The DVD Report #73

Criterion continues to release near-perfect restorations of classic films. Three new releases add handsomely to their reputation.

Director Michael Powell in seeing The Small Back Room at a Lincoln Center retrospective in 1991 found the then-more-than-forty-year-old film to be a cold movie. Although the film was well received by the British critics in 1949 (it didn’t open in the U.S. until 1952), it was not a success at the box office. The public perceived it to be a war movie and war movies were out at the time. Those who saw it as a love story couldn’t understand why a woman as intelligent as the one played by Kathleen Byron would stay with such as a whiner as the character played by David Farrar for most of the film. Powell agreed with this in hindsight, saying that he should have lightened Farrar’s character up, that the problem was that he tried too hard to adhere to the original novel.

I think the film is a nice discovery. It’s closer to A Matter of Life and Death (Stairway to Heaven) aka Stairway to Heaven in tone than any other Powell/Pressburger film. There’s real suspense in the 17-minute bomb-defusing segment near the end. There’s the treatment of alcoholism as a disease, though Farrar sobers up a bit too quickly to be totally realistic. It even has a dream sequence that evokes The Lost Weekend, though it was actually stolen from Hitchcock. Powell wanted a sequence like the one Salvador Dali designed for Spellbound.

The film is a real eye opener in its casual treatment of sex. Though you could no more show an unmarried couple living together in British films than you could in Hollywood films of the era, Powell gets around it by having Byron living “across the hall” from Farrar though it’s clear from the way the two move in and out of each other’s apartments so frequently that they are more than neighbors who just happen to work together.

Finally there’s the cast, a rather strong one for such a “little” film. It’s a treat to see Farrar and Byron in roles so different from the ones they played in Black Narcissus just two years earlier. The supporting cast is a veritable who’s who of the British film industry from the 30s (Leslie Banks, Anthony Bushell) and includes actors still relevant in the 50s and 60s (Jack Hawkins, Robert Morley, Cyril Cusack) as well as ones still around today (Michael Gough). All of them, and a few others, including Renee Asherson, blend in extremely well, but it’s Farrar and Byron’s show. My only complaint is that they didn’t interview Byron, who is still acting in her 80s, for the one of the DVD extras.

It seems silly that the film version of a play that had been performed on stage for more than fifty years would run afoul of the censors in 1951, but that’s exactly what happened with Max Ophuls’ La Ronde, released in 1950 in France. It wasn’t until 1954 that the film was allowed to be shown in New York. In the meantime it had been released in Los Angeles in 1951 without a hitch, and was in fact nominated for 2 Oscars.

Anton Walbrook is the on-screen narrator who glides us through 12 hook-ups involving 11 participants, starting with the prostitute (Simone Signoret) and the soldier (Serge Reggiani), then going to the soldier and the maid (Simone Simon), the maid and a young gentleman (Daniel Gelin), the young gentleman and an older married woman (Danielle Darrieux), the woman and her husband (Fernand Gravey), the husband and a young girl (Odette Joyeux), the young girl and a poet (Jean-Louis Barrault), the poet and an actress (Isa Miranda), the actress and a count (Gerard Philipe) and the count bringing us full circle with Signoret’s prostitute. It’s very wry and very charming, with all of the actors given a chance to shine against a gorgeous backdrop of 1900 Vienna.

The censors didn’t try to stop Ophuls next film, his masterpiece, and according to many, including noted critic, Andrew Sarris, the greatest film ever made. The lushly romantic The Earrigng of Madame de… was released in France in 1953 and the U.S. in 1954. Reuniting the stars of 1936’s Mayerling, Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux, and adding Vittorio De Sica to form its great triangle of aging lovers, it is at once luxuriantly romantic and bittersweet with a heartbreaking, but profound ending. The story itself is a simple one, involving the pawn of a rich woman’s earrings and the efforts of her husband to retrieve them at a very dear cost. Extras include an introduction by Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), an essay by Molly Haskell (Mrs. Andrew Sarris), and a re-printing of the novella by Louise De Vilmorin, the film’s source material.

Coming back down to earth from the headiness of Ophuls, Ira Sachs’ Married Life (2007) comes as a nice surprise. It proves to be a witty satire of late 1940s mores about a man who plans to murder his wife rather than have her suffer the indignities of his having left her for a younger woman. You know you’re in for a treat when the man is played by Chris Cooper, the wife by Patricia Clarkson and the young mistress by Rachel McAdams with Pierce Brosnan hanging around as the best friend and David Wenham popping up as younger man with designs on the wife. It’s all very droll and the period detail, complete with vintage cars, is perfect.

Less compelling, but worth a look, is Helen Hunt’s Then She Found Me, written, produced and directed by the actress who also stars as a middle-aged schoolteacher reeling from her brief marriage to a mama’s boy, played by Matthew Broderick. Colin Firth is the divorced guy with two kids she then falls for, but the meat of the film is about her relationship with the mother who abandoned her as a baby and now wants to be part of her life. She’s played by Bette Midler in a nicely controlled performance in which she’s less frantic than usual but still has her way with a quip or two or three or four.

A tedious romantic comedy of the sort you wish they’d stop making, Paul Weiland’s Made of Honor gives away its entire plot in the title. It’s a flat and humorless mess about a philanderer and his true love who are best friends but don’t realize they’re in love until she becomes engaged to another man, a Scottish duke, no less. The film doesn’t come alive until its last third set in Scotland, but at least there’s that. Patrick Dempsey sleepwalks through the whole thing and Michelle Monaghan doesn’t have much to do but look pretty. Michael McKidd, as the other man, outclasses them by a mile.

Sony has released the first batch of what it calls Martini Movies. I’m not sure what the message is here – whether it’s that these films are better served with a drink or what, but each one of them includes a recipe for a particular type of Martini.

Hailed as Rita Hayworth’s return to films after her headline marriage to Ali Khan, Vincent Sherman’s1952 film Affair in Trinidad is a nifty thriller set in the Caribbean that reunites the volatile redhead with her Gilda co-star Glenn Ford as her brother-in-law investigating her husband’s murder. She sings (dubbed, of course), dances and romances as only Hayworth could in one of her best performances. Included is the recipe for the Tropical Martini.

Ripped from the headline story of corruption in New York’s garment industry,Sherman’s 1957 film The Garment Jungle has the tone and pulse of the Oscar-winning On the Waterfront. It even has that film’s Oscar nominated co-star Lee J. Cobb again battling the unions. Alas, Kerwin Mathews, in the lead as Cobb’s son, is no Marlon Brando, but he does well enough. Robert Loggia also stars. Included is the recipe for the Manhattan Martini.

One of the best remembered caper films of the 70s, Sidney Lumet’s 1971 film The Anderson Tapes features Sean Connery in one of his first post-Bond roles as the mastermind of a planned jewel heist and a recently released jailbird. His accomplices include Dyan Cannon, Christopher Walken, Martin Balsam and Alan King, while Ralph Meeker is a cop and Margaret Hamilton one of the victims of the high rise apartment building being robbed. Included is the recipe for (what else!) the Shaken Martini.

Another well remembered caper film from the same year, Richard Brooks’ Dollars, benefits immensely from the location filming in Hamburg, Germany and the first pairing of screen legends Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Breezily acted by the two stars who are ably assisted by Gert Frobe, Robert Webber and Scott Brady, the jaunty bank heist comedy goes off without a hitch – well, almost. Included is the recipe for the Green Martini.

Often credited with bringing a gritty realism to police procedurals that formed the foundation for now decades of TV series, Richard Fleischer’s 1972 film The New Centurians stars George C. Scott as the veteran cop and Stacy Keach as his rookie partner. The strong supporting cast includes Jane Alexander (as Keach’s wife), Scott Wilson, Rosalind Cash, Erik Estrada, Clifton James and Isabel Sanford. Included is the recipe for the Mounted Cop Martini.

Forthcoming Martini Movie releases include Our Man in Havana (the Cuban Martini?) and I Never Sang for My Father (the Old Man’s Martini?)

Based on a true story, the compelling 1987 TV movie Billionaire Boys Club, directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, stars Judd Nelson as a young financial wiz who is on trial for the murder of associate Ron Silver. Told in flashback, the film provides meaty supporting roles for a slew of then-rising stars including Fredric Lehne, Brian McNamara, John Stockwell, Barry Tubb, Stan Shaw, Raphael Sbarge, Jill Schoelen and Gail O’Grady. Veterans James Sloyan, Dale Dye, Alan Fudge and Ben Piazza are also featured.

The onslaught of last season’s TV series being released on DVD continues unabated.

Featuring an all-star cast, Dirty Sexy Money gives us Peter Krause as a young lawyer bribed with $10 million a year to provide to various charities of his choosing who replaces his late father as counsel to New York’s wealthiest dysfunctional family. Family members include Donald Sutherland as the patriarch, Jill Clayburgh as the matriarch, William Baldwin as the State’s attorney general with a transsexual mistress on the side, Natalie Zea as a much married divorcee, Glenn Fitzgerald as an Episcopal priest with an illegitimate son, and Seth Gabel as the family’s juiced up, not very bright, young rebel. Blair Underwood, Candis Cayne and Shawn Michael Patrick are among the non-family members whose stories intertwine with the zany Darling clan.

They don’t come any more whimsical than Pushing Daisies, the first season of which is now available. It’s way too cutesy-poo for me, but it certainly does have its fans including the Television Academy which gave it 12 Emmy nominations. Lee Pace stars as a pie maker who has the ability to bring dead things, including people, back to life for one minute. Any longer than that and something or someone else must die in their place. Once he touches them a second time, they die for good. Consequently he is unable to touch either his dog or his girlfriend, both of whom he has brought back from the dead.

My kind of whimsy leans more to Eli Stone in which Jonny Lee Miller plays a lawyer with a brain aneurism whose affliction causes him to take on cases that place morality above monetary gain. When I wrote about this series a few weeks ago, I mistakenly said it only lasted one season. Thankfully, I was wrong. It’s back for a second one with the same wonderful cast including Natasha Henstridge, Victor Garber and Loretta Devine, none of whom are afraid of bursting into song at the slightest provocation. The special effects are first rate, including the collapse of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge in the Season’s penultimate last episode.

Yes, Eli ‘s back,and I’ll be back next week with reviews of new Blu-ray titles including The Godfather – The Coppola Resoration and L.A. Confidential.

-Peter J. Patrick (September 23, 2008)