The Return of Martin Guerre has been given a brand new 4K restoration by the Cohen Film Collection which reissued the film theatrically before its new Blu-ray release.

The French film classic based on the real-life 15th Century case that resonated through Medieval Europe was released in France in late 1982. A 1983 release it the U.S., it earned numerous awards including one for Gerard Depardieu for Best Actor from the National Society of Film Critics, an honor that was given him for both this and the French-Polish collaboration Danton.

Depardieu has never been better than he is here as the former soldier who comes to a French village claiming to be the man who abandoned his wife and child eight years earlier to fight in the wars but now weary of war returns to claim his rightful place as husband, father, and head of his house. Nathalie Baye is equally fine as the wife.

The film, which won three French Cesars, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, plays as it would if it were a modern thriller in which the audience is torn between believing and not believing Depardieu’s character. When most films which were released theatrically in the U.S. in both subtitled and dub versions are released on DVD and Blu-ray, they are released only in the subtitled versions, but Cohen has made both versions available here. The film, co-written by 2015 honorary Oscar winner Jean-Claude Carriere (That Obscure Object of Desire, The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and the film’s director Daniel Vigne, can be enjoyed in either format.

Arrow Academy has released a Special Edition Blu-ray of the newly restored 1957 film Man of a Thousand Faces starring James Cagney as Lon Chaney.

As with most show business biographies, this one is a mixture of fact and fiction, although with its subject dead for more than a quarter century, there is less whitewashing going on here than in most such films of the era.

Cagney at 58 is at least twenty years too old to be playing Chaney in his twenties and thirties, but it works because Cagney who made his first film in 1930, the year Chaney died, was like the man he played, a consummate actor. The high points of the film are the many disguises Cagney wears in recreating the characters Chaney made famous having acted as makeup artist as well as actor.

The film’s narrative portrays Chaney’s many hardships and heartaches as well as his monumental successes. Dorothy Malone as his mentally unbalanced first wife and Jane Greer as his supportive second wife are first rate even though they are overshadowed by Cagney in one of his best performances. Roger Smith, an actor discovered by Cagney, later best known as Ann-Margret’s husband, is equally fine as Lon Chaney, Jr. and Robert Evans, handpicked by Irving Thalberg’s widow, Norma Shearer, to play her husband, is interesting in a role that foreshadows his own career as a powerful Hollywood producer.

It was directed by Joseph Pevney (Star Trek (The Original Series)) who also had a major 1957 success with Tammy and the Bachelor.

Extras include a new commentary by film scholar Tim Lucas and a newly filmed look at Chaney and his legacy by critic Kim Newman.

I’m not sure how many people are familiar with The Swan Princess, which was released in the shadow of The Lion King in 1994, but this charming animated musical has had no less than six video sequels from director-producer Richard Rich, the latest earlier this year, so clearly a lot of people are.

Jack Palance, three years after his Oscar-winning performance in City Slickers, is in fine voice as the sorcerer who curses a princess to live as a swan by day to keep her from the prince who loves her. Palance doesn’t sing, but the film provides fine material for Broadway stars Howard McGillin, a Tony nominee for The Mystery of Edwin Drood and Anything Goes, and Broadway’s longest running phantom in The Phantom of the Opera, as the prince; and Liz Callaway, a Tony nominee for Baby, as the singing voice of the princess. Michelle Nicastro (When Harry Met Sally…) provides the non-singing voice of the princess.

The film’s theme song, “Far Longer Than Forever,” was nominated for a Golden Globe.

The 25th Anniversary Blu-ray and DVD release includes a Looking Back feature as well as an Original Making Of documentary and five Sing-Alongs.

1984’s Lust in the Dust, given a 4K restoration for its Blu-ray release by Vinegar Syndrome, takes its name from the nickname given the notorious 1946 Hollywood film Duel in the Sun starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones. Although it is a western parody, the films it parodies are those of Clint Eastwood made twenty years later.

Tab Hunter’s desperado, Able Wood, is meant to be a parody of Eastwood’s “man with no name” from his spaghetti westerns including The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It also includes elements of Eastwood’s characters from Hang ‘Em High and Two Mules for Sister Sara, co-starring Shirley MacLaine. In fact, co-producer Hunter’s first choice for co-star was MacLaine, not his Polyester co-star Divine, who was ultimately cast in one of the two female leads. Chita Rivera was first choice for the other role which eventually went to Lainie Kazan. Hunter, Divine, and Kazan are all in fine fettle as are supporting cast members Geoffrey Lewis, Henry Silva, and Cesar Romero.

Numerous extras are included, among them reminiscences by Hunter and co-producer Allan Glaser, and a piece on director Paul Bartel (Eating Raoul).

An offbeat western from another era, 1955’s Count Three and Pray, has been released on Blu-ray by Sony.

The film, which marked the screen debut of Joanne Woodward, starred Van Heflin as a self-ordained minister believed to be living in sin with the 18-year-old Woodward, a gun-toting orphan claiming squatter’s rights to his church’s residence. Two other women, played by Allison Hayes and Jean Willis, complicate matters. Phil Carey and Raymond Burr co-star in the film directed by George Sherman.

This week’s new releases include The Farewell and After the Wedding.