The Criterion Collection has released both a 4K UHD and a standard Blu-ray upgrade of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1945 film, I Know Where I’m Going!.

This release uses the 2023 restoration of the film previously released on DVD by Criterion in 2010 but imports the extras from that release including Martin Scorsese’s introduction.

Scorsese’s editor Thelma Schoonmaker was married to Powell giving Scorsese more access to the works of Powell and Pressburger than most people. Also interviewed is director Kevin Macdonald, Pressburger’s grandson.

Although Powell and Pressburger, known as the Archers, were given equal credit for writing, directing, and producing their films, most of the directing, including this film, was done by Powell while most of the writing was done by Pressburger.

I Know Where I’m Going! was the duo’s fifth collaboration. Their most popular film to date had been 1943’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp with Roger Livesey and Deborah Kerr, released in the U.S. in 1945. Kerr, who had replaced a pregnant Wendy Hiller as the female star of Blimp was the original choice to play the starring role in I Know Where I’m Going! but she was unable to get out of other contractual obligations and was replaced by Hiller. Kerr’s intended co-star James Mason was then replaced by Roger Livesey who got his chance to finally play opposite Hiller.

The film’s story is the standard spoiled girl loves the wrong man (an unseen wealthy Scotsman) but eventually falls in love with the right man (sailor Livesey). What makes it special is the magnificently photographed locale, Scotland’s treacherous Hebrides islands.

The stars are supported by a group of fine character actors including Pamela Brown, Finlay Currie, Nancy Price, Catherine Lacey, John Laurie, Murdo Morrison, Margot Fitzsimons (Maureen O’Hara’s sister), and a young Petula Clark

The film was released in the U.S. in 1947 after the release of two later Powell-Pressburger hits, 1946’s A Matter of Life and Death also known as Stairway to Heaven and 1947’s Black Narcissus, but proved just as popular with critics and audiences alike as those two had been.

Film Masters has released a Blu-ray of Willliam A. Wellman’s 1943 film, Lady of Burlesque from a 4K scan of the original film elements.

The United Artists release from Hunt Stromberg Productions has long been in the public domain which accounts for the sub-standard previous releases of the film now restored to its original glory.

Based on Gypsy Rose Lee’s novel, The G-String Murders with a screenplay by James Gunn (All I Desire, the film is a raucous comedy-mystery that Wellman made just before the same year’s The Ox-Bow Incident which was arguably the year’s best film.

Barbara Stanwyck, who worked for Wellman on several of his earlier films including Night Nurse and So Big! , starred as a character based on Lee between her Oscar nominated performances in Ball of Fire and Double Indemnity and is just as much fun here as she was in 1941’s Ball of Fire and The Lady Eve.

Stanwyck’s co-star is Michael O’Shea in his screen debut. Other standouts in the cast include Iris Adrian, Charles Dingle, J. Edward Bromberg, and Frank Conroy.

Warner Archive’s late arriving December releases include 1939’s On Borrowed Time and At the Circus, 1945’s San Antonio, 1953’s I Love Melvin, and 1955’s Interrupted Melody.

On Borrowed Time was directed by Harold S. Bucquet who also directed the film’s star, Lionel Barrymore in the successful Dr. Kildare series and its successful follow-up series based on Barrymore’s character of Dr. Gillespie.

Presented as a tribute to Barrymore’s then 30-year-long film career, the actor played a cantankerous old man who held death in the person of Sir Cedric Hardwicke up a tree so that no one could die so long as he remained in the tree and unable to approach his next subject.

Sort of a variation in on Death Takes a Holiday, the film which is based on a 1937 novel Lawrence Edward Watkins and a 1938 play by Paul Osborn, opens with the deaths of Barrymore’s doctor son and his wife. He takes in his grandson (Bobs Watson) who is also sought after by his daughter-in-law’s malicious sister played by Eily Malyon who wants to control the money left to the boy by his father.

Beulah Bondi plays Barrymore’s dying wife, and Una Merkel his housemaid. Things do not go well for any of them and the ending is not what you might expect.

At the Circus, directed by Edward Buzzell, was the seventh of the nine films made by the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Chico, and Harpo) who are very funny here as is Margaret Dumont as their traditional foil. Kenny Baker and Florence Rice play the young romantics in the film with a score by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg who were pulled from the production by Leo B. Mayer to work on The Wizard of Oz. Eve Arden and Nat Pendleton co-star in this mild but enjoyable romp.

San Antonio, directed by David Butler, is one of Errol Flynn’s lighter films, a western in which he is the guy who cleans up the town while romancing dance hall girl Alexis Smith at her most charming. S.Z. Sakall and Florence Bates provide comic support with John Litel as Flynn’s buddy and Victor Francen and Paul Kelly as the principal villains. It’s good, but Butler’s similar 1953 musical classic, Calamity Jane with Doris Day and Howard Keel, is even better.

I Love Melvin, directed by Don Weis, was MGM failed attempt to provide Donald O’Connor and Debbie Renolds with a successful follow-up to the previous year’s Singin’ in the Rain even to the extent of having chorus boys wear Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire masks. Noreen Corcoran as Debbie’s little sister is the best thing about it.

Interrupted Melody, directed by Curtis Bernhardt, features Eleanor Parker in an Oscar-nominated portrayal of Australian born opera singer, Marjorie Lawence, whose career was interrupted by a bout with polio. Parker lip-syncs perfectly to Eileen Farrell’s soaring vocals, but the film presents polio as a mere inconvenience amidst all the operatic arias.

Happy viewing.