 |
December 2011: West Side Story's 50th
by
John Gallagher
WEST SIDE STORY 50TH ANNIVERSARY: 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment and MGM Home Entertainment celebrate the half-century mark of a classic screen musical with WEST SIDE STORY: 50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION. The show premiered on Broadway in 1957, with staggering talents behind it -- book by Arthur Laurents, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreography by Jerome Robbins. A ROMEO AND JULIET story updated to late 50s Manhattan, with street gangs Sharks and Jets replacing the Montagues and Capulets, WEST SIDE STORY pushed the boundaries of the stage musical and has been in constant play ever since, from high school productions to Broadway revivals. The 1961 movie version, co-directed by Robbins and Hollywood veteran Robert Wise (editor: CITIZEN KANE, director: THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL and SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME, later to direct THE SOUND OF MUSIC), won ten out of eleven Academy Awards (including Best Picture), plus a special Oscar for Robbins’ choreography, and placed on the NBR’s Top Ten list. Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer played the star-crossed lovers, with Russ Tamblyn, George Chakiris and Rita Moreno in support (Best Supporting Oscars for Chakiris and Moreno). The three-disc anniversary set includes the movie on Blu-ray, remastered in 1080p hi-def, giving new lustre to Daniel Fapp’s glorious Oscar-winning Super Panavision 70 cinematography, with 7.1 DTS-HD sound, a featurette on the dances, and song-specific commentary by Sondheim; a full Blu-ray disc with retrospective featurettes and a story-board-to-film comparison; and a DVD of the digitally restored movie.
Wise and Robbins shared an Oscar for Best Director; I interviewed Robert Wise in 1978 and 1983 and he recalled, “I was in New York doing post-production work on ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) when I got a call from Harold Mirisch on the Coast asking me if I would be interested in doing WEST SIDE STORY. I jumped out of my seat because I had seen it two or three years before and just thought it was marvelous. It was the last few weeks of its stage run in New York, so I went to a matinee and loved it again.
“I was to be producer and director on the film. Jerry Robbins, who directed and choreographed the stage show, had the right to do the movie choreography if he chose. Of course, I was anxious to have Jerry do the movie because he’s such an exceptional, unusual and classic talent. But when he was approached he declined. He said unless he could be more involved in the making of the film than just the choreography, he would rather not do it. I said jokingly to Mirisch, ‘Why don’t you let him direct the film?’
“Now I knew I could get one or two of his assistants to come out from New York and reproduce the choreography. But I also knew that Jerry, being the special talent that he is, would find more to do and more ways to adapt and change and do new things and creative things. So I took off my director’s cap and put on the producer’s cap and looked in the mirror and said, ‘What’s the best thing for the picture?’ And the answer had to come back, ‘Get Robbins on it if there’s any way you can work it out.’
“It took many months of soul-searching both on Jerry’s part and my part to finally come to a sort of meeting of the minds on the way that this might work but eventually he did come and work on the show. He co-directed about half the film with me. We were terribly behind schedule, way over budget, and United Artists was getting increasingly nervous. Finally, the decision was made that the co-directing was slowing us down too much and in order to get on with it and not to go any more over budget, we’d just have to ask Jerry to leave. Jerry was upset and I was unhappy about it but it had to be done. Fortunately for me and the film he had rehearsed all the balance of the numbers that we hadn’t shot and his assistants stayed on to help me do it. But Jerry was involved in all aspects of the films from scripting to music to sets and costumes. His contribution was of such stature and such quality that I felt he definitely deserved the co-directing credit with me and he got it.
“There is quite a difference in putting a musical on the screen and on the stage. In stage convention you accept people breaking into song out of dialogue, going into a dance … you’re in a theatre and you accept that. It’s a different situation on the screen. The screen is a very real medium; it’s very difficult to get into musical things out of dialogue without feeling a little sense of awkwardness or embarrassment and that’s the thing that we struggled with more than anything else: how to capture the quality of all the marvelous stylized, poetic and theatrical movements of the stage show into the realistic medium of the screen.
“One of the solutions was the opening of the film, the flight over New York. That was my idea. I wanted to show New York as a real city, because that’s where our story is taking place. At the same time, by shooting straight down in the patterns and forms the city gave us, we delivered this ‘real’ New York in an abstract way. I think this helped put the audience in a frame of mind that was able to accommodate accepting the kids breaking into a dance early in the show.”
WYLER’S THE BIG COUNTRY: Before he directed DODSWORTH, DEAD END, JEZEBEL, THE LETTER, THE LITTLE FOXES, MRS. MINIVER, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, ROMAN HOLIDAY and BEN-HUR, winning three Best Director Oscars, the Irving G. Thalberg Award and two NBR Best Director Awards, William Wyler made two-reel silent horse operas. At the peak of his career, he returned to his cinematic roots with the sprawling Western THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), available on Blu-ray from 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment. In a decade of truly great Westerns (the Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart pictures, the Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott movies, Wellman’s WESTWARD THE WOMEN, Stevens’ SHANE, Ford’s WAGONMASTER, RIO GRANDE and THE SEARCHERS, Fuller’s RUN OF THE ARROW and FORTY GUNS, Hawks’ RIO BRAVO), THE BIG COUNTRY is one of the best, often overshadowed by Wyler’s next picture, the mammoth BEN-HUR. Wyler and his partner/producer Gregory Peck assembled an impressive cast, including Peck, Jean Simmons, Charlton Heston, Carroll Baker, Charles Bickford, Chuck Connors and Burl Ives (Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), and as he would do in BEN-HUR, Wyler balanced the intimate with the epic. THE BIG COUNTRY is a neglected gem, emotionally propelled by the director’s masterful staging and Jerome Moross’ rousing, iconic score. It’s a rich visual rich experience from start to finish, thanks to gorgeous cinematography by Franz Planer (Wyler’s ROMAN HOLIDAY and THE CHILDREN’S HOUR), looking better than ever on Blu-ray.
HUMPHREY BOGART: THE COLUMBIA COLLECTION: After a Broadway career as a “tennis anyone?” juvenile, Humphrey Bogart made the exodus to Hollywood with the advent sound, like many stage stars, debuting with Spencer Tracy in John Ford’s prison comedy UP THE RIVER (1930). Producers didn’t quite seem to know what to do with him, however, and by 1934 Bogart was back in New York. As brutal killer Duke Mantee in Robert Sherwood’s Broadway hit THE PETRIFIED FOREST, Bogart revealed the darkest of dark sides, and Warner Brothers signed him to a long term contract. It would take five more years of gangster roles before Bogart shot to stardom as private detective Sam Spade in John Huston’s THE MALTESE FALCON (1941). Warners had a major star on their hands, and he scored for them again and again in Michael Curtiz’ CASABLANCA (1942), Howard Hawks’ TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) and THE BIG SLEEP with soon-to-be wife Lauren Bacall, and Huston’s KEY LARGO (1948) and THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948). Bogart and studio chief Jack Warner frequently clashed, and when Bogart’s contract ended in 1948 he took his company Santana Pictures (named after his yacht) to Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures. The TCM Vault and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment have compiled five movies – Thornton Freeland’s LOVE AFFAIR (1932), Nicholas Ray’s KNOCK ON ANY DOOR (1949), Stuart Heisler’s TOKYO JOE (1949), Curtis Bernhardt’s SIROCCO (1951), and THE HARDER THEY FALL (1956) -- in a new set of Columbia/Bogarts (his best there, Nicholas Ray’s IN A LONELY PLACE and THE CAINE MUTINY are available as stand-alone DVDs from SPHE). For years one of the hardest-to-see movies by a major star (right up there with the Bette Davis BAD SISTER from 1931), the Pre-Code romantic drama LOVE AFFAIR gave Bogie his first role as leading man, as an aircraft engineer (allowing aerial sequences), opposite Dorothy Mackaill in a breezy romantic drama. It’s one of the handful of films he made during his first sojourn to Hollywood, a must for Bogart completists. Anticipating his REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) in its dramatic dissection of a juvenile delinquent, Ray’s KNOCK ON ANY DOOR cast Bogart as defense attorney for troubled youth John Derek (in his screen debut) on a murder charge. Ray is in top form, his mise-en-scene justifying Jean-Luc Godard’s remark that “The cinema is Nicholas Ray.” Bogart’s an expatriate in post World War II Japan in TOKYO JOE, a noirish thriller directed by Stuart Heisler, an interesting director who was a longtime editor at Goldwyn and Paramount before helming such worthwhile features as THE BISCUIT EATER (1940), THE REMARKABLE ANDREW (1942) and ALONG CAME JONES (1945). SIROCCO, directed by Curtis Bernhardt (A STOLEN LIFE), set in 1925 Syria, attempts to evoke the atmosphere of CASABLANCA with much less satisfying results; Bogart plays a black marketeer wedged between French officials and Syrian rebels. Bogie got his Oscar in 1952 for Huston’s THE AFRICAN QUEEN and did fine work in Huston’s BEAT THE DEVIL (1954), Mankiewicz’ THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA (1954), and Wyler’s THE DESPERATE HOURS (1955) before returning to Columbia for Mark Robson’s THE HARDER THEY FALL, an exceptional drama with Bogart as a publicist for a corrupt boxing promoter (Rod Steiger). Sadly, this was Bogart’s final film; he succumbed to cancer of the esophagus on January 14, 1957, only 56 years old. As always, the titles from the Columbia catalogue are of stellar quality, thanks to Sony’s aggressive preservation program, and the set includes intros by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz, posters and stills galleries.
CRITERION’s no-frills Eclipse series of DVDs celebrates SABU!, a three-disc set consisting of Alexander Korda’s productions of ELEPHANT BOY (1937), THE DRUM (1938), and THE JUNGLE BOOK (1942). Born Selar Shaik in Mysore, India, the son of an elephant driver, the orphaned Sabu was discovered at age 11 by cameraman Osmond Borradaile on a location scout for ELEPHANT BOY, based on the Rudyard Kipling story “Toomai of the Elephants.” Korda renamed the child himself, and cast him as the titular elephant driver. Documentary master Robert J. Flaherty (NANOOK OF THE NORTH, TABU) shot hours of footage in India, and the film was completed at Korda’s Denham Studios near London under the direction of brother Zoltan Korda. It’s a fascinating production, highlighted by the care and quality common to the Korda brothers, a delightful adventure story graced by Sabu’s naturalism and charisma. Remarkably, Sabu only spoke Ordu at the time and delivered all of his English dialogue phonetically. ELEPHANT BOY was a tremendous hit, making the NBR’s list of Top Ten Foreign Films for 1937, and catapulted Sabu to international stardom. With THE DRUM (1938), Korda crafted a more lavish adventure vehicle for Sabu, based on the novel by A. E. W. Mason, whose THE FOUR FEATHERS would be filmed by the Korda’s a year later (Criterion released a stunning Blu-ray eartlier this year). Filmed in Technicolor again on India locations and at Denham, THE DRUM cast Sabu as a young prince whose father is murdered by his uncle (Raymond Massey), forcing him into hiding with British officer Roger Livesey and wife Valerie Hobson. Like many Kipling stories, the taint of colonialism hangs over the movie, and indeed there was an outcry in India against the movie by that country’s independence movement.
Sabu starred next in Korda’s epic masterpiece THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940, available in another stellar Criterion set), directed by Michael Powell, Tim Whelan and Ludwig Berger, then he and Korda returned to Kipling with THE JUNGLE BOOK (1942), shot in Hollywood as London was under attack. Sabu was perfectly cast as Mowgli, raised in the jungle by wolves, understanding the languages of all the animals in the forest. The sumptuous three-strip Technicolor cinematography Lee Garmes (MOROCCO, SHANGHAI EXPRESS, SCARFACE, DUEL IN THE SUN) dazzles the eye; all three films look exceptional, made from masters from preservation materials in the British Film Institute National Archive, but the real visual joy comes from THE JUNGLE BOOK. After falling into the public domain the movie was duped into a pale version of its former self, so many thanks to Criterion for restoring it for our viewing pleasure.
The NBR Award for Best Ensemble 2011 honors the dazzling cast (including Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson and Sissy Spacek) of THE HELP, beautifully adapted and directed by Tate Taylor from Kathryn Stockett’s #1 New York Times best seller. Set in 1960s Mississippi, the movie starts slowly but builds into a powerful and inspirational drama of upstairs/downstairs race relations between spoiled belles and the African-American maids who raise their children and run their households. Touchstone Home Entertainment and Dreamworks Pictures have released a Blu-ray/DVD combo; the DVD features deleted scenes and Mary J. Blige’s music video “The Living Proof,” while the BLu-ray includes more deleted scenes, and two featurettes, “Making of THE HELP: From Friendship to Film” and “In Their Own Words: A Tribute to the Maids of Mississippi.”
Woody Allen’s in fine form with his romantic fantasy MIDNIGHT IN PARIS (2011), from Sony Pictures Classics and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Opening with an enchanting four-minute montage of Paris, it’s lots of fun, with Owen Wilson doing his best work since his early Wes Anderson collaborations (BOTTLE ROCKET, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS), as a disillusioned Hollywood screenwriter-turned-aspiring-Great-American-Novelist in love with the idea of Paris in the 20s. In the City of Lights with his superficial L. A. fiancée (Rachel McAdams), he is magically transported every midnight to the Paris of Hemingway, where he hangs out with his idols – Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill), Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Josephine Baker (Sonia Rolland), Pablo Picasso (Marcel Di Fonzo Bo), and Salvador Dali (an hysterically funny Adrien Brody) -- while falling in love with Bohemian beauty Marion Cotillard. Woody’s directed nearly 50 features since 1969’s TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN, an extraordinary achievement recently celebrated in an AMERICAN MASTERS special, with 14 Oscar nominations for original screenplay (winning for ANNIE HALL and HANNAH AND HER SISTERS), as well as Best Director nods for ANNIE HALL and HANNAH (for which he was also awarded an NBR Best Director Award). Audiences were clearly delighted with MIDNIGHT IN PARIS – it became the highest-grossing Woody Allen movie in 25 years. The DVD includes the featurette “Midnight in Cannes,” where the film was the opening night presentation last May.
One of the year’s best popcorn movies (and a top worldwide grosser at $432 million), Rupert Wyatt’s RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2011) is a thrilling sci-fi adventure, an intelligent prequel to the franchise inaugurated with Franklin Schaffner’s PLANET OF THE APES in 1968. Wyatt and his colleagues make expert and elaborate use of state-of-the-art motion capture technology, rendering the chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans with incredibly life-like precision, Andy Serkis (“Gollum” in THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the title character in KING KONG, all from Peter Jackson) doing brilliant work as the CGI actor for Caesar, the George Washington of the simian world. The script by Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver is expertly woven, a model of genre regeneration, with knowing references to the 1968 original. British filmmaker Rupert Wyatt (THE ESCAPIST) leaps to the front ranks of genre filmmakers with this picture, blending edge-of-the-seat suspense with surprisingly emotional resonance. Special features include 11 deleted scenes (many pre-rendering, with Serkis in his computer-friendly outfit), a slew of featurettes on Serkis, the Patrick Doyle score, the franchise’s mythology and the motion capture process, and audio commentaries by Wyatt and the writers.
There are lots of terrific holiday gift ideas this season for movie lovers, including the titles discussed above. Other highlights include:
The long-awaited LAUREL & HARDY: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION (RHI Entertainment/Vivendi Entertainment), ten discs containing 58 talkie shorts and features from beloved comedy geniuses Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, produced by Hal Roach between 1929 and 1940. Transferred in high definition for the first time and digitally enhanced for home viewing in the finest quality available to date, the set contains favorites that have been enjoyed for generations including the features SONS OF THE DESERT (1934) and WAY OUT WEST (1937), and the Oscar-winning short THE MUSIC BOX (1932). There’s an extensive, detailed film guide and over two hours of special features including exclusive, never-before-seen interviews with comedy legends Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Lewis, and Tim Conway, discussing the enduring impact and influence of Laurel and Hardy. Additional features include commentaries by Laurel and Hardy aficionados, along with a virtual location map that allows viewers to take an interactive tour of the places in and around Los Angeles where Laurel and Hardy filmed. Available for the retail price of $99.98, LAUREL & HARDY: THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION is a treasure chest of timeless comedy.
William Wyler’s BEN-HUR (1959), the Biblical spectacle starring Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd, earned eleven out of twelve Oscars (only not winning for Karl Tunberg’s script), made the NBR Top Ten List, won NBR Awards for Best Supporting Actor (Hugh Griffith) and a special citation to Andrew Marton and Yakima Canutt for their execution of the chariot race. Warner Home Video’s three-disc 50th Anniversary Collectors Edition is the ultimate home entertainment presentation of this venerable title, restored frame-by- frame from the original 65MM camera negative and remastered in 1080p hi-def, with commentary by film historian T. Gene Hatcher with Charlton Heston, a music-only track showcasing Miklos Rozsa’s award-winning score, and theatrical trailers. Other extras include a new feature-length documentary, CHARLTON HESTON & BEN-HUR: A PERSONAL JOURNEY, written and directed by his son Fraser Heston, with never-before-available images and footage from the Heston Family Archives, and a great treat, Fred Niblo’s impressive 1925 silent version, starring Ramon Novarro and Francis X. Bushman in the Heston-Boyd roles. Watching the staggering chariot race in the original, it’s easy to appreciate the 1959 filmmakers’ trepidation at attempting to top it (incidentally Wyler was one of the dozens of assistant directors who worked on the 1925 race).
Jean-Luc Godard’s 266-minute HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA (1988-1988) is finally available in the U. S., courtesy of Frank Tarzi’s Olive Films. The greatest of late Godards, eight video episodes made over the course of ten years, it’s a wide-ranging and hypnotic abstract history and appreciation from the great Nouvelle Vague director and cineaste. With thousands of images from our cinematic legacy, hundreds of picture and audio clips and stills and even more Godardian slogans, HISTOIRE(S) is unlike any other film history (additionally touching on art, literature and politics), a breathtaking, trippy collage with Godard himself as erstwhile narrator.
Perfect for silent film fans (a growing number in the wake of the success of THE ARTIST (2011 NBR Top Ten List), Kino Lorber’s Blu-rays of D. W. Griffith’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) and WAY DOWN EAST (1920) contain the best-looking prints of these films since, perhaps, their original release. The Civil War epic THE BIRTH OF A NATION, with its undeniably racist overtones, is ironically a landmark in world film, the first American blockbuster feature, the movie that more than any moved the nascent form from nickelodeon to picture palace. BIRTH’s controversial depiction of slaves and carpetbaggers caused race riots in 1915, and to this day provokes vigorous protest whenever (rarely) revived. The film survived efforts by the NAACP to ban the picture, and inspired African-American to make movies and have their own voices heard. The three-disc set includes a newly mastered HD print from original 35mm elements, music by the Mont Alto Orchestra, a spoken introduction the 1930 re-release by Griffith and Walter Huston, including a newly discovered extension of the scene; the 1993 David Shepard restoration with orchestral score adapted from the original 1915 Joseph Carl Breil score, Shepard’s “making of” documentary; seven of Griffith’s Civil War Biograph shorts from 1910-1911, excerpts from original souvenir programs, and “New York vs. THE BIRTH OF A NATION,” archival documents relating to the censorship battles over the film’s 1922 re-release.
Griffith’s Victorian melodrama WAY DOWN EAST (1920), with its famous, climactic Lillian Gish-Richard Barthlemess rescue on the ice floes of Vermont’s White River, is re-mastered from the Museum of Modern Art’s 35mm restoration, with original color tints, music by Mont Alto, a gallery of images from the original souvenir book, notes and excerpts from the 1898 Lottie Blair Parker (a monster hit in its day), photos of William Brady’s 1903 Broadway production, and a film clip from ice floe sequence from the Edison Studio’s 1903 UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
For lighter silent fare, there’s Kino Lorber’s BUSTER KEATON SHORT FILMS COLLECTION: 1920-1923, a three-disc set of 19 hilarious shorts from the great “Stone Face” comedy auteur, including THE PLAY HOUSE (1921), COPS (1922), THE BLACKSMITH (1922), THE BALLOONATIC (1923), and THE LOVE NEST (1923). The films are newly mastered from archival elements, with select titles in both standard and digitally enhanced versions; extras include fifteen visual essays, illustrated with clips and stills, written by Keaton experts, “The Men Who Would Be Buster,” a collection of clips from slapstick films influenced by Keaton’s work, an eight-page booklet with an essay by Buster Keaton Remembered author Jeffrey Vance, four visual essays on the films’ locations by Silent Echoes author John Bengtson, 1922’s CHARACTER STUDIES, a gag film with cameos by Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Fatty Arbuckle, and excerpts from SEEING STARS, also from 1922, with cameos by Keaton and Chaplin.
For lovers of Italian cinema, Kino Lorber has the SOPHIA LOREN AWARD COLLECTION in Blu-ray, as much a tribute to her favorite director Vittorio DeSica and favorite co-star Marcello Mastroianni, with DeSica’s YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (1963, NBR Top Five Foreign-Language Films), MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE (1964), and SUNFLOWER (1970), all co-starring Marcello, all new HD transfers. Winner of a Best Foreign Film Oscar, YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND TOMORROW teams Loren and Mastroianni in three comedy stories in three diverse economic settings, with the last sequence containing Loren’s classic seduction scene with a howling Mastrioanni (recreated in 1985 in Robert Altman’s PRET-A-PORTER). Eduardo DeFilippo adapted his play “Filumena Marturano” for MARRIAGE ITALIAN STYLE, a bittersweet romance with Loren as Mastroianni’s decades-long mistress determined to marry him. The emotional melodrama SUNFLOWER casts Loren as a woman in World War Two searching for her missing husband (Mastroianni) in war-torn Russia. Also included is the anthology feature BOCCACCIO ’70 (1962), with Italy’s four top directors each tackling four Decameronesque tales of sex in the ‘60s – Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, Mario Monicelli, and DeSica (directing Loren in his segment). Posters, trailers and stills galleries accompany each movie in the set, and as a very special bonus there is the phenomenal feature documentary VITTORIO D., featuring interviews with Loren, Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood (who starred for DeSica in his segment of the 1967 anthology THE WITCHES). DeSica’s whole career is covered, from his days as a matinee idol in the 30s, through his neo-realistic classics SHOESHINE (1946), BICYCLE THIEVES (1947), MIRACLE IN MILAN (1951), UMBERTO D. (1952), and 1961’s TWO WOMEN (directing Loren to a Best Actress Oscar), his move into more commercial fare with the Loren-Mastroianni pictures, to his brilliant GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1971). Vittorio DeSica (1901-1974) was one of the most honored filmmakers in NBR history, winning Best Picture and Best Director for BICYCLE THIEVES, and placing on the NBR Top Five Foreign-Language Film list with MIRACLE IN MILAN, THE ROOF (1959), TWO WOMEN, GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS, and A BRIEF VACATION (1975), as well as Rossellini’s GENERAL DELLA ROVERE (1960), starring DeSica.
BOCCACCIO ’70 is also available in Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, as well as Mario Monicelli’s CASANOVA ’70 (1966), the kind of sex comedy the Italians did so well in the ‘60s. Marcello Mastroianni spoofs his screen persona as an impotent Don Juan, vulnerable and self-deprecating, as he pours out his amorous problems to his unorthodox psychiatrist. Monicelli and Mastroianni won Best Director and Best Actor prizes at the San Sebastian Film Festival; the disc includes a theatrical trailer and stills gallery.
WWII IN HD: COLLECTOR’S EDITION from The History Channel and New Video, is an important historical document and a must for WWII buffs. Culled from 3,000 hours of rare color footage, much of it never available, the result of a two-year international search, the four-disc, over 10 hour set is truly extraordinary, following twelve American service men through European and Pacific conflict in 1941-45. “Battle for Iwo Jima” is also included, extensively covering the brutal and bloody campaign to gain a stepping stone to Japan. It’s the perfect complement to Clint Eastwood’s masterful FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS (2006 NBR Top Ten) and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (2006 NBR Best English-Language Film). “WWII in HD: the Air War” is here as well, the untold story of the American 8th Air Force’s 1944 struggle to defeat the German Luftwaffe in the months before the D-Day invasion. A tragic note: the 8th Air Force had more than 26,000 combat deaths, more than the Marines suffered during the course of the entire war.
From 20th Century-Fox Home Entertainment there’s a new Blu-ray of TORA! TORA! TORA! (1970, NBR Top Ten List), a painstakingly researched big-budget re-enactment of the attack on Pearl Harbor starring Martin Balsam, Joseph Cotton, Jason Robards, E. G. Marshall and James Whitmore as Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. Richard Fleischer directed the American sequences, with Kinji Fukasaku and Toshio Masuda directing the Japanese sequences. Both the American release version and the extended Japanese cut (ten minutes longer) are included, along with commentary by Fleischer and Japanese film historian Stuart Galbraith IV, three documentaries, behind-the-scenes galleries, and a series of Fox Movietone newsreels covering the span of the war.
The History Channel’s SWAMP PEOPLE is, with PAWN STARS and AMERICAN PICKERS, a big hit for the network, a reality show about gator hunters in Louisiana’s treacherous Atchafalaya swamp. It’s produced with a decidedly cinematic feel reminiscent of Walter Hill’s SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981): Season Two is available from New Video in a four-disc, 11-hour set that includes bonus footage.
James Curtis’ Spencer Tracy (Knopf) is an epic read, nearly 1,000 pages in length, detailing the work and life of the artist considered by many critics and historians to be the greatest film actor in history. The simplicity and conviction of Tracy’s performances in THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933), FURY (1936), CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS (1937, Oscar for Best Actor), BOYS’ TOWN (1938, another Best Actor Oscar), THE SEVENTH CROSS (1944), THE FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950), THE ACTRESS (1953), BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1954), THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA and THE LAST HURRAH (both 1958, honored for both by the NBR as Best Actor) and in his eight teamings with Katharine Hepburn from WOMAN OF THE YEAR (1942) to GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER (1967) still inspire. Privately, Tracy struggled for decades with a mass of personal demons: the guilt he endured about his deaf son; his recurring alcoholism; and an often overwhelming insecurity. A devout Catholic married to Louise Treadwell, he would never divorce, while engaging in affairs with Loretta Young, Ingrid Bergman and Gene Tierney, and an intense 25-year romantic relationship with Hepburn. Curtis, the author of excellent books on Preston Sturges, W. C. Fields, and James Whale, has done an exemplary job creating the definitive work on Tracy. Through the cooperation of the Tracy estate, he was able to utilize the actor’s daily date book; among many other things it reveals that Tracy, once he finished a picture, deeply questioned the picture’s quality and especially his own work. As Stanley Kramer, who directed four of Tracy’s last films – INHERIT THE WIND (1960), JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961), IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963) and GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER, wrote: “He thought and listened better than anyone in the history of motion pictures. A silent close-up reaction of Spencer Tracy said it all.”
Michael Henry Wilson’s Scorsese on Scorsese (Cahiers du Cinema) – not to be confused with the 1989 Faber & Faber paperback of the same name – is a sumptuous, beautifully produced coffee table book that traces with infinite detail the life and work of the 2011 NBR Best Director (for HUGO) honoree (Scorsese also won the NBR Best Director Award for THE AGE OF INNOCENCE in 1993 and THE DEPARTED in 2006, and the 2001 NBR William K. Everson Award for Film History for MY VOYAGE TO ITALY).
It’s packed with hundreds of rare photos and storyboards, and a massive career interview that takes the Maestro right up to HUGO. It’s one of the best books on a director ever published. The Scorsese quote on the back of the book says it all: “I am the films that I make.”
Happy Holidays!
John Gallagher
jgmovie@gmail.com |
