The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures


Between Action and Cut
June 2005: Gary Cooper

by John Gallagher

GARY COOPER : The vast body of work by Hollywood icon Gary Cooper (1901-1961) has long been randomly represented on DVD, with only a few titles available – until now. Rejoice, Coop fans, as Universal Home Video brings us The Gary Cooper Franchise Collection, introducing five prime Cooper titles that also happen to be among the very best of Thirties cinema:

DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933): While Cooper first made an impression in Henry King's Western THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH (1926), it was his appearance in William Wellman's World War One epic WINGS (1927) that made him a star. He appeared in only one scene, but Paramount was flooded with fan mail for the lanky, almost painfully handsome young man. He was carefully groomed by the studio in a succession of romantic roles and outdoor adventures and Westerns, most notably Victor Fleming's horse opera THE VIRGINIAN (1929), the Foreign Legion love story MOROCCO (1930), opposite Marlene Dietrich in her first American movie, and Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1932) with Helen Hayes. It came as quite a surprise then when ultra-sophisticate Ernst Lubitsch cast Coop in DESIGN FOR LIVING, a Continental confection revolving around a thinly veiled ménage a trios of kindred spirits. Although based on a Noel Coward play, Lubitsch discarded most of the material for a delicious Ben Hecht screenplay, and the result is an absolutely delightful pre-Code gem. Cooper more than holds his own in his first full-fledged screen comedy, sharing the screen with the equally beautiful Miriam Hopkins and Fredric March.

THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935): Coop is back in the saddle in this rousing adventure of British India (he's cast as a Canadian officer fighting for King and Country in the Khyber Pass). Location footage by Ernest Schoedsack (KING KONG) alternates with the main narrative directed by Henry Hathaway in this filmmaker's first major assignment, anticipating George Stevens' GUNGA DIN (1939) with its trio of gentlemen officers (Cooper, Franchot Tone, Richard Cromwell). Hathaway's career was launched by the success of this movie, for which he earned an Oscar nomination; he went on to a long career that included JOHNNY APOLLO (1940), KISS OF DEATH (1947), NIAGARA (1953), TRUE GRIT (1969) and five more movies with Gary Cooper, including:

PETER IBBETSON (1935), the rarest title in the collection, a beautiful romantic fantasy featuring spectacular black-and-white cinematography by Charles Lang. It's a complete three-sixty for Cooper and Hathaway away from BENGAL LANCERS, a lush, haunting story of unconditional love set in Victorian France and England, with the beautiful Ann Harding cast as the love of Cooper's life. There's also an extremely touching prologue with two endearing child actors, Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler as the young Cooper and Harding.  

THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN (1936) is engrossing pulp fiction, scripted by Clifford Odets, directed by one of the Thirties' greatest stylists, Lewis Milestone (ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, THE FRONT PAGE, RAIN, HALLELUJAH I'M A BUM). Coop plays an adventurer embroiled with a beautiful blonde (Madeleine Carroll), pitted against a vicious warlord in strife-torn China (Akim Tamiroff in the role that propelled him to fame).

BEAU GESTE (1939): I have to confess that this is my favorite film of one of my favorite directors, the legendary William “Wild Bill” Wellman (1896-1975 ). Wellman's version of   BEAU GESTE is a faithful remake of the popular 1926 silent about the gallant Geste brothers (Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Robert Preston), the mystery of the Blue Water diamond, and service in the French Foreign Legion. Wellman brought his talents for romance and realism to the proceedings, and quite equalled the original film, neatly balancing the sweeping action with the theme of brotherly devotion and sacrifice. The result is a grand tale of high adventure that rates with Victor Fleming's TREASURE ISLAND (1934), the Michael Curtiz-William Keighley THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938), and George Stevens' GUNGA DIN (1939) as a perennial favorite.

                   

In both the Wren novel and the silent version, the character of the sadistic sergeant was French, while his hyena-like henchman was Italian, but in the spring of 1939, the Soviet Union signed a pact with Nazi Germany, and BEAU GESTE's villains were changed to Russians. Despite the change, the picture was still banned in predominantly French-speaking Quebec. Other than the change in nationality, Wellman's version closely resembled the original, even re-using the Yuma, Arizona desert locations. The plot is well known. Beau, John and Digby Geste are raised as wards of Lady Patricia Brandon, owner of the precious Blue Water diamond. When the gem is stolen, Beau disappears and joins the Foreign Legion, followed quickly by John and Digby in an effort to avert blame from their brother. In the Legion they are victimized by the brutal Sergeant Markoff, who attempts to recover the Blue Water for himself.

                   

Wellman opens the film with a brilliant sequence, as a relief column approaches Fort Zinderneuf, an isolated post in the remote stretches of the southern Sahara. The curiosity and suspense of the scene is heightened by Alfred Newman's ominous score, as the reinforcements find the corpses of dead Legionnaires propped up at the fort's embrasures. The camera slowly pans their lifeless faces for chilling effect. The film flashes back to scenes of the Geste brothers as children at Brandon Abbas in England. A scene with the brothers playing with toy cannons establishes their unswerving dedication to each other, swearing to each other that if any die, the others will give him a Viking funeral -- wrapped in a flag on a flaming bier with a dog at his feet. The story then jumps fifteen years later to their early manhood and the disappearance of the Blue Water. The Gestes are reunited in the Legion, where Wellman blends Paramount gloss with Warners realism, capturing the feel of the Foreign Legion during the time of French domination in North Africa, with authentic sets, costumes and Lebel rifles.

                   

The highlight of BEAU GESTE is the siege of Fort Zinderneuf and the attack of Arab Touaregs. A closeup of thundering horses pans up to a majestic view of onrushing hordes surging across the desert sands. Four attacks are hurled against the fort before the Arabs turn away, leaving only Markoff and John Geste alive, with Beau mortally wounded. When Markoff searches Beau for the Blue Water, the enraged John bayonets him the sergeant to death. In a touching moment, John kisses the dying Beau goodbye, and leaves the fort as the relief column approaches, the narrative neatly brought full circle. Digby gives Beau the Viking funeral he had requested as a child, wrapping him in kerosene-soaked barracks mattresses and   playing a muffled "Taps." He lays the "dog" Markoff at Beau's feet and sets them ablaze.

                   

Cooper, Preston and Milland work well together, expressing their brotherly love without any false notes of sentimentality, their loyalty contrasting with Albert Dekker and the other soldiers who have been physically and emotionally exhausted by the desert and the legion. J. Carroll Naish is memorable as the rascally Rasinoff, a young Susan Hayward supplies Milland's romantic interest, and former Wellman assistant director Charles Barton appears in a supporting role as a Legionnaire.

                   

But BEAU GESTE's acting honors go to Brian Donlevy in a tour-de-force performance as Markoff. He is a Captain Bligh of the desert, driving his men mercilessly, branding them "scum" and "stupid blundering pigs" as their mutiny is thwarted. Made up with a jagged scar across his cheek, Donlevy repeatedly scowls "I promise you!" and he lives up to his word, making life hell for his Legionnaires. His sadism is demonstrated early in the film. Two deserters are brought back from the desert, crazed and delirious from the sun and lack of water. As punishment, Donlevy sends them back out into the desert. In battle, Donlevy exults in the heat of combat, crying out, "You'll get a chance yet to die with your boots on!" As his men fall under the rain of Touareg bullets, he props up the corpses in the ramparts ("Everybody does his duty at Zinderneuf, dead or alive!") and places rifles in their posts. In a touch of black humor, he says to a corpse, "The rest of the bullets you stop won't hurt as much as that one!" Donlevy's career took off after BEAU GESTE (he was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, losing to Thomas Mitchell in STAGECOACH), and he was rewarded with the starring role in Preston Sturges'   THE GREAT McGINTY (1940).

                   

BEAU GESTE is epic filmmaking at its best, marked by sweeping action, fine performances, crisp photography, and a stirring Alfred Newman score, a storybook adventure steeped in Victorian romanticism, a vanished code of honor, and brotherly love. The original version was still fresh in the minds of many critics who found comparison irresistable, so at press screenings, Paramount showed the first reel of the silent to emphasize the strides made in the industry over the past decade. The studio's big summer movie scored well at the box office and continued Wellman's producer-director winning streak after 1937's A STAR IS BORN and NOTHING SACRED, and 1938's MEN WITH WINGS.

                   

There's more vintage Gary Cooper available on Universal's SHIRLEY TEMPLE LITTLE DARLING PACK , featuring two 1934 Paramounts, Alexander Hall's LITTLE MISS MARKER and Henry Hathaway's NOW AND FOREVER . The first is a Damon Runyon fable (remade twice), with Adolphe Menjou as Sorrowful Jones, a degenerate bookie charmed by “the little dame” Shirley, whose father leaves her with Jones as collateral on an I.O.U. before commiting suicide. Sorrowful and his colorful Broadway touts become Shirley's literal knights in shining armor in an entertaining vehicle for the precocious six-year-old, but I am more thrilled about NOW AND FOREVER, which had only been available before in a colorized VHS version. Gary Cooper and the luminous Carole Lombard are free-wheeling jet setters who settle down when the adorable Shirley enters their lives. It is remarkable that this is such a little known movie, considering the Hathaway pedigree and the high-power Cooper-Lombard-Temple cast, but the vaults are full of such gems. The film has virtually no reputation, and while it is certainly not a lost classic, it is highly enjoyable for the sheer charisma of its stars. Someone at Universal Home Video should be commended for digging deep for this collection and uncovering a 1932 short subject called THE RUNT PAGE , part of a forgotten comedy series with little kids satirizing movie hits (in this case THE FRONT PAGE), their voices dubbed by adult actors. Shirley makes an unbilled appearance in what some references cite as her screen debut.

Compared to Warners and Fox, Universal Home Video has been super slow about releasing its vintage catalogue of Paramount and Universal titles to DVD (though quite a few choice titles came out on video). The 1929-1949 Paramount library in particular is a gold mine of movie treasures, and these five Gary Cooper titles represent some shining examples. Universal Home Video is pricing the collection at twenty bucks or thereabouts (depending on your DVD source), making it the bargain of the year. Hopefully consumer interest will result in more Paramount titles being released; in the meantime, if you're in New York City or environs, the Film Forum has a stunning retrospective of pre-Code Paramount pictures scheduled for June and July ( www.filmforum.com ) – Lubitsch, Mamoulian, Marx Brothers, Cooper, Colbert, Sylvia Sidney, George Raft, Sternberg and Dietrich are all represented.

 

MARLON BRANDO : Universal also releases The Marlon Brando Franchise Collection with four of his Sixties pictures. Brando revolutionized film acting in the Fifties with A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and ON THE WATERFRONT, but the Sixties were a very uneven decade for him, beginning with ONE-EYED JACKS (1961) and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962), both much maligned works that play much better today. The Universal collection is worthwhile for THE UGLY AMERICAN (1963), an ahead-of-its-time political drama set in Southeast Asia, with Brando as a U.S. diplomat; THE APPALOOSA (1966), a beautifully photographed Western with Brando in pursuit of his stolen horse in the Old West; the previously released A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG (1967), a romantic comedy co-starring Sophia Loren, the last film directed by Charlie Chaplin, and a tremendous amount of fun; and the most interesting picture in the set, a moody thriller called THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY (1969), with Brando, Richard Boone and Rita Moreno as kidnappers. This little known suspense picture includes an audio commentary by director Hubert Cornfield. THE GODFATHER (1972) and LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1973) were right around the corner for Brando; this Franchise Collection fills in the gap in his career with a look at some of his representative Sixties work. As always, Brando's acting is fascinating and unpredictable.

THE AVIATOR (2004): Martin Scorsese's epic biopic about Howard Hughes earned a slew of Oscar nominations, five Academy Awards, and volumes of critical praise. Like any movie by America's cinematic national treasure (and greatest working director), it rewards repeated viewings. There was a certain bombast seeing the movie on the big screen that overshadowed the character study, and Warner Home Video's DVD release allows us to savor the nuances of Scorsese's direction, Robert Richardson's cinematography, Dante Ferretti's   production design and especially Thelma Schoonmaker's editing and the performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, Alec Baldwin, John C. Reilly and Alan Alda. Warners has released a two-disc set with hours of extras. There's a brief but interesting deleted scene in which Hughes (DiCaprio) tells Ava Gardner (Beckinsale) about a car accident that resulted in a man's death. A LIFE WITHOUT LIMITS: THE MAKING OF THE AVIATOR goes behind the scenes of the production; a documentary about Hughes' role in the history of aviation; a History Channel documentary on Hughes; a piece on Hughes' obsessive-compulsive disorder; and even an OCD panel discussion with Scorsese, DiCaprio, Hughes' widow Terry Moore (remember her from the 1949 MIGHTY JOE YOUNG?) and   two doctors from the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute; an Evening with Leonardi Di Caprio and Alan Alda, a post-screening interview with the actors; separate featurettes on the visual effects and the Dante Ferretti production design, Sandy Powell's costuming, the film's hair and makeup, Howard Shore's score, and even the contributions of musician Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright, who each handled music chores in the film for the Twenties (Loudon), Thirties (Rufus) and Forties (Martha).Most informative, however, is the audio commentary by Scorsese, Schoonmaker, and producer Michael Mann, who originally developed the project. Truly, this is one of the most thorough DVD releases of the year (Warner Home Video has another on the way next month with their long-awaited MILLION DOLLAR BABY disc.)

CASINO : Along with NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977) and GANGS OF NEW YORK (2003), CASINO is Martin Scorsese's great underappreciated masterwork, rewarding the viewer with multiple viewings. When it was first released in 1995, there was a sense of disappointment – GOODFELLAS had been released only five years before to instant classic status, and CASINO was just too close to the earlier film with its Scorsese-DeNiro-Pesci-(writer Nick) Pileggi dynamic. In retrospect, CASINO is a rich and densely textured work, with sterling performances by Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci, James Woods, and especially Sharon Stone (in her Oscar-winning role), wonderful character actors Don Rickles, Frank Vincent, L.Q.Jones and Vinny Vella, dazzling visuals, a perfectly structured screenplay by Pileggi and Scorsese, and a soundtrack exploding with pop and rock classics. The movie portrays the heyday of Las Vegas when it was ruled by the Mob, before the corporations came in, and it is very simply one of the best films of the Nineties. If you haven't seen it since '95 or have never seen it all, it's required viewing, and don't let the two hour-fifty-nine minute running time put you off – the movie flies. Universal Home Video celebrates CASINO's tenth anniversary with a digital remaster, improving the original DVD release, and adds deleted scenes (the best feature the director's mother Catherine), documentaries on the real-life story, the casting, the filming and the post, and selected commentary from Scorsese, Stone and Pileggi.

FOX WESTERNS : Fox Home Video has launched a brilliant Western promotion, bringing some of our favorite horse operas to pristine DVD. From the rare early talkie IN OLD ARIZONA (1929) to John Ford's “Eastern” DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939) and Wild Bill Wellman's BUFFALO BILL to the seminal adult Westerns BROKEN LANCE (1954), FORTY GUNS (1957), THE BRAVADOS (1958) and WARLOCK (1958), this is a windfall for genre fans.

IN OLD ARIZONA (1929): In my last column I discussed the great auteur Raoul Walsh (1887-1980) in connection with Warner Home Video's Errol Flynn collection (he directed THEY DIED WITH THEIR BOOTS ON in 1941). After the smash success of THE JAZZ SINGER (1927), the studios scrambled to produce sound pictures, with the cameras trapped in huge immovable booths and the microphones hidden in flower vases, resulting for the most part in static drawing room pictures. Walsh proposed to his Fox bosses that he take their Movietone newsreel cameras on location to shoot the first outdoor talking picture, an adaptation of O. Henry short stories about The Cisco Kid. Walsh, who had started his career as an actor (he played John Wilkes Booth in THE BIRTH OF A NATION) and just co-starred opposite Gloria Swanson in SADIE THOMPSON, as well as directing the film, also signed to star as The Cisco Kid, and went on location to Utah to shoot exteriors. Driving on a bumpy back road one night, a jack rabbit crashed through the windshield, and Walsh lost his eye (hence his trademark black eye patch). Irving Cummings finished directing IN OLD ARIZONA, and Warner Baxter was re-cast as The Cisco Kid (winning one of the first Best Actor Oscars), although that's Raoul Walsh galloping in the long shots. I was thrilled and amazed that Fox would issue this title on DVD – it's a major contribution to film history, and while some will find it creaky, I think most will appreciate its historical importance, particularly when you realize the context. Audiences hadn't heard these noises before from the big screen --- ham and eggs frying, gunshots, crying babies, water pumping, a cracking whip, a braying mule, gunshots, a ticking clock. Like most Walsh movies, there's also a good deal of sexual innuendo (e.g. Baxter and Edmund Lowe comparing the size of their guns!). Bravo to Fox Home Video for this release.

DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK (1939):   This is another long time personal favorite of mine – Henry Fonda and John Ford on the New York frontier during the Revolutionary War. Hollywood has rarely attempted to depict the dramatic events of the American Revolution -- D.W. Griffith's epic AMERICA (1924), Frank Lloyd's tedious THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA (1940); the screen version of the Broadway musical 1776 (1972); Hugh Hudson's uneven REVOLUTION (1985). By far the most successful film about the period is DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, not surprising since Ford was this country's pre-eminent chronicler of Americana.  

Warner Baxter, Nancy Kelly and Don Ameche were originally considered for parts, but clearer heads prevailed and Henry Fonda was cast in the lead, the perfect choice. He had just worked with Ford in the title role of YOUNG MR. LINCOLN, and was in fact the descendant of Revolutionary War patriots from the Mohawk Valley (the town of Fonda, New York, is named after them). Claudette Colbert was borrowed from Paramount, and although she gives a creditable performance, the filmmakers went a little heavy on the glamour makeup.Edna May Oliver earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination as a cantankerous frontier woman, and Ford regulars John Carradine, Ward Bond, Arthur Shields, Jack Pennick and brother Francis Ford rounded out the cast.

DRUMS has many memorable sequences – the first attack of the Iroquois, the house-raising sequence, the siege, Fonda's run through the wilderness for reinforcements. The Technicolor print has been restored and the DVD comes with a restoration comparison. I would have liked more extras and an audio commentary, but frankly, I'm just thrilled to have a great print of this great film finally available.

BUFFALO BILL (1944): This is a good Western for the kids, capably directed by William Wellman. He made a deal with Zanuck – if 20 th financed THE OX-BOW INCIDENT (1943) for him, Wellman would direct two pictures for the studio. The first was an aviation drama, THUNDER BIRDS (1942) with Gene Tierney, while BUFFALO BILL was the   second. BUFFALO BILL is an extremely romanticized account of Western legend "Buffalo Bill" Cody, a subject that Wellman and Gene Fowler had abandoned several years earlier when they realized that would be debunking a great American hero. The Zanuck version presented the myth in typical Hollywood fashion, and ironically, its glossiness and falseness was miles apart from the honesty of Wellman's OX-BOW INCIDENT, although in Linda Darnell's character and McCrea's attitude towards the Indians, Wellman did present Native Americans in an unusually compassionate light. The Cody saga would eventually be de-glorified in Robert Altman's BUFFALO BILL AND THE INDIANS (1976).

                     

BUFFALO BILL has a fine cast, with Joel McCrea as Buffalo Bill in his third and final Wellman film, and Ford favorites Maureen O'Hara and Thomas Mitchell, and is at its best when out in the wide open spaces. The production was opulently mounted, with dazzling Technicolor photography capturing red desert, blue skies, white clouds, and war-painted Indian horses, a re-enactment of a Wild West Show, and a spectacular Wellman action scene -- the Battle of War Bonnet Gorge.

                     

BROKEN LANCE (1954): This is a remake of the 1949 contemporary drama HOUSE OF STRANGERS, with Edward G. Robinson excelling as the patriarch of a family of sons, dominating and domineering their lives. Under Edward Dmytryk's direction, it lends itself well to the Western genre, and is really one of the first films to properly make use of the potential of Cinemascope. The movie belongs to Spencer Tracy all the way – he is just so incredible to watch, almost Biblical in his on-screen iconography. Richard Widmark, Robert Wagner, Hugh O'Brian and Earl Holliman play his sons, Jean Peters is Wagner's love interest, and Katy Jurado (with a Best Supporting Actress nomination) is Tracy's devoted wife. BROKEN LANCE won an Oscar for Best Writing of a Motion Picture Story (a now defunct category).

The next three titles are especially significant for their influence on the Sixties Westerns of Sergio Leone:

FORTY GUNS (1957): Here's another eccentric classic from the great Sam Fuller, full of inventive shots, unusual but wholly appropriate angles, and brilliant compositions, with Barbara Stanwyck as a dictatorial Arizona landowner, riding at the head of her forty horseman (“She's a hard-riding woman with a whip!” as the song goes). She falls for lawman Barry Sullivan and gets mixed up in romantic complications, culminating in a typically unique Fuller denouement, replete with sexual passion and innuendo. Along with Joan Crawford in Nicholas Ray's JOHNNY GUITAR (1954), Stanwyck's character exerted a clear influence on Claudia Cardinale's Jill in Leone's epochal ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (1968), and her forty riders anticipate the Wild Bunch from MY NAME IS NOBODY (1973). And I can't think of a Western before FORTY GUNS that used the super extreme close-ups that Leone made famous (Fuller uses the device on Barry Sullivan stalking down the street to confront John Ericson). Fuller could always be counted on to bring fresh spins on genre films, and FORTY GUNS is no exception.

THE BRAVADOS (1958): Gregory Peck's wife has been raped and murdered, and he tracks down each killer one by one … or does he have the wrong dudes? Henry King's revenge Western is violent and dark, anticipating Lee Van Cleef's vendetta against Gian Maria Volonte in Leone's FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965). Van Cleef plays one of the bad men in THE BRAVADOS, one in a string of supporting villain roles (HIGH NOON, MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE) before Leone made him a star. THE BRAVADOS has a great Lionel Newman score, a psycho-sexual heavy in Stephen Boyd, and an Ahab-like performance from Peck (Peck and King had previously made TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH, THE GUNFIGHTER and THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO together). Mexico locations and Joan Collins keep things picturesque; early in her career, Collins was cast in the last films of some of Hollywood's greats, including, in addition to King, Raoul Walsh (ESTHER AND THE KING), Leo McCarey (RALLY ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!), Howard Hawks (LAND OF THE PHAROAHS) and Henry Hathaway (SEVEN THIEVES).

WARLOCK (1959): This is a really neglected key Fifties Western, with a great cast headed by Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn and Richard Widmark. Fonda's vigilante sheriff cleans up the town of Warlock, going head to head with the local bad guys. Director Edward Dmytryk (THE CAINE MUTINY, RAINTREE COUNTY) keeps a McCarthy metaphor running throughout the narrative, and there's no mistaking the homoerotic aspects of Anthony Quinn as Fonda's sidekick. Elements of Warlock can be found in the town of Sweetwater in Leone's ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, and some of the earlier movie's moral ambiguities also run rampant throughout Leone's cinema.

MGM Home Video adds to Western mania with two overlooked genre pieces from the late Sixties – John Sturges' HOUR OF THE GUN (1967) and Sydney Pollack's THE SCALPHUNTERS (1968). The Sturges film is a sequel to his 1957 GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, with James Garner and Jason Robards replacing Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, with Robert Ryan as nemesis Ike Clanton (played by Lyle Bettger in the '57 film). HOUR OF THE GUN is a somber, low key movie, opening with the O.K. shootout, and raising moral questions for Wyatt Earp. James Garner gives one of his all-time finest performances as the stoic, vengeful Earp, and Robards warmed up his spurs for his later Western classics ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST (!968) and BALLAD OF CABLE HOGUE (1970). Robert Ryan is always great, and he plays Ike Clanton as a much cleaner, more civilized psycopath than say Walter Brennan did in Ford's 1946 telling of the Western perennial, MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (which of course cast Henry Fonda and Victor Mature as Earp and Doc). HOUR OF THE GUN is also recommended for Jon Voight's debut as a Clanton henchman, Lucien Ballard's cinematography on location in Mexico, and the Jerry Goldsmith score. THE SCALPHUNTERS is a picaresque comedy with some good action setpieces, as lone mountain man Burt Lancaster (flashing his pearly whites and showing off his dazzling athletic skills) trails badman Telly Savalas and moll Shelley Winters to retrieve his stolen furs. Burt has an erudite ex-slave in tow, played by the late great Ossie Davis (who died on February 2 nd of this year at the age of 88); Davis absolutely steals the show from Burt, Tell and Shelley (pretty stiff scene-stealing competition in any genre), and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Elmer Bernstein contributed a rousing musical score.

FRANK SINATRA : Ol' Blue Eyes (1915-1998) had quite a versatile movie career, excelling in musical comedy (ON THE TOWN, GUYS AND DOLLS, HIGH SOCIETY, PAL JOEY), drama (MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, THE JOKER IS WILD, SOME CAME RUNNING, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, and his Oscar-winning FROM HERE TO ETERNITY), and of course the Rat Pack movies (OCEAN'S ELEVEN, SERGEANTS THREE, 4 FOR TEXAS, ROBIN AND THE SEVEN HOODS). In the twilight of his leading man days, Sinatra scored with three popular crime movies: TONY ROME (1968) and its sequel LADY IN CEMENT (1968) and THE DETECTIVE (1968), all just released on DVD from Fox Home Video. If you're a Sinatra fan, all three discs are absolute musts – if not, stay away. Sinatra's TONY ROME is a Miami private eye, living on his boat, slingin' booze and one-liners as he busts the bad guys and romances the broads (Jill St. John and Sue Lyon). Yes, the movie's vulgar, banal, sexist … but hey, it's Frank doing his tough guy bit. There is some redemption in two excellent scenes between Sinatra and Gena Rowlands (a big studio gig while she and hubby John Cassavetes were making their own FACES), and a great title song written by Lee Hazelwood and sung by Nancy Sinatra in the vein of their hit “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'.” The sequel LADY IN CEMENT is much lighter in tone, practically comedic, with Sinatra embroiled with Dan Blocker (“Hoss” from BONANZA) and a ravishing Raquel Welch. Richard Conte returns from the original as a police detective, Lainie Kazan has a small role as a go-go dancer, and there's a very cool “lounge-y” soundtrack. Both Tony Rome movies are late Sixties kitsch, good for some laughs. THE DETECTIVE , on the other hand, is serious stuff, based on a Roderick Thorp novel about a New York City detective (Sinatra) fighting corruption. At the time of its release, this was a controversial adult film, dealing with homosexuality, nymphomania, castration, and conspiracy theories – Frank even says “penis” and “semen,” a first in a major studio film. Seen today, THE DETECTIVE is impossibly homophobic in its treatment of gays, akin to watching a Stepin Fetchit movie from the Thirties. In its defense, the performances by Sinatra, Lee Remick (as his promiscuous wife), Jacqueline Bisset (in her second Hollywood film), and Robert Duvall (as a brute cop) are strong; there's an over-the-top confession scene by Tony Musante that has to be seen to be believed. Jerry Goldsmith also contributes one of his most evocative scores. All three of these movies were directed by Gordon Douglas (1909-1993), who started as a child actor before directing Our Gang comedies and Laurel and Hardy's SAPS AT SEA for Hal Roach. He had a fairly undistinguished career, with the exception of a couple of early Fifties Jimmy Cagney vehicles (KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, COME FILL THE CUP) and the sci-fi classic THEM! (1954). He's fine for the two TONY ROME movies (he directed IN LIKE FLINT the same year), but THE DETECTIVE definitely would have benefited from a stronger hand, say a Don Siegel or Phil Karlson. All three DVDs include trailers (the one for TONY ROME is almost exclusively alternate takes) for the Sinatra films as well as various Raquel Welch Fox pictures from the same era (e.g. FANTASTIC VOYAGE, BANDOLERO!, ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.).

FOX STUDIO CLASSICS : Fox offers three diverse entries in their praiseworthy continuing series:

THE RAZOR'S EDGE (1946) was Darryl F. Zanuck's prestige product for the year, based on the hit 1944 novel by Somerset Maugham, about a World War One veteran, just returned to Chicago, who forsakes an upper middle class existence and a wealthy fiancée to search for the meaning of life, traveling to Paris and India and back again in his quest. The concept has become a cliché by now, but at the time Maugham's novel held a haunting grasp on his readership. Lamar Trotti did an admirable job adapting the novel, although director George Cukor was dissatisfied with his work and was replaced by Edmund Goulding (see my review of Matthew Kennedy's Goulding biography in last month's column). Zanuck and Goulding made a sublime film, that – along with the same year's BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES and IT'S   WONDERFUL LIFE -- brought a new emotional candor to post-war Hollywood fare. THE RAZOR'S EDGE is perfectly cast, with Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, Anne Baxter, Clifton Webb and Herbert Marshall (as author Maugham) doing some of the finest work of their careers. Among the film's highlights: Tierney's attempted seduction of Power … Baxter's devastating hospital scene, and her harrowing “reunion” with her old friends in a Paris dive   … a delirious jazz club scene shot in Goulding's favored long take that ends with a brawl breaking out, a clear inspiration on the opening sequence of Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK (1977) … Clifton Webb's inimitable delivery of the line “I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi;” only he could have gotten away with that one. THE RAZOR'S EDGE is also a wonderful example of studio system craft at its finest, with beautiful black-and-white photography by Arthur Miller, one of Alfred Newman's best scores and impeccable Richard Day-Nathan Juran production design. Anne Baxter won a much-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (her role was originally offered to Susan Hayward, Betty Grable and Judy Garland!), and there were nominations for Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Webb) and Black-and-White Art Direction (Day and Juran). The extras include a fact-filled commentary by two of our greatest film historians, Anthony Slide and Robert Birchard; it's loaded with production history and light on critical analysis, just the way I like my DVD audio commentaries. There are also three Fox Movietone News clips – Somerset Maugham presenting his book manuscript to the Library of Congress; the world premiere at New York's Roxy Theatre, attended by Goulding, Tierney, Webb, Tyrone Power and wife Annabella, Paulette Goddard, Maureen O'Hara, and Frank Sinatra and his first wife Nancy (accompanied by police offers to fend off bobbysoxers); and excerpts from the Academy Awards, with Lionel Barrymore presenting to Anne Baxter, and Jack Benny giving an Honorary Oscar to director Ernst Lubitsch.

THE BEST OF EVERYTHING (1959) has acquired a cult status; it was celebrated in the March 2004 Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair with pages of on-set photographs and an article by Laura Jacobs heralding the film as an essential look at the late Fifties workplace. Based on a novel by Rona Jaffe, the movie concerns three young women (Hope Lange, Diane Baker and Suzy Parker) working at a midtown Manhattan publishing firm. With   soap opera trappings and the presence of Hope Lange, the film summons up Fox's previous hit PEYTON PLACE (1957), while the sordid goings-on anticipate the same studio's THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS (1967). The large ensemble cast (including Joan Crawford as a queen bitch, Brian Aherne as a charming lecher, Louis Jourdan as a self-involved stage director, and Kid Notorious himself, Robert Evans, in his early acting days as an unrepentant cad) is put through their paces by Jean Negulesco (1900-1993), a director comfortable with melodrama (JOHNNY BELINDA), ensemble casts (TITANIC) and a trio of girls in the big city (HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE). The clothes, the hair, the hats, the smoking, the drinking, the blatant sexual harassment – its all here in this 1959 time capsule of office politics. There's also some lovely location footage of Manhattan (Park Avenue in the 40s, Central Park, the theater district). I don't know how much of a classic this is, but as entertainment THE BEST OF EVERYTHING makes for a terrific guilty pleasure. The movie also provides a rare chance to admire the work of Suzy Parker, a beautiful blue-eyed redhead who was a huge model in the mid-Fifties, a favorite of Coco Chanel and Richard Avedon; indeed, she was the first model to earn $100 an hour and $100,000 a year, and at one time was the most photographed woman in the world. She only made a handful movies (KISS THEM FOR ME with Cary Grant, TEN NORTH FREDERICK with Gary Cooper) before marrying Bradford Dillman and retiring, but she was quite a fine actress. The DVD contains an informative audio commentary by author Rona Jaffe and historian Sylvia Stoddard, along with Fox Movietone coverage of the New York premiere featuring Hope Lange and husband Don Murray, and Robert Evans gleefully signing autographs for the teenyboppers.

ANNA AND THE KING OF SIAM (1946) is the drama that served as the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit Broadway musical and the 1956. In this original version, opulently produced by Darryl Zanuck and directed by John Cromwell, Irene Dunne plays Anna, the British governess to the court of the King, played here by Rex Harrison, in the roles made famous by Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner in the musical version of THE KING AND I (Linda Darnell is effective as Tuptim, the native girl played by Rita Moreno in the Brynner film). Indeed the memory of THE KING AND I hangs over every frame of this movie, just as it did with the 1999 Jodie Foster-Chou Yun Fat film, but this ANNA is an excellent, moving film in its own right, further distinguished by Bernard Herrmann's Oscar-nominated score, and the Oscar-winning cinematography (Arthur Miller) and sets. Fox has included Movietone News coverage of the Hollywood premiere, and an episode of Biography about the real Anna (who, as it turns out, was a great-aunt of Boris Karloff!).

ITALIAN CINEMA : Criterion has made my dreams come true with a two-disc DVD of DIVORCE, ITALIAN STYLE (1962). I'm half-Sicilian-American; my Sicilian grandmother took me to see this picture at the Walker Theatre on 18 th Avenue in Brooklyn when I was a little kid more interested in the Mets and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. I didn't understand a damn thing about it, other than that I fell madly in love with Stefania Sandrelli. I saw the movie again as a teenager and 20 times since, and it is my all-time favorite comedy. DIVORCE (along with its successor 1964's SEDUCED AND ABANDONED) captures the vagaries of small-town post-war Sicily, where the worst fate awaiting man was to become a cornuto (cuckold). At the time this film was made, divorce was illegal in Italy, and screenwriters Germi, Aldredo Giannetti and Ennio DeConcini use this as the basis for their Oscar-winning original screenplay. Marcello Mastroianni, married to a loving but boorish wife (Daniele Rocca) lusts for his 15-year-old cousin (Sandrelli), and the movie follows his elaborate plot to make himself available to wed his teen bride.

I love so many things about this picture: Marcello in his hairnet. His wife's mustache. The decaying villa. Marcello's love pangs over Sandrelli. The palpable Sicilian heat. The horror of the midwife examining Sandrelli. The Carlo Rustichelli music, by turns jaunty and tragic. The utterly brilliant final scene. I can't write objectively about this movie. It has too deep a grasp on my psyche. All I can say is buy it, rent it, watch it. And then search for a VHS of SEDUCED AND ABANDONED (it screams for restored DVD treatment), also starring Stefania Sandrelli, also directed by Pietro Germi. It treats similar themes in an even more emotionally brutal manner, and sometimes both films tend to meld into one in my fevered mind. I have the same screening history with SEDUCED AND ABANDONED – saw it first with Grandma at the Walker, then again 15 years later, and many times since.And yes, I'm still in love with Stefania Sandrelli. Sorry, Claudia. Sorry, Sophia.

The Criterion DVD presents a new restored high-definition digital transfer, a 40-minute documentary about Germi, a half-hour of interviews with his actors, an interview with screenwriter DeConcini, screen test footage of Sandrelli and Rocca, and a 28-page booklet that includes essays by Andrew Sarris and Martin Scorsese.

LA DOLCE VITA (1959): Koch Lorber has done us all a favor with a definitive DVD of the seminal Fellini film LA DOLCE VITA, digitally remastered and restored, with the following extras: audio commentary by Richard Schickel, an introduction by director Alexander Payne, a collection of commercials and TV shorts directed by Fellini, an interview with the Maestro, interviews with Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg, a musical montage of Cinecitta (Fellini's favorite studio), photo galleries and a restoration comparison. I'm happy to welcome the talented writer and actor Gio Crisafulli to share his thoughts about the movie for this column:

“It seems today the paragon-like reverence toward The Director has diminished in an overtly consumer-conscious, market-driven world of cinema dominated by numbers, and where many a film school grad's MTV upbringing is all too apparent in films containing no shot lasting more than two seconds.

At the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Roger Ebert conveyed to me the essence of a different time, when the hip counter-culture hung out at art houses to watch foreign films made with a particular style and the unmistakable signature of an auteur instead of at the megaplex showing films that each strive to connect with audiences on the least common denominator.  

“You know,” he said “there was a time when these directors were like gods. There were The Big Three: Fellini, Antonioni, and Bergman. And from France you had Truffaut and Godard. They made the films they wanted to make.”

He went on to explain how every winter Bergman would work on a script and shoot it the following summer. There was actually a woman on his set whose job was to make tea for others on the shoot. “Imagine.” He exclaimed with a fond disbelief, “That was her job .”  

I'm sometimes reminded of Fellini when I see the work of Wong Kar Wai in that the Chinese director's films star characters who move to the beat of their own drummer at their own pace, and are in no need to push a conventionally formulaic plot. In both directors' works, the story arch seems to hover around the characters who are in no urgency to reach a plot point, and whose actions are not out of obligation, but instead reveal intimate flavors of nuance. Fellini was perhaps more obvious of the two, with his countless exotic characters taken deep from within mythological lore and the psychoanalytic subconscious.

LA DOLCE VITA was his most commercially successful film which does not mean that it was commercial fare. It was initially condemned by the Church, and then in 1978 it actually made John Paul II's list of the twenty-five best films about religion. Like most of Fellini's films, it is the director's own journey into his inner-most demons and desires. As in the epic poem “The Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri, it is the journey of its creator's alter ego Marcello, played by Marcello Mastroianni, through a richly dense forest of characters that each represent a place within the complexity of the tempted human soul.

             

“The people throughout the movie seem to consciously be giving performances of some kind,” added Jim Emerson, editor of Rogerebert.com. Even Marcello's girlfriend Emma (Yvonne Furneaux) is a source of drama with her drug overdoses, raging late-night fights in which she begs to get out of Marcello's car only to refuse when he then orders her to get out, in efforts to solicit his attention, and hopefully, his love.  

There's the arrival of Anita Ekberg walking off her plane which has just landed in Rome. The swarming paparazzi actually tell her to go back into the plane and come out again so they can set up a better shot. Later, by the Roman Forum, Marcello slow-dances with her, calling her “the first woman on the first day of creation.” In the same scene, we meet an American actor obviously disguised as what amounts to a satyr. Italian superstar Adriano Celentano, who was one of Europe's first rock' n' rollers at the start of the 1960's, makes a cameo and gets the real party started before Ekberg leads them in a dance parade ending with our satyr lifting her up in his arms: the Earth Mother held on high by the devil, then becoming temptation. We also see Fellini's recurring fascination with physically odd-paired couples dancing together. Marcello then obsessively follows her around Rome, leading to their legendary embrace in the Trevi Fountain, in what was the most famous scene of the two actors' careers.

There's also the film's most touching sequence that starts when Marcello takes his father (Annibale Ninchi), who longs to feel young again, to a cabaret. For the first musical number, women dressed as tigers are “whipped” by a ringmaster into uniformity, and are followed by a 1920's era dance line, and finally a trumpet player amidst balloons. He plays with such sadness, and an inner solitude as the balloons scattered on the floor then follow him offstage. You can feel the longing within Marcello to reconnect with his father who he admits he was never close to. It is a magically emotional scene which seems to strip the prevailing attitude of the room to its bare soul.

There is the sequence where two children lead a media frenzy around their alleged sightings of the Madonna. The apparitions are of course complete fabrications as the children lead the many people who come in hopes of catching a glimpse as well as the hungry media crews covering (or creating) the event in circles. There's the séance at a castle where Marcello runs into Anouk Aimée, his some-time lover who proceeds to divulge penance for her sins upon him in an echo chamber, declaring she wants to be with him faithfully, only to make off with another man from the party before she's even finished.

At the center of the film is the most chilling “performance” of all. That is, the life of Steiner, the friend whose family lifestyle Marcello so envies. Marcello first catches up to Steiner entering a church where he encourages Marcello to have more faith in his higher aspirations, such as writing his book. Marcello then flees to the coast where he attempts to write that book and encounters the young girl he claims to be an angel. He never does finish the book, and later comes the heart-shattering scene in which Marcello discovers Steiner's world was fabricated on a foundation of charades.

All these scenes are lush, visual experiences that make less obvious the more discrete cinematic applications. Such as the painstaking way in which Fellini illuminates a scene, or how he often places a small clump of people walking in the same direction as a car in the foreground, creating a subtle, uniformed flow of movement on screen. Ebert also pointed out that the movie has virtually no parallel action, where scenes are intercut from one location or group of characters to another. Each scene is self-contained, almost like a one-act play. Also, like many Italian directors of his time, Fellini did not record sound on set, instead opting to dub it in post-production. So he often chose to play music while shooting a scene, setting a mood. The actors in his scenes often seem to almost be floating, as if subtly moving to some discrete and distant beat.

The film opens with a statue of Jesus flying over Rome, arms outstretched. The statue, symbolic of doctrine and of faith, is beautiful, but fake. At the end of the film, fishermen pull an enormous sea monster onto the beach. It is ugly, but real, and it's looking right at Marcello. Further down the beach he notices the young angel he met while trying to fulfill his greater aspirations. But he can no longer hear or recognize her. He shrugs, and walks away.  

The film brought the sweet life and the paparazzi into the popular vernacular. It explored the most superficial of human temptations, and the most despaired of human regrets. In doing so, it was the deep and sincere exploration of an artist's core.”

              Thanks, Gio!

Koch Lorber has also released Fellini's INTERVISTA (1987), a unique self-examination by the director. As a Japanese documentary crew follows Fellini, he guides them around his beloved Cinecitta studios, reminiscing about the first time he came there, taking us on a candid journey through his past. The highlight is a visit with Marcello Mastroianni to Anita Ekberg's villa, where his LA DOLCE VITA stars are re-united in a literally magical moment. INTERVISTA is a rare and beautiful document and amust for Fellini fans. A documentary about Fellini is included on the DVD, along with a photo gallery.

MILESTONE SILENTS : No company does silent film like Milestone (toll free phone number 800.603.1104; www.milestonefilms.com), as three current Mary Pickford DVDs illustrate, all produced by The Mary Pickford Institute and Timeline Films for Milestone. SUDS (1920) features Mary as a London laundress, offering a unique characterization unlike anything else she ever did, while still maintaining her charm, charisma, humor and often Chaplinesque pathos. There's an elaborate fantasy sequence in which “Sudsie” imagines herself a princess out of a fairy tale, and outstanding cinematography by Pickford's favorite cinematographer, Charles Rosher. Milestone also provides the original foreign version of SUDS, filmed simultaneously. The side-by-side comparison shows that the setup and lengths of shots vary from version to version, in essence creating two different films. There's also an alternate happy ending, a still gallery, and – typical and for any Milestone silent release -- an excellent score, this time by the Mont Alto Orchestra. The foreign release features an organ score by veteran Gaylord Carter. Finally, the DVD includes half-hour documentary about Pickford from 1966.

On another disc, HEART O'THE HILLS (1919) is paired with M'LISS (1918), two of her last features before founding United Artists with Charles Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and future husband Douglas Fairbanks, both films showcasing Pickford's fiery, passionate side. HEART is a story of the Kentucky hills (Redlands, California), with city slickers trying to steal land from the simple country folk. A very young John Gilbert (THE BIG PARADE) has a supporting role, but it's Pickford's show all the way. The tinted Charles Rosher photography makes great use of the landscape, very reminiscent of John Ford, but the director here is Sidney Franklin, later responsible for similarly heartfelt dramas starring Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer, as well as producing MRS. MINIVER (1942). Maria Newman's chamber score makes the viewing experience of HEART O'THE HILLS especially memorable.

M'LISS is a Western melodrama based on a Bret Harte story. Pickford's at her tomboy best, firing her slingshot at bears, squirrels and boys, trying to clear schoolmaster Thomas Meighan (a silent screen idol) of the murder of her father. M'LISS is a rare chance to see the work of   Marshall Neilan, a director who strongly influenced the next generation of filmmakers (Ford, Wellman, Hathaway), but who sadly drank himself into obscurity. There is a beautifully acted scene between Pickford and Meighan when he is behind bars, enough to convince anyone of her prodigious talents. The fact that she also micro-managed her lavish productions makes her legacy all the more impressive.

The third disc is the utterly delightful THROUGH THE BACK DOOR (1921), a melodramatic story of mother love that offers Pickford room for romance and slapstick. The early scenes are set in pre-Wordl War One Belgium, with 28-year-old Pickford playing a 12-year-old, and completely getting away with the illusion by virtue of oversized furniture and a giant pet canine. The story takes her from the European countryside through Ellis Island (the “back door” to America) to another back door, this time the servants' entrance of a Long Island mansion. There's an original orchestral score that works beautifully, and as an added bonus, the primitive 1914 Pickford five-reeler CINDERELLA , directed by Biograph's James Kirkwood, which makes for some interesting historical viewing.

Even though two of my favorite historians, Kevin Brownlow and Scott Eyman, have written excellent books about Mary Pickford, I have to confess I never really appreciated her until this series of Milestone releases. She truly set the trend for strong, self-reliant heroines that was perpetuated in the talkies by Hepburn and Davis, and is so sadly lacking in today's American cinema. Further, she produced her own films – after 1919 through UA, so she was one of the first independent producers as well as the first great international female superstar. Her movies are inventive and wonderfully produced, showing off the best of silent film artistry as well as still working nearly 90 years later as enjoyable entertainment.

Milestone also offers THE OLIVE THOMAS COLLECTION, highlighting a forgotten star of the late teens with a compelling documentary, OLIVE THOMAS: EVERYBODY'S SWEETHEART (2004), and her quintessential feature, THE FLAPPER (1920). The documentary by Andi Hicks and Sarah Baker is riveting; they do a brilliant job of bring the world of the Ziegfeld Follies and early Hollywood to life. “Ollie” Thomas' romance with Jack Pickford (brother of Mary) is explored as well as her stage and screen career, and her ultimately tragic (and mysterious) end just a month before her 26 th birthday. THE FLAPPER, directed by Alan Crosland (THE JAZZ SINGER) and scripted by Frances Marion, the foremost female screenwriter during the ‘20s and early ‘30s, is a time capsule of the era, a coming of age comedy about a girl who gets mixed up with the wrong sort and has to redeem her name. Olive Thomas had a vibrant, sexy girl next door quality that made her a huge attraction, and her star quality is certainly in evidence in THE FLAPPER. Look for Norma Shearer and her sister Athole (the first wife of Howard Hawks) in small roles as boarding school girls.

With all of Milestone's contributions to our silent film heritage, the current jewel in their crown is, for me, HINDLE WAKES (1927), considered by many to be the best British silent, a film I had never even heard of until I read about Milestone's release of a British Film Institute restoration. Every year the mill workers of Lancashire are given a vacation in Blackpool; when one of the working girls takes an extended vacation with the son of the mill owner, she scandalizes her family but refuses to give in to contemporary mores. Directed by Maurice Elvey, based on a popular play, HINDLE WAKES has a remarkable documentary feel in the mill and resort scenes, but is most valuable as a feminist tract years ahead of its time, hailed by no less a social activist than Emma Goldman, who praised the film's unflinching condemnation of sexual double standards. Milestone's extras include two choices of soundtracks, the traditional original score by Philip Carli, and the one I preferred, a contemporary track by British group In   the Nursery that underscores the timeless quality of the film. There is also a stills gallery and original press kit, and DVD-Rom extras of Milestone's press kit and an article by Emma Goldman about the play. HINDLE WAKES is an important film and an important DVD release.

 

MORE AMAZING WARNERS BOX SETS : Take a poll asking “Who is the coolest movie star of them all?” and no doubt James Dean and Steve McQueen would rate way high. Warner Home Video celebrates both actors with elaborate box set collections:

THE COMPLETE JAMES DEAN COLLECTION will keep Dean fans very happy indeed. We're given three double-disc sets of his three starring movies – in order of their production,   Elia Kazan's EAST OF EDEN (!955), Nicholas Ray's REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and George Stevens' GIANT (1956), all gorgeously remastered from restored elements, presented in all their widescreen Technicolor glory. After years of seeing these movies panned and scanned on TV, we can fully appreciate the compositional intentions of their directors.

Based on a portion of the John Steinbeck novel, EAST OF EDEN is a re-telling of the Cain and Abel story with Dean and Richard Davalos as the brothers and Raymond Massey as their father. There's a Richard Schickel audio commentary, a brand-new 50 th anniversary documentary about the making of the film, the vintage documentary FOREVER JAMES DEAN, additional scenes, screen tests, wardrobe and production design tests, and footage from the New York premiere.

REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE was Dean's next picture, the quintessential juvenile delinquent movie, and unquestionably one of the most influential movies ever made. REBEL fulfilled the promise Dean showed EDEN, and became an eternal icon for disenfranchised youth. Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo, Jim Backus, Dennis Hopper, and Nick Adams co-star under Nicholas Ray's sympathetic direction, working from an original screenplay by Stewart Stern. The extras here are wonderful – audio commentary by Douglas Rathgeb (author of The Making of Rebel Without a Cause), a new 50 th anniversary documentary, an incredible 1974 documentary hosted with Peter Lawford interviewing Sammy Davis, Jr., Natalie Wood, music composer Leonard Rosenman. And Sal Mineo (who talks about conta