Paramount has re-released 1981’s Reds on Blu-ray from a brand new 4K transfer. Whereas the previous release was spread across two discs with extras, the new one presents the entire 3-hour, 16-minute film on one disc, with extras, including a two-hour long making-of documentary on the film hosted by writer-producer-director-star Warren Beatty, imported from the previous release.

Nominated for 12 Oscars, this epic tale of radical American journalist Jack Reed and his involvement in the Communist revolution in Russia won 3 for Best Supporting Actress (Maureen Stapleton), Cinematography (Vittorio Storaro), and Director. Beatty’s win in the latter category was one of four nominations he received, losing Best Actor to Henry Fonda in On Golden Pond and Best Picture and Best Screenplay to Hugh Hudson’s Chariots of Fire. He would eventually earn a total of 14 nominations and the Thalberg.

Stapleton’s win for playing anarchist Emma Goldman came on her fourth nomination. She had been previously nominated for Lonelyhearts, Airport, and Interiors. This was cinematographer Storaro’s second win. He had previously won for Apocalypse Now and would win again for The Last Emperor. Among the film’s other nominees were Diane Keaton as Reed’s lover, writer Louise Bryant, and Jack Nicolson as playwright Eugene O’Neill. This was Keaton’s second of four nominations. She had won on her first nomination for Annie Hall. This was Nicholson’s sixth nomination, his first since winning for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He would go on to another six nominations, with additional wins for Terms of Endearment and As Good as It Gets.

The film’s narrative traces Reed and Bryant from their first meeting in Portland, Oregon in 1915, through their time in Greenwich Village, and then Russia in 1917, ending with Reed’s death in 1920. More than thirty of Reed’s contemporaries, referred to as witnesses in the screenplay, provide on-screen comment on Reed and Bryant throughout the course of the film. Among them are Roger Baldwin, Henry Miller, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Hamilton Fish, Rebecca West, Will Durant, Dorothy Frooks, and George Jessel.

To get Paramount to make Reds, Beatty had to agree to make Heaven Can Wait for them three years earlier. That film has finally been given a Blu-ray release by the studio in conjunction with the release of Reds.

Unlike the superb job accorded Reds, the release of Heaven Can Wait is a major disappointment. It is not a new transfer. It looks as dreary as the DVD of old with its faded imagery

This remake of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan was nominated for 9 Oscars and won one for its Art Direction. Beatty himself had been nominated for the same four awards he would be nominated for again for Reds, Picture, Director (with co-director Buck Henry), Actor, and Screenplay (with co-writer Elaine May), albeit Adapted not Original. He lost Picture and Director to Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Actor to Jon Voight in Coming Home, and Adapted Screenplay to Oliver Stone for Midnight Express. Jack Warden and Dyan Cannon received nominations for their supporting performances, which seemed questionable at the time, ludicrous now. None of the actors look good, especially female stars Julie Christie and Cannon in their hideous 1970s style big hair wigs.

The superior Here Comes Mr. Jordan was nominated for 7 Oscars and won 2, both for writing, one for Original Story, the other for Screenplay. It had also been nominated for Best Picture, Directing (Alexander Hall), Actor (Robert Montgomery), Supporting Actor (James Gleason), and Cinematography.

Montgomery plays a prizefighter on his way to a championship bout whose soul is mistakenly taken fifty years too soon by novice heavenly escort Edward Everett Horton, forcing heavenly guide Claude Rains (as Mr. Jordan) to find a new body for him to return to earth in as his has already been cremated. He temporarily puts him into the body of a wealthy businessman whose wife (Rita Johnson) and her lover, his male secretary (John Abbott), have just murdered but whose body hasn’t yet been discovered. Only his fight manager (James Gleason) is let in on the secret. Enter Evelyn Keyes as a woman whose father was ruined by the man whose body Montgomery has taken over.

In the remake, Beatty plays a football player, a quarterback on his way to the Superbowl. Buck Henry has Horton’s role, James Mason has Rains’, Dyan Cannon has Johnson’s, Charles Grodin has Abbott’s, Jack Warden has Gleason’s, and Julie Christie has Keyes’. While Beatty is every bit as good as Montgomery, none of the supporting players come close to the charm of the originals, especially Warden, a fine actor in other roles, lamely trying to fill the shoes of the incomparable Gleason in his greatest role.

Warner Archive has released a Blu-ray of Nicholas Ray’s 1958 gangster film Party Girl.

Ray, whose only Oscar nomination was for his screenplay of 1955’s Rebel Without a Cause, was MGM’s choice to direct this film with similarities to 1955’s Love Me or Leave Me in which Doris Day played real-life singer Ruth Etting married to James Cagney, Oscar-nominated for his portrayal of a gangster with a limp. In this one, Cyd Charisse plays a fictitious dancer in gangster-ridden 1930’s Chicago who falls in love with crippled mob lawyer Robert Taylor. Lee J. Cobb plays the gang leader clearly modeled after Al Capone or rather Edward G. Robinson’s interpretation of him as Rico Bandello in 1931’s Little Caesar. He’s even called Rico (Angelo) in this.

The film moves fast with an excellent performance by the usually stoic Taylor. Charisse starts out strong but fades into the background in the second half. Cobb, who would be Oscar nominated for the same year’s The Brothers Karamazov is way over the top as usual. Whereas the musical scenes with Day were the highlights of Love Me or Leave Me, the dance scenes with Charisse do nothing but slow the plot down in this one.

The film, a modest hit at the time, has grown in appreciation over time but still doesn’t come close to the level of Ray’s In a Lonely Place or the previously mentioned Rebel Without a Cause. Its blood red color palate, however, looks great on Blu-ray.

This week’s new Blu-ray releases include One Night in Miami and Angels with Dirty Faces.