Australia’s ViaVision Imprint label has released an all-region Blu-ray of John Ford’s 1940 film, The Long Voyage Home.

Made between Ford’s Oscar-winning The Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley, The Long Voyage Home was the director’s favorite of the three. He was a director for hire by Daryl F. Zanuck on the other two, both of which won him Oscars for Best Director, but The Long Voyage Home, a compilation of four short plays by Eugene O’Neill, was one of his passion projects like The Informer and The Quiet Man for which he won his other two Oscars for Best Director.

Nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, The Long Voyage Home failed to win any, unlike The Grapes of Wrath which was nominated for seven and won two, and How Green Was My Valley which was nominated for ten and won five. John Wayne straight from his star making role in Ford’s Stagecoach was topcast as a Norwegian mariner but the film also gives memorable acting opportunities to Thomas Mitchell, Ian Hunter, Ward Bond, Barry Fitzgerald, and John Qualen as his shipmates, and Mildred Natwick in her film debut as a waterfront prostitute.

Mitchell, who won an Oscar of his own for playing the drunken doctor in Stagecoach, was the standout once again playing an alcoholic. Bond is perhaps the most surprising in that most of his roles at the time were very minor. This one, though, is an early standout.

Natwick may not have astonished at the time but for subsequent audiences who know her for her old maid and kindly mother roles, seeing her playing a prostitute is a bit of a shock. Her breakthrough role came a year later when she played Madame Arcati in the first Broadway production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit.

The Blu-ray is from the 2016 UCLA Film and Television Archive restoration of the film which looks great. The extras are excellent. They include newly recorded commentary form film historians Alain Silver and Jim Ursini and on separate documentaries featuring Professor José Arroyo on the film and Professor Jean Chothia on Eugne O’Neill. Topping the extras off is a video essay by Tag Gallagher, film critic and author of John Ford: The Man and His Films.

Imprint has also released an all-region Blu-ray of William Wyler’s 1952 film, Carrie, based on Theodore Dreiser’s 1900 novel, Sister Carrie.

Filming was completed in late 1950 intended for release in 1951 but was held back until after the release of Wyler’s highly successful next film, Detective Story.

Wyler and the studio bickered over the film’s title. Wyler filmed it under Dreiser’s famous original title, but Paramount was concerned that audiences would think the film was about a nun.

Jennifer Jones plays the title role of an ambitious young woman whose family refers to her as Sister Carrie, providing the reason for the title of Dreiser’s first novel. The film, however, is dominated by Laurence Olivier in what many consider his best screen performances as the married man who is obsessed with Carrie’s beauty and unbeknownst to her, commits bigamy to marry her.

Eddie Albert plays the sleazy salesman Jones first “shacks up with” and Miriam Hopkins, in one of her best late career performances, plays Olivier’s bitter wife.

The screenplay is quite mature for the era in which it was made but ironically, it’s not any of the sex stuff that got removed by the censors in its initial release, but rather the scene of a destitute Olivier in a flophouse near the end of the film.

Olivier was nominated for a BAFTA, but Oscar ignored him. Had he been nominated and won an Oscar, it might have been presented to him by his then wife, Vivien Leigh, who won her second Oscar for Best Actress of 1951 for A Streetcar Named Desire.

Excellent newly recorded commentary is provided by professor and film scholar Jason A. Ney. There is also an on-camera interview with Neil Sinyard, author of A Wonderful Heart: The Films of William Wyler.

Warner Archive has released a beautifully restored version of Howard Hawks’ 1955 film, Land of the Pharaohs, on Blu-ray.

A notorious flop in its initial release, the film has rightly become a cult classic even though Hawks himself never liked it, taking four years before he would direct his next film, 1959’s Rio Bravo which restored his reputation.

The Warner Bros. film features compelling performances from Jack Hawkins as the Pharaoh whose slaves built the first Pyramid in 3,000 B.C., Joan Collins as his murderous second wife, Dewey Martin as the son of the Pyramid’s architect, Alexis Minotis as the Pharaoh’s high priest, James Robertson Justice as the architect, and Sydney Chaplin as the captain of the guard and Collins’ secret lover.

Peter Bogdanovich’s imported commentary from the original DVD release is one of his best. It includes excerpts from his earlier interviews with Hawks.

Arrow Films has released a 4K Ultra-HD edition of Martin Scorsese’s 2011 film, Hugo.

Nominated for eleven Oscars, and winner of five, Scorsese’s film of Brian Selznick’s one-of-a-kind illustrated children’s novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, has only gotten better in the intervening years.

Asa Butterfield gives one of the better child performances of recent years as the boy living in a Paris train station in 1931. He is given strong support by Chloe Grace Moretz as the young girl who is his only friend, Ben Kingsley as her once famous grandfather, Helen McCrorey as her grandmother, and Sacha Baron Cohen as the station inspector, the film also features memorable cameos by Michael Stuhlbarg, Christopher Lee, and Jude Law.

The film is, of course, at its heart a plea for film preservation as Kingsley’s character turns out to be Georges Méliès, the director of A Trip to the Moon, most of whose films had already been destroyed by 1931.

Extras include numerous interviews, one with Brian Selznick, a rare book author who loves the film made of one of his most famous works.

Happy viewing.