Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet reunite eleven years after Titanic. No crowd pleaser this time out, Revolutionary Road is a bleak melodrama about discontented suburbanites in the 1950s.

Richard Yates’ novel met with critical acclaim when it was published in 1961, but was not a commercial success. Indeed, none of the writer’s seven published novels and three collections of short stories were. Raised by a ne’er-do-well sculptress mother, he was a psychotic alcoholic who died in 1992 at the age of 66 after two failed marriages, three children and twenty five years of suffering from emphysema. I mention this because it is crucial to understanding the place this unique work comes from.

On the surface the Wheelers appear to be your typical suburban couple with a couple of nice kids. The husband Frank, played by DiCaprio, has settled into a job he hates while wife April, played by Winslet, yearns for a life she never had. The two are bored out of their skulls. One day, the usually depressed April euphorically suggests that they sell their house and car and move to Paris. After some trepidation, Frank agrees. The remainder of the film revolves around others’ reaction to this decision and the two main obstacles that that stand in its way.

Yates wrote this, his first novel, in the wake of the break-up of his first marriage. His sympathies clearly lie with the husband, while the wife is portrayed as cold and bitter, near schizophrenic in her actions. On screen, though, the wife grabs more of your sympathy thanks to the sheer force of Winslet’s performance. DiCaprio, on the other hand, never seems to me to be at his best. His character is often petulant and child-like and it’s never clear whether it’s the character or the actor that is coming through.

The supporting performances are difficult to gauge. The characters are mostly caricatures, though the unsung David Harbour as the neighbor who has a thing for April and Richard Easton as the realtor’s husband who turns his hearing aid off when his wife goes into one of her tirades, seem more real than Kathryn Hahn as Harbour’s silly wife or Kathy Bates as the jabbering realtor.

Michael Shannon, who won an Oscar nod as the realtor’s son just released from a mental institution, seems to be a stand-in for Yates, the outside observer who sums everyone up with a barrage of words no one in their right mind would get away with.

The office workers pale in comparison to the similar characters in TV’s superb Mad Men series.

Revolutionary Road is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Extras include commentary by director Sam Mendes and screenwriter Justin Haythe and a documentary on Yates.

Poor Ed Zwick, the long time director gets almost no respect in critical circles. His only Oscar was for producing Shakespeare in Love and his only other nomination was for producing Traffic. The films which he himself directed, including Glory, Legends of the Fall, Courage Under Fire, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond won lots of awards recognition for their stars and technicians, but none for Zwick. The same is true for his latest, Defiance, about a group of Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis and survived World War II.

The film’s only Oscar nomination was for James Newton Howard’s score, yet the film is easily Zwick’s best since the similarly themed Glory.

Whereas Glory dealt with the unheralded story of the volunteer black brigade which fought in the Civil War, Defiancedeals with the wartime participation of another group generally viewed as victims of their time. Three of the four Jewish Bielski brothers, played by Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell take matters into their own hands when their parents are massacred by the Nazis on their farm in Belarus. The fourth, played by George MacKay, is too young to fight.

During the course of the war they will not only hide in the nearby forest, but rescue thousands of others. At war’s end, 1,20 people will walk out of the forest.

Craig as the charismatic oldest brother and natural leader is the only one billed over the title, but this is a true ensemble piece in which many of the players stand out, chief among them Schreiber as the hot-headed and hot-blooded second brother, Bell as the sensitive third brother, Alexa Davalos as Craig’s “forest wife” who becomes his long time real wife, Allan Corduner and Mark Feuerstein as the camp’s intellectuals and Jodhi May as a pregnant rape victim.

Defianceis available on Blu-ray and standard DVD. Extras include commentary by Zwick, a making-of documentary, interviews with the children and grandchildren of the Bielski brothers and recent photographs taken of survivors of the forest camp.

There have been so many new-to-Blu-ray discs released in the past few months it’s impossible to keep up with them all. One worth mentioning is Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, whose popularity has endured for more than forty years. What is unusual about this release is that it not only includes the superior Blu-ray transfer but the 40th Anniversary standard DVD of two years ago, as well. Alas, the Original Soundtrack and Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park CD’s that accompanied the release of the standard DVD are not included.

On the classic front, Warner Bros. continues to go all out with its Archive Collection. As we wait to see what they have in store for us in June, we have learned that they have pulled the Lex Barker Tarzan films from showing on TCM any time soon. Apparently they want the Warner store to be the only place we can find the films in the Archive for now.

Concurrently, however, Warner Bros. has released ten titles (so far) that would seem like natural fits for the Archive program to Amazon for sale as exclusives. Included in this group are such interesting titles as:

1940’s Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet, directed by William Dieterle, with Edward G. Robinson in his own personal favorite screen role as the tenacious 19th Century bacteriologist who discovered a cure for syphilis. This was the third great biographical drama Dieterle directed for Warner Bros. following The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Life of Emile Zola and another example in a long line of fine films for which Robinson might have been nominated for an Oscar, but incredibly never was.

1941’s The Strawberry Blonde, directed by Raoul Walsh, with James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland and Rita Hayworth at their charming best in this turn-of-the-century comedy-drama in which dentist Cagney muses over his life, wondering if he married the right girl. De Havilland provides just the right touch as his wife and Hayworth is unforgettable as the sex bomb who becomes a shrew. Highlights include the rendering of many early 20th Century hit tunes and ends with a sing-along to “And the Band Played On”.

1946’s The Verdict, Don Siegel’s directorial debut, a nifty, locked-room murder mystery set in fog-enshrouded Victorian London, in which long time co-stars Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre pull out all the stops as a disgraced Chief Inspector of Scotland Yard and his loquacious neighbor. Joan Lorring as a money grubbing chanteuse, George Couloris as Greenstreet’s replacement at the Yard and Rosalind Ivan as an impressionable housekeeper co-star, but it’s Greenstreet and Lorre you can’t take your eyes off of.

1947’s The Unsuspected, directed by Michael Curtiz, a dandy film noir murder mystery featuring Claude Rains in a role similar to the one played by Clifton Webb in Laura, with Joan Caulfield in the role patterned after Gene Tierney in that better known classic and a whopper of a supporting cast including Audrey Totter, Constance Bennett, Hurd Hatfield and Ted North all in top form as the “lesser” people in radio star Rains’ orbit. Woody Bredell’s cinematography and Franz Waxman’s score are standouts.

1949’s Look for the Silver Lining, directed by David Butler, the highlight of June Haver’s career in which she played Broadway star Marilyn Miller whose rise to fame was similar to Haver’s own. Unlike the fabled Miller who died at the early age of 37, Haver would soon turn her back on show business and join a convent only to emerge several months later to marry Fred MacMurray and live a long life as one of the richest and happiest women in Hollywood. Her story would make a more interesting biopic than Miller’s, but this one’s decent enough.

Also available as Amazon exclusives are 20,000 Years in Sing Sing, Bordertown, Crime School, The Male Animal and Colorado Territory.

-Peter J. Patrick (June 2, 2009)