Warner Bros.’ The Golden Year: 5 Classic Films from 1939 gives us four new-to-Blu-ray releases, Dark Victory, Dodge City, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Ninotchka, and yet another release of Gone With the Wind.

Dark Victory was a huge hit when released in April 1939. Bette Davis considered it one of her best performances, one in fact that she thought would win her a third Oscar. Although nominated along with Irene Dunne in Love Affair, Greta Garbo in Ninotchka and Greer Garson in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, good as they all were, none of them were going to beat Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. In fact, there are many who liked Davis better in her September 1939 release, The Old Maid from Zoe Atkins’ 1935 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, itself taken from Edith Wharton’s 1924 novella.

Whereas Davis’ character in The Old Maid suffered mightily over a twenty year period, her character in Dark Victory suffers briefly from the brain tumor that will kill her in a matter of months. Davis is good as is George Brent as the brain surgeon who temporarily cures her blind spells, falls in love with her and marries her while hoping to find a cure for her condition. The revelation here, though, is Geraldine Fitzgerald as Davis’ friend, in only her second Hollywood film who is as good here as she was in Wuthering Heights, which had been released just two weeks earlier, and for which she would receive her own Oscar nomination. Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan are wasted in supporting roles.

Dodge City was Warner Bros. contribution to the return of the epic western, the first western to star Errol Flynn. Why it’s included here, however, is something of a mystery. While good, it was not the standout western of the year. Fox’s Jesse James with Tyrone Power, United Artists’ Stagecoach with John Wayne and Paramount’s Union Pacific with Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea are all more highly regarded. The three-strip Technicolor restoration, however, is superior to the weak color transfer on the ten-year-old DVD. The chemistry between Flynn and co-star Olivia de Havilland is more palpable here than in any of their other films.

An undisputed masterpiece, RKO’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame remains the definitive version of Victor Hugo’s classic novel with Charles Laughton giving one of the greatest portrayals of tortured humanity ever committed to film as Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer. Laughton’s protégé Maureen O’Hara is simply stunning as the gypsy girl Esmeralda and they are superbly supported by Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien and Harry Davenport in key supporting roles.

The year’s most sophisticated comedy, MGM’s Ninotchka, had a screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett and direction by Ernst Lubitsch. Its main attraction, however, was Greta Garbo in her first comedy as a stern Soviet official who falls under the spell of Melvyn Douglas in Paris. The film should have led to a second career for tragedienne Garbo as a comedy star, but it wasn’t to be. She would make only one more film before withdrawing from the public eye.

Why we needed yet another release of Gone With the Wind, included here without any extras other than Rudy Behlmer’s excellent commentary, is beyond me. It would have made more sense to include one of the other films from Hollywood’s oft-quoted “greatest year” under Warner Bros.’ purview. Oh well! Perhaps there’ll be a second Golden Year collection featuring the likes of Wuthering Heights, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Gunga Din, Beau Geste, and Love Affair.

All films in the collection are available as singles.

Warner Bros. has also put together a John Wayne Westerns Film Collection consisting of the previously released Fort Apache, The Searchers and Rio Bravo as well as two new to Blu-ray releases, 1971’s The Train Robbers and 1973’s Cahill: U.S. Marshal.

All films in the collection are available as singles.

Warner Archive has stepped up its release of Blu-ray titles. While past releases had been sporadic at best, in the last two months alone the Archive has released four Blu-ray upgrades, one every two weeks. These releases include Ladyhawke, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Wolfen, and The Sunshine Boys, none of which exactly relate to one another.

Richard Donner’s 1985 film Ladyhawke is a one-of-a-kind romantic fantasy set in medieval France in which runaway thief Matthew Broderick helps Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer defeat evil bishop John Wood who has placed a curse on the lovers that turns Hauer into a wolf by night and Pfeifffer into a hawk by day. It’s lushly filmed with impeccable performances by the principals.

David Butler’s 1943 film Thank Your Lucky Stars is one of those wartime concoctions in which the lesser stars, in this case Eddie Cantor (in a dual role), Dennis Morgan, Joan Leslie, S.Z. Sakall and Edward Everett Horton, carry the plot while the bigger names draw audiences in to see their cameos. John Garfield and Errol Flynn sing. Humphrey Bogart kids his screen persona. Olivia de Havilland and Ida Lupino boogie. Only Bette Davis singing Arthur Schwartz and Frank Loesser’s Oscar-nominated “They’re Either Too Young or Too Old” and Hattie McDaniel singing and dancing to the same composers’ “Ice Cold Katy” are truly memorable.

The only narrative film ever directed by Michael Wadleigh, 1981’s Wolfen, is an unusual horror movie about shape-shifting in modern New York. Albert Finney as a weary cop is good as ever and Diane Venora, Edward James Olmos, Gregory Hines, Tom Noonan and Dick O’Neil all turn in compelling performances. It has great cinematography, but the plot’s a bit anemic.

Herbert Ross’ 1975 film The Sunshine Boys from Neil Simon’s hit play about two old vaudeville partners who despise one another has its fans, but I’ve never been one of them. Walter Matthau, in old age makeup, and George Burns, who on the cusp of 80, didn’t need any, are at their comedic best but the material just isn’t that good. It was, however, enough to garner Matthau and Oscar nomination and Burns an Oscar win.

This week’s new releases include Chappie and the Blu-ray release of Spirited Away.