The DVD Report #100

Warner Bros. had already decided to release Slumdog Millionaire straight to DVD in the U.S. when Fox Searchlight picked up the distribution rights last fall and released the film to U.S. theatres instead. The result was a word-of-mouth hit and an eventual worldwide awards winner. Among its haul of awards – 8 Oscars out of 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Director (Danny Boyle) and Song (“Jai Ho”).

It was the right film at the right time. A real life terrorist attack in Mumbai, where the film, is set drew attention to it. Its story of orphaned Indian children struggling to find a way out of their poverty certainly resonated in a worsening worldwide economy. The set piece of the TV show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” with its familiar format brought a universal appeal to audiences who just a few years ago sat transfixed watching the same show play out in their living rooms.

Although the film is a tribute to the human spirit it travels a long, dark road before it gets to its inevitable happy ending. Given that, its R rating may seems kind of harsh for such an inspirational film.

Slumdog Millionaire is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Warner Bros. and Fox continue to be the only two Hollywood studios that regularly restore and release its classic films on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

With its superb picture and glorious sound, Blu-ray is a natural venue for movie musicals, yet few of them have been released in this format. Both Warner Bros. and Fox are rectifying that with the release of three classic musicals this week.

Set to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the original Broadway production, as well as the 50th anniversary of the general release of the film version, Fox’s presentation of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific now looks and sounds better than it ever has. Director Joshua Logan’s fanciful use of color filters during many of the production numbers is still an unnecessary distraction, but not enough to overwhelm them, and when the filters are lifted we are amazed anew at Leon Shamroy’s breathtaking cinematography.

The Blu-ray, as well as the previously released standard DVD, includes two versions of the film, the general release version and the road show version which is 15 minutes longer. Other extras include a sing-along and the ability to play only the film’s musicals numbers.

Warner Bros. is guilty of double dipping, i.e. causing consumers who must have the most pristine version of a treasured film to buy the same film on disc more than once, with its upgraded versions ofVincente Minnelli’s Oscar winners Gigi (1958) and An American in Paris (1951) as well as the recently released non-musical Quo Vadis (also 1951). All three films were available for release on Blu-ray at the same time as their standard DVDs last autumn, and were in fact released in Japan, but held back for U.S. releases until now.

All three, of course, look and sound even more marvelous on Blu-ray, but include the same extras as the standard DVD versions.

Extras on Gigi include the original 1948 non-musical French version of the film based on Colette’s novella while extras on An American in Paris include the excellent 2002 documentary, American Masters – Anatomy of a Dancer.

Extras on Quo Vadis include a documentary on the genesis of the Biblical epic.

If Quo Vadis brought renewed interest in Biblical epics to Hollywood, Fox’s 1953 epic The Robe cemented that interest.

The Robe was planned and begun as the first film in the Cinemascope firnat, but How to Marry a Millionaire, which began filming after The Robe,was completed first, giving rise to the legend that Millionaire, which was released later,was the first film to employ that process. This is just one of the many facts you’ll pick up while watching one of the many extras included with the meticulously restored production simultaneously released on Blu-ray and standard DVD. No double dipping from Fox.

The film, which has had previous, rather blah releases on home video has been restored to its original brilliance. Audiences of the day were only somewhat impressed by the story of a Roman Centurion (Oscar-nominated Richard Burton) in charge of Christ’s crucifixion and his eventual conversion to Christianity, others who had read the best-selling novel were annoyed that they would have to wait another year for the sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators, to get the remainder of the story that had been contained in a single novel. Everyone, however, was impressed with the look of the film which won 2 out of the 5 Oscars it had been nominated for. Now, those who have never experienced the film theatrically can finally appreciate what the shouting was all about. The film looks marvelous, though Jay Robinson as the mad emperor Caligula outshines the once-vaunted Burton, Jean Simmons, Victor Mature and everyone else in the film.

The restored edition of The Robe is available on standard DVD as well as Blu-ray.

Another film that looks better than ever is Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief. Easily the least effective, dramatically, of all of Hitchcock’s major films, the shimmering beauty of the French Riviera was its selling point but you’d never know it from previous video releases, all of which suffered from washed-out colors. Paramount’s latest DVD release, its third, rectifies that and you can, at the very least, appreciate why the film won an Oscar for Best Cinematography and nominations for its art direction and costume design.

Warner Bros. has released Forbidden Hollywood Collection Volume Three in its on-going efforts to bring pre-Code films to DVD. This set is comprised entirely of films by the prolific William A. Wellman. It includes one from 1931, Other Men’s Women, one from 1932, The Purchase Price, and four from 1933, Frisco Jenny, Midnight Mary, Heroes for Sale and Wild Boys of the Road.

The first two films, Other Men’s Women with Grant Withers, Regis Toomey, Mary Astor, James Cagney and Joan Blondell, and The Purchase Price with Barbara Stanwyck and George Brent, are potboilers. Withers and Toomey fight over Astor, who is married to Toomey, in the former. Stanwyck is a mail order bride with a past in the latter. Both are highly watchable.

Ruth Chatterton, who won an Oscar nomination for Madame X, plays a variation on that role in Frisco Jenny in which her fiancé James Murray is killed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the pregnant woman is left to fend for herself. She eventually becomes a notorious madam and must give up her son to a respectable couple in order to stay two steps ahead of the child protection society. Years later, the son, now the San Francisco D.A., must prosecute Chatterton for murdering mobster Louis Calhern without knowing that she is his mother. Wellman directs with his customary verve. The special effects used to convey the earthquake are especially well done for the era.

Loretta Young is remembered nowadays as the virtuous Oscar and Emmy winning star of The Farmer’s Daughter, The Bishop’s Wife and TV’s Letter to Loretta, but the actress who began her career at the age of four and became a star at 14 opposite Lon Chaney in Laugh, Clown, Laugh, had a dual nature to her personality that was best displayed in her pre-Code films, of which Midnight Mary is one of the best.

Lovely and angelic opposite good guy Franchot Tone one minute and as vulgar and fast as any of her contemporaries opposite bad guy Ricardo Cortez the next, Young is in her element. Seen in flashbacks as a nine-year-old in pig-tails and later as a sophisticated 27-year-old on trial for murder, Young is believable in every incarnation. It’s hard to believe she was only 19 at the time, already married and divorced from Grant Withers. It’s no wonder she considered this one of her favorite films unlike other actresses of the day who demurely disowned their pre-Code movies.

Heroes for Sale and Wild Boys of the Road are two of Wellman’s best films. Both capture the heartache and despair of the Great Depression like few other films.

In Heroes for Sale, Richard Barthelmess is a World War I hero who suffers from morphine addiction, later spends five years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit and eventually ends up as a “forgotten man”. Loretta Young is lovely as his wife although she doesn’t have much to do. Aline MacMahon is much more memorable in the film’s principal character role as their friend. The film’s ending offers no easy solution.

An even bleaker world view is presented in Wild Boys of the Road which chronicles the true story of adolescents of the depression who live the lives of hoboes when their parents can no longer afford to feed them. Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips and Dorothy (Dottie) Coonan have the principal roles and they are all excellent. Coonan married Wellman after completion of the film and bore him seven children including William Wellman Jr. who does commentary on the film. Dottie Coonan is still going strong at 93.

Two excellent documentaries on the life of “Wild Bill” Wellman round out the package.

Although Warner Bros. remains the studio most likely to release its classic films on DVD, its releases have slowed down considerably in the last year. Fortunately, they have not been asleep at the wheel, but rather planning to launch a direct purchase arm of their store called The Warner Bros. Archives where you can download one of an initial 150 films for $15 or order a specially made DVD complete with box cover art for $20. The service, which launched on March 23, is presently only available to U.S. residents but Warners is working to clear worldwide distribution rights to such titles as Sunrise at Campobello, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, All Fall Down, Ah, Wilderness!, The Magnificent Yankee, Invitation, Emma, The Citadel, The Big House, The Actress and other long-requested titles. Another 150 titles are expected to be added to the initial list by year’s end with more to come from their library of more than 5,000 classic MGM, Warner Bros. and RKO films.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 31, 2009)