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None Shall Escape, a 1944 Oscar nominee for Best Original Story, has been given a Blu-ray only release by Sony. Although not a huge hit in its original engagements, this film, directed by André De Toth (House of Wax) was not a “B” picture as is commonly believed, but a major release from Columbia, whose only other Oscar nominee that year was the musical Cover Girl, which had been nominated for five Oscars and won one for its score.

Although largely dismissed in its initial run, None Shall Escape has grown in stature. Filmed in 1943 and released in early 1944, it is an uncanny predictor of things to come. Acknowledged as the first Holocaust film, its handling of the fictional post-war Nazi tribunal in Warsaw predates the similar handling of the real-life 1948 Nazi tribunal depicted in 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg.

Alexander Knox stars as an unrepentant Nazi Reich Commissioner in the same year in which he would receive an Oscar nomination of his own for playing Woodrow Wilson in Best Picture nominee Wilson. His character’s post-war trial in the not-so-distant future begins with Henry Travers (It’s a Wonderful Life) as a Polish Catholic priest recounting his behavior in 1919.

Knox had been a German teacher in a small Polish town before the outbreak of World War I. He had returned to Germany to fight in the war, returning to the Polish town after the war where he is greeted with skepticism even by Travers’ niece, local teacher Marsha Hunt (The Human Comedy) who had been his fiancée. That skepticism turns to anger when he rapes one of his students (Shirley Mills) and her boyfriend (Elvin Field) is blamed for the crime before the girl confesses to Hunt that it was Knox before committing suicide. Getting off in the courts due to lack of evidence, Knox returns to Germany where he joins the rising Nazi Party and rises with it.

The next witness is Knox’s brother (Erik Rolf), a socialist writer with a wife (Ruth Nelson, later the first Mrs. Wilson to Knox’s Wilson) and two children. We first see a harmonious relationship between the brothers when they are reunited in 1923 but see a different relationship in 1933 when Knox has his brother sent to a concentration camp for treason and takes his son and turns him into a Nazi youth. No one will tell Rolf what happened to his wife and daughter.

The third witness is Hunt who recounts the events of 1939, the year Knox returns to the Polish village as Reich Commissioner with his now-grown nephew (Richard Crane) as one of his aides. Hunt had in the interim married a man who was killed by the Nazis in the three-month war that ended with the Nazi takeover of Poland. She has a teenage daughter (Dorothy Morris) whose budding romance with Crane will have disastrous results. It is in this section that the atrocities mount, including the massacre of the local Jewish rabbi (Richard Hale) and his flock who are slaughtered as they board a train that would have taken them to a concentration camp.

Sony’s Blu-ray release has no extras, no subtitling, no trailer, no commentary, and no interview with the film’s only surviving cast members, 101-year-old Marsha Hunt and 91-year-old Elvin Field. It is, nevertheless, an important release of an undeservedly underappreciated film.

Kino Lorber, which over the past few years has become the predominant provider of major Blu-ray releases of classic films, continues its domination of the classic marketplace with the release of Becky Sharp, I Walk Alone, and Bend of the River.

1935’s Becky Sharp, directed by Rouben Mamoulian (1932’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde), is an historically important film due to its being the first three-strip technicolor film. It was the fifth of at least ten versions of Thackery’s 1848 novel Vanity Fair to be filmed, the most recent theatrical release being Mira Nair’s 2004 version starring Reese Witherspoon, Romola Garai, and Gabriel Byrne in the roles played in 1935 by Miriam Hopkins, Frances Dee and Cedric Hardwicke.

Becky Sharp is also notable as the only film for which Hopkins (Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) was nominated for an Oscar. Kino Lorber’s release is a brand-new 4K restoration from the 35mm nitrate negative and positive separations which restores the film to the look it had in 1935. Because the film was deemed not important enough to be re-struck in its original Technicolor process, its 1945 reissue prints were struck from a copy of the original that was released in the inferior, cheaper Cinecolor. The original Technicolor was restored in the 1980s by the UCLA Film Labs. The sound was subsequently improved as well. Kino Lorber’s restoration also includes found footage missing from prints for the last seventy-four years. It looks and sounds great, but like most versions of Thackery’s novel, it’s amusing, but rather dull.

Audio commentary is provided by film historian Jack Theakston.

One of the best films noir ever, 1948’s I Walk Alone, directed by Byron Haskin (The War of the Worlds), is a twisty thriller based on a 1945 Broadway play called The Beggars Are Coming to Town. It reunited three of the stars of 1947’s Desert Fury, Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, and Wendell Corey, all in terrific form. It was also the first of seven films Lancaster would make with Kirk Douglas who plays his nemesis in the film’s deft cat-and-mouse game. Kino Lorber’s release is from a brand-new 4K scan of the 35mm safety dupe negative by Paramount Pictures Archive.

Audio commentary is by film historian Troy Howarth.

1952’s Bend of the River was the second of eight films, six of which were westerns, that James Stewart made with director Anthony Mann. It was also the first film in which Stewart played a more violent, cynical, and ruthless character than he typically did.

Based on a screenplay by Borden Chase (Red River), Stewart plays a reformed outlaw who guides a band of pioneers from Missouri over the Oregon Trail to a new life in the Columbia River Basin. When the settlers are cheated out of their supplies and cattle, he crosses rivers, climbs mountain, and outguns greedy hijackers to ensure their survival through the first winter. Arthur Kennedy, Rock Hudson, and Julie Adams co-star.

Audio commentary is by film historian Toby Roan.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of A Face in the Crowd and The House of the Seven Gables.

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