Sony has released a Blu-ray of Frank Borzage’s newly restored 1933 film, Man’s Castle.

Sony, which owns the Columbia Pictures catalogue, recently found the missing footage needed to restore the film to its original 75-minute length after it was cut to 66 minutes for its 1938 post-Code release. The restored film was shown for the first time since its original release on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) on November 15, 2023.

By the time of the film’s release, actor-turned-director Borzage had already become the first director to win two Oscars for directing films that did not also win the Oscar for Best Picture, a feat that has only been repeated three times since. His wins were for 1927’s 7th Heaven at the first Academy Awards and 1931’s Bad Girl at the most recent ceremony for films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932. The next awards ceremony would be for films released between August 1, 1932 and December 31, 1933.

Although Borzage directed films in numerous genres, he was best known for his romantic melodramas which, in addition to 7th Heaven and Bad Girl, included 1928’s Street Angel with 7th Heaven stars Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell; 1928’s The River with Farrell and Mary Duncan; 1929’s Lucky Star, again starring Gaynor and Farrell; 1930’s Liliom, the source material for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel with Farrell and Rose Hobart; and 1932’s A Farewell to Arms with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes.

Man’s Castle, like Bad Girl, is contemporaneously set in the Great Depression but with bigger stars than James Dunn and Sally Eilers. Although they had not yet reached the heights of their legendary careers, both Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young were well on their way. Tracy had already been highly praised for his performances in 1932’s Me and My Gal opposite Joan Bennett and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing opposite Bette Davis, and the recently released 1933 film, The Power and the Glory, opposite Colleen Moore. Young, who began her career as a child actress in 1917, was a busy actress whose films included 1928’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh opposite Lon Chaney, 1930’s The Devil to Pay opposite Ronald Colman, and eight previous 1933 releases including Heroes for Sale opposite Richard Barthelmess.

Man’s Castle opens, as did many depression era films, with Tracy and Young sitting on a bench in New York’s Central Park with him feeding popcorn to the pigeons and she, thinking he must have money, hoping he’ll throw her a few kernels. Instead, he takes her to a fancy restaurant where neither he nor she can afford the food but since they are dressed nicely, the staff doesn’t suspect that they are freeloaders until it comes time to pay the bill. Tracy uses his great bravado to get them out of the jam they are in and takes her to his home which is not a mansion as she had expected, but a tent by the East River.

Against her better judgment, Young spends the night in a shack rented to Tracy by Marjorie Rambeau. So far, so good, nothing to alarm the censors, but then in broad daylight, Tracy takes off his clothes and runs naked into the river, enticing Young to do the same. Obviously, that scene would have to be cut for the film’s rerelease, but so too would be parts of the many scenes obviously indicating that the two are cohabiting without the benefit of marriage, followed by Young’s pregnancy and their hastily conducted unrecorded marriage performed by a discredited former minister, and Tracy’s straying into another sexual relationship with chanteuse Glenda Farrell.

Not cut, but far more disturbing to modern sensibilities are the scenes in which Tracy threatens Young with bodily harm if she doesn’t do exactly what he wants her to do. Although she tells him she is not afraid of his threats, and he never carries them out, the threat of them hangs uneasily over the film.

Arthur Hohl as Tracy’s leering friend/rival is a bit over the top but Farrell in another hilarious turn, Rambeau in one of her signature souse roles, Walter Connolly as the former minister, and Dickie Moore as the little boy Tracy adores, are all pitch perfect. It’s another winner for Borzage, albeit a minor one.

Borzage’s career over the next eight years included such well-received films as 1934’s Little Man, What Now with Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery, 1936’s Desire with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper, 1937’s History Is Made at Night with Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur and Mannequin with Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy, 1938’s Three Comrades with Margaret Sullavan and Robert Taylor, and The Shining Hour with Crawford and Sullavan, followed by 1940’s Strange Cargo with Clark Gable and Crawford and The Mortal Storm with Sullavan and James Stewart, romantic melodramas all.

Borzage’s later career was filled with hits and misses in other genres as romantic melodramas failed to bring in the audiences they once did. He returned to acting for the first time since 1918 in a bit part in 1957’s Jeanne Eagels starring Kim Novak as the legendary actress. His last directed film was 1959’s The Big Fisherman, a biblical epic starring Howard Keel as Saint Peter which failed to catch on in the era of such better received biblical epics as The Robe, The Ten Commandments, and Ben-Hur. He died in 1962 at 68.

Sony has also released a Blu-ray upgrade of Michal Apted’s 1992 film, Thunderheart.

Directed by Apted (Coal Miner’s Daughter, Gorillas in the Mist), Thunderheart is both a social drama and a murder mystery, set in a poverty stricken Sioux Indian Reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota where there is more going on than just the one murder.

Val Kilmer, in arguably his best performance, stars as a mixed-blood FBI agent assigned to aid veteran agent Sam Shepard in the investigation of a murder on the reservation. Standing in the way of a quick and easy arrest are Graham Greene as a reservation cop, Sheila Tousey in her film debut as a dedicated schoolteacher, and 72-year-old Chief Ted Thin Oak, also in his film debut, as a canny reservation elder.

Beautifully photographed and acted, the film may well have fared better with awards bodies if it hadn’t been in the shadow of Dances with Wolves released just two years earlier. As it is, the only awards recognition it received were from Political Film Society, USA which nominated it for recognition in two categories: Exposé and Human Rights. It lost the first category to Hoffa, and the second to The Power of One. Other winners that year were Bob Roberts for Democracy and Grand Canyon for Peace.

Happy viewing.