Kino Classics has released the Library of Congress restoration print of 1934’s Of Human Bondage on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This was the first and best of three versions to date of W. Somerset Maugham’s autobiographical novel. Unfortunately the owner of the copyright of the film, originally released by RKO, failed to renew it and the film fell into the public domain some time ago, garnering horrid release prints on both VHS and DVD. Finally we have a release worthy of tone of the classics of early 1930s cinema.

Leslie Howard gives one of his best performances as Philip Carey, the sensitive club-footed medical student who falls under the spell of tawdry, vulgar and callous waitress Mildred Rogers played to the hilt by Bette Davis in her star-making role.

Howard is in practically every frame of the film, but it is Davis with her pitch perfect cockney accent and low-rent demeanor that you can’t take your eyes off of.

John Cromwell directs a sterling cast that also includes Kay Johnson (then Mrs. Cromwell), Frances Dee, Reginald Denny, Alan Hale and Reginald Owen. They’re all fine, but Howard and Davis are something more, painting unforgettable screen portraits of Maugham’s famed characters.

Among the latest releases from Olive Films is the 1948 screen version of the Kurt Weill-Ogden Nash Broadway musical One Touch of Venus about the window dresser who kisses a statue of Venus, thereby bringing her to life. Alas, the musical score is cut to just three numbers, putting the emphasis on comedy to carry the film.

Robert Walker stars as window dresser Eddie Hatch opposite Ava Gardner as Venus with top-selling singer of the day Dick Haymes in a role that affords him little opportunity to sing. Eve Arden, Olga San Juan and Tom Conway also have important roles in the film which was directed by William A. Seiter. It’s good, but not great.

One Touch of Venus is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Also newly released from Olive Films is 1952’s Retreat, Hell! , the best film about the Korean War made during the war and still considered one of the best films about the war overall.

Directed by film noir great Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy; The Big Combo), the film stars Frank Lovejoy and Richard Carlson with Russ Tamblyn in his first adult role in this tale of a U.S. Marine battalion that must fight its way out of a frozen mountain pass despite diminishing supplies, freezing temperatures and constant attacks by overwhelming numbers of Chinese and North Korean soldiers. Future director Lamont Johnson and real life war hero Peter Ortiz also have important roles.

Retreat, Hell! is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Long one of the most sought after “lost” films, 1927’s Sorrell and Son was found several years ago in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences archives, missing its final reel. A restoration was made of the film that earned Herbert Brenon an Oscar nod for Best Director, but the film can only be seen at Academy screenings.

If you want to see a production of Warwick Deeping’s celebrated novel you’ll most likely have to opt for the 1984 British mini-series, broadcast in the U.S. in 1927.

British character actor Richard Pascoe has the part H.B. Warner played in the earlier version, that of the World War I vet whose bored wife runs off with another man, abandoning him and their young son. Future director Peter Chelsom plays the grown son, a successful doctor, a role originally played by Nils Asther.

Deeping’s novel, first published in 1925, remained a best-seller throughout the 1920s and 30s. A sound version was made in England in 1933, also starring H.B. Warner, but it did not achieve the same popularity as the 1927 original.

The mini-series follows the same path as the original film, but tells the tale more leisurely. The elder Sorrell is forced to take menial jobs to support his son, rising to head porter at a posh London hotel which allows him to send his beloved son, Kit, to medical school. Both the novel and the first film version courted controversy because of its sympathetic treatment of euthanasia. The mini-series did not court the same controversy, but the elder Sorrell’s last days are no less difficult to watch enfold than those of the wife in last year’s award winning French film, Amour.

Available on stand DVD, the Sorrell and Son mini-series is well worth seeking out.

The last time Roman Polanski saw his wife Sharon Tate before she was murdered by the Manson family in 1969, she left him a copy of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Polanski was entranced by the novel and looked forward to making a film of it with Tate. Unfortunately that wasn’t to be, but nine years later he began filming the novel with the title shortened to Tess, which is dedicated to the late actress.

The film that Polanski made of Hardy’s classic isn’t just “for Sharon” as the credits indicate, but for anyone who loves a good, leisurely film. Seventeen year old Nastassia Kinski is amazing in the role of the young peasant girl who is wooed by two men, only one of whom she herself loves.

Kinski looks uncannily like the young Ingrid Bergman with a talent to match. Peter Firth as her true love, Angel Clare, and Leigh Lawson as her seducer/rapist, Alec D’Urbervill,e are equally impressive. The film was nominated for six 1980 Oscars including Best Picture, Director and Score and won for Best Cinematography, Art Direction and Costume Design.

The film’s cinematography is especially noteworthy. The award was shared by Geoffrey Unsworth, one of the great cinematographers of the 20th Century, and Ghislain Cloquet who completed the film after Unsworth’s sudden death.

Unsworth, whose credits include 2001: A Space Odyssey and Superman had previously won a much deserved Oscar for Cabaret and had been nominated for Becket and Murder on the Orient Express, all of them visually impressive masterpieces.

Tess is available on a region free Blu-ray from Germany which has already seen French and British Region 2 issues of the gorgeously restored film. Hopefully a U.S. release will be forthcoming.

This week’s new releases include Masterpiece Mystery: Inspector Lewis Season 6 and New Tricks: Season 9.