Earlier this year, Criterion released a long overdue Blu-ray upgrade of Destry Rides Again starring James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich. Released in New York in late 1939, the film had its Los Angeles debut in early 1940, becoming eligible for the 1940 Academy Awards, the year Stewart won his Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, which Criterion had release on Blu-ray in 2017.

In the meantime, Warner Archive has been busy stepping up its Blu-ray output of classic films with a particular emphasis on 1940. Late last year, they released The Letter and earlier this year, Pride and Prejudice. They ended October with the release of Waterloo Bridge and began November with the release of The Mortal Storm.

The Mortal Storm was one of the seminal films of 1940. Released just six months after the better-known The Shop Around the Corner (coming to Blu-ray in December), this film again starred Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, supported by Frank Morgan, all in terrific performances, especially Morgan’s. Its release caused Hitler to immediately ban all MGM films in Nazi-occupied Europe.

The film has an uncanny relevance to life in the U.S. eighty years later, as it is about a family that is shattered by bitter disputes over politics. Set in 1933 as Hitler is rising to power, it centers on a German family with Morgan as a non-Aryan university professor celebrating his sixtieth birthday whose stepsons (Robert Stack, William T. Orr) leave home and join the Nazi party along with his daughter’s fiancé (Robert Young) while he is supported by his wife (Irene Rich), young son (Gene Reynolds), daughter (Sullavan), and his daughter and her fiancé’s friend (Stewart). Tensions escalate and Morgan is taken from his home and incarcerated, then sent to a concentration camp, while Sullavan and Stewart navigate a difficult terrain. Maria Ouspenskaya (Dodsworth) and Bonita Granville (These Three) are also terrific as Stewart’s mother and sister, respectively. Future singing and dancing legend Dan Dailey (There’s No Business Like Show Business) makes a chilling screen debut as a Nazi.

The film’s ending in which Stewart and Sullavan ski to safety in Austria was devastating to a 1940 audience knowing that Austria would fall to Nazi control two years before the film was made.

The Mortal Storm was directed by Frank Borzage (A Farewell to Arms) although his co-producer Victor Saville (The Green Years) was rumored to have directed some scenes. The film’s outstanding cinematography was the work William H. Daniels (The Naked City).

Stewart’s Destry Rides Again co-star has also been honored with a busy Blu-ray release schedule this year.

Marlene Dietrich had been the object of Criterion’s celebrated Dietrich and von Sternberg in Hollywood six-film Blu-ray. Late last year and earlier this year, Kino Lorber released several Dietrich films on Blu-ray including 1942’s The Spoilers and Pittsburgh, both co-starring John Wayne. Now Kino has released a Blu-ray of 1940’s Seven Sinners, the first film Dietrich made with Wayne, her first film since Destry Rides Again, which resurrected her career.

Wayne also came to the film fresh from his own career re-emergence as the star of 1939’s Stagecoach. The supporting cast in this one, set in the South Seas, features a Albert Dekker, Broderick Crawford, Anna Lee, Mischa Auer, Billy Gilbert, Samuel S. Hinds, Osar Homolka, and Reginald Denny.

Direction was by Tay Garnett (The Valley of Decision). Cinematography was by Rudolph Maté (To Be or Not to Be).

Blu-ray extras include commentary by film historian David Del Valle.

Kino Lorber has also released a Blu-ray of Wayne’s 1941 classic The Shepherd of the Hills.

Although Wayne receives top billing in the film directed by Henry Hathaway (True Grit) and photographed by W. Howard Greene (The Adventures of Robin Hood) and Charles Lang (Some Like It Hot), he is not the main character. That would be Harry Carey (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington) in the title role of the cultured stranger who settles in the midst of superstitious hillbillies in the Ozarks in this third of many film versions of Harold Bell Wright’s novel.

Wayne plays the vengeful son of a kindly woman who died of a broken heart when her husband abandoned her years before. He is looking for his father, so that he can kill him, egged on by his self-righteous aunt played to the devastating hilt by Beulah Bondi. Betty Field plays the girl who comes between Wayne and his plans. James Barton as Bondi’s subservient husband, Marjorie Main as an old blind woman who regains her sight but not her ability to keep her mouth shut, and Marc Lawrence (Dillinger) in a rare sympathetic role as a supposed idiot all contribute mightily, but acting honors go to Carey and Bondi at the top of their considerable acting prowess, with Field not far behind.

Blu-ray extras include commentary by film critic and author Simon Abrams.

Kino Lorber has also released two Michael Caine films new to Blu-ray in the U.S., featuring the two-time Oscar winner in films made twenty-three years apart, but both before he won his first Oscar for Hannah and Her Sisters.

1965’s The Ipcress File is the film that made him a star, earning him his first BAFTA nomination. The film, a stylish anti-James Bond thriller, earned BAFTAs for Best British Film, Art Direction, and Cinematography. Sidney J. Furie (Superman 4) was nominated for a Director Guild of America award but failed to make the Oscar cut.

The film’s stylish direction and cinematography by Otto Heller (Peeping Tom) has influenced filmmakers to this day.

Extras include two commentaries, a previously recorded one with Furie’s participation and a newly recorded one with the participation of his biographer, filmmaker Daniel Kremer.

Simon Langton’s 1987 thriller The Whistle Blower features an older, but not necessarily wiser Caine as the retired spy and father of a young intelligence officer who has been murdered. Langston, the director of TV’s Smiley’s People knows his way around a thriller and gets first-rate performances from Caine, Nigel Havers, and John Gielgud. Second-billed James Fox is wasted in a minor role as a red herring character.

This one has no commentary, but none is needed.

This week’s new releases include the Criterion Blu-ray release of Bill & Ted Face the Music and A Rainy Day in New York.