren Hsieh co-star. Composer Victor Young died of a stroke before his score was completed. His friend Max Steiner completed it from Young’s notes.

Other recent releases on both Blu-ray and DVD include Hemingway & Gelhorn and Hyde Park on Hudson, both based on real life people.

Nominated for fifteen Emmys, and winner of two, Philip Kaufman’s literate TV movie, Hemingway & Gelhorn features marvelous lead performances by Clive Owen and Nicole Kidman as the title characters and David Strathairn as writer John Dos Passos, all of whom were among the film’s Emmy’s nominees. The best part of the film is the fascinating coverage of the Spanish Civil War which takes up more than half of the film. The latter part, which deals with Hemingway and Gelhorn’s troubled marriage is less effective, but still interesting.

Hyde Park on Hudson, on the other hand, is a wretched little film. Oh, it looks nice, with its meticulous outside of London recreation of Franklin Rossevelt’s 45 acre estate, now a national monument, but the story is much ado about nothing.

Bill Murray “suggests” rather than “imitates” FDR and the result is tepid at best. Laura Linney as his fifth or sixth cousin (her description) is mousey beyond description. This is the woman who became the President’s curator after his death and died in her 100th year in 1991. She couldn’t have been that mousey.

There is no historical record of Margaret “Daisy” Stuckey having been one of FDR’s mistresses, but that doesn’t get in the way of the story which not only suggests that, but intimates a whole lot of other sexual shenanigans about the Roosevelts that can neither be confirmed nor denied as the participants are all dead.

The framework for the 1939 summer of FDR and Daisy’s alleged dalliance is the royal visit of England’s George VI and his wife. Samuel West does a credible job of portraying the British monarch, but Olivia Cole as Elizabeth and Olivia Williams as Eleanor Roosevelt have little to do. The film’s climax has the king taking a bite out of a hot dog. We waited almost two hours for this?

New releases this week include Django Unchained and the Blu-ray upgrade of Repo Man.