Set in an isolated, snow covered village in the Utah mountains during winter, The Great Silence is unique not only for its setting (most "Spaghetti Westerns' take place in sun-baked deserts or dusty frontier towns) but for its political subtext and its grim climax in which evil triumphs. The film is also significant for its atypical casting; French actor Trintignant, who is best known for his art-house hits A Man and a Woman (1966) and The Conformist (1970), was a last-minute replacement for Franco Nero in the lead and Vonetta McGee makes her motion picture debut in this film and went on to become a familiar face in the 'blaxploitation' films of the seventies (Blacula, Brothers).
Fantoma's DVD release of The Great Silence includes the original theatrical trailer, extensive liner notes, an appreciation of the film by director Alex Cox (Repo Man, 1984), and the alternate 'Happy Ending' which was added to prints of the film for distribution in North African and other limited markets. The latter, though silent (the original audio was unfortunately lost), is particularly fascinating and includes one surprising shot of Silence's metal-clad hand, a kinky character detail that never emerges in the final version of the film. Any self-respecting fan of the 'Spaghetti Western' will want to own this offbeat gem which (except for a Japanese laserdisc version) has long been unavailable in any version, much less one that looks as good as this. For more information about The Great Silence, visit Fantoma and Image Entertainment, Inc..
By Jeff Stafford
THE FULLY RESTORED VERSION OF DECEMBER 7th
Banned for more than fifty years by the U. S. Government, John Ford's December 7th (1943), a dramatic re-creation of the infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, is now available on VHS and DVD from VCI and Kit Parker Films. Now you can plainly see that Michael Bay's multimillion dollar epic, Pearl Harbor, obviously copied numerous battle re-enactments from this film, right down to the same camera set-ups.
Utilizing stock military footage of Pearl Harbor, December 7th departs from the typical documentary form to present a narrative framing device featuring Walter Huston as a character representing Uncle Sam, Harry Davenport as a folksy representation of "conscience" called Mr. C, and Dana Andrews as the ghost of an American soldier. The story opens on December 6, 1941, the day before the attack, with Uncle Sam and Mr. C carrying on a discussion about the history of Hawaii and the country's war preparations. One of the approaches taken by co-directors John Ford and Gregg Toland was to paint the Japanese-American citizens of Hawaii (37 percent of the population, according to the film) as potential traitors, fifth-columnists spying on their "American" employers for information to hustle back to the "homeland." When it was screened for military brass, there was alarm and disapproval. One officer said "the proportion of the picture's time and the attention given to the local Japanese problem is unwarranted when compared to the overall significance of the December 7th attack." The real issue, however, seemed to be the portrayal of America's readiness. Admiral Stark, commander of the Naval Forces in Europe, commented, "This picture leaves the distinct impression that the Navy was not on the job, and this is not true... I am not concerned with minor inaccuracies, but great harm will be done and sleeping dogs awakened if the picture is released as it now stands." To make matters worse, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a directive saying all future Field Photo material must be submitted for censorship before use, in the interest of preventing injury to morale.
To save the film and please the government, Ford and editor Robert Parrish went into the editing room and cut the framing device, chopping the picture down to 34 minutes and concentrating largely on the clean-up and preparedness efforts that followed. Toland had made a feature movie about America's worst military disaster; from it, Ford crafted a short subject about the country's quick recovery. It was this shorter version that was released and won the Oscar for Best Documentary.
Now you can see both versions on he DVD edition of December 7th plus a wealth of bonus material including full commentary by four Pearl Harbor survivors, Universal and Movietone News stories, Frank Capra's 62 minute documentary, Know Your Enemy: Japan, and English subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired. For more information about December 7th, you can visit VCI Entertainment. To order the DVD or video, you can call 800-331-4077. Turner Classic Movies will also be showing the uncensored version of December 7th on Sunday, September 9 at 6:00 am ET.
If you are a World War II buff, you'll also be interested in these other new releases from VC! Entertainment and Kit Parker Films:
Combat Camera: The Pacific - original uncensored newsreels from Movietone News, Universal Newsreel Pathe News and the U.S. Navy, digitally restored. Some of the material includes The Fleet That Came to Stay, directed by Budd Boetticher, footage of Japan's surrender, Battle of Iwo Jima, Midway and Coral Sea Battles, and bonus shorts like This Could Be America.
The Colors of War: The Pacific is another exceptional DVD and it includes the documentaries Report from the Aleutians, directed by John Huston, The Battle of Midway, directed by John Ford, and several others plus a poster gallery and an interview with Joe Rosenthal, the man who photographed the flag raising on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi. Visit VCI Entertainment for more information.
THE CRITERION COLLECTION DOES IT AGAIN!
Fans of director Douglas Sirk will find a real treat in the DVD bins. Two of his wildest
melodramas, Written on the Wind (1956) and All That Heaven Allows (1955), have been released in special editions with sharp new transfers, enhanced for widescreen. A noted director in his native Germany, Sirk was one of many who fled the Nazis in the 1930s for a new home in Los Angeles. It was there that he continued his filmmaking career, even though he essentially had to start over again, making B-movies for the major studios. Sirk's sense of style and reliable production techniques eventually found him making high-profile melodramas featuring big-name stars but Sirk's theatrical background and wide intellectual interests gave them a unique twist. His films are self-critical without ever abandoning direct emotional appeal, making his films among the most important work of the 1950s.
Written on the Wind is a startling, overheated tale about the schemes and fantasies of a decadent Texas oil family. Robert Stack and sister Dorothy Malone run amuck through the lives of ad executive Lauren Bacall and geologist Rock Hudson. Sirk's imaginative but controlled style only highlights all the activity. The disc comes with notes by critic Laura Mulvey and production material. All That Heaven Allows is a bit more sedate on the surface but may be even more intense. Jane Wyman plays a wealthy widow attracted to her gardener (Rock Hudson again) despite the disapproval of her children and friends, a set-up that Sirk turns into an indictment of narrow-minded thinking. The disc includes a BBC documentary on Sirk plus a wonderfully demented essay by German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, himself greatly influenced by Sirk. Both of the Sirk DVDs are from The Criterion Collection which is The Criterion Collection is distributed jointly by Home Vision and Image Entertainment. For more information, you can visit either Image or The Criterion Collection.
By Lang Thompson
A B-MOVIE GEM FROM BUDD BOETTICHER
In the late forties in Hollywood, when Budd Boetticher was still going by the name of Oscar Boetticher, he directed several B-movies for "Poverty Row" studios like Monogram and Eagle Lion. Of these, Behind Locked Doors (1948) was one of the best and thanks to Kino International, it is now available on DVD and VHS. The ambitious plot, which would later inspire director Sam Fuller to make a similar film - Shock Corridor (1963) - follows detective Ross Stewart (Richard Carlson) as he has himself declared insane and committed to a mental institution. Why? Because a persuasive reporter (Lucille Bremer) has convinced him that a corrupt judge is hiding from the police within the asylum and there is a $10,000 reward on his head. But once inside, Stewart discovers that it's not so easy to prove the reporter's hunch plus there is a very real concern that he will EVER get out again.
Boetticher gives Behind Locked Doors a real sense of paranoia and claustrophia which is heightened by the moody cinematography by Guy Roe. There are also some unexpected surprises along the way like the appearance of Ed Wood regular, Tor Johnson, in the role of a brain damaged boxer who becomes extremely violent whenever he hears a ringing bell. This might explain why the alternate title for this film was The Human Gorilla.
The Kino box art cover recreates the film's original theatrical poster while the back cover confirms the film's importance: "Behind Locked Doors cleverly compensates for its budgetary limitations by bathing its sets in darkness. This visual spareness is perfectly suited to Boetticher's terse, hard-edged style, making the film a nightmarish ride through the halls of insanity and an ingenious, effective example of American film noir." We agree wholeheartedly and recommend this outstanding DVD to anyone interested in innovative B-movies or the early work of Budd Boetticher.
Kino International also offers several other outstanding B-movie titles on DVD and VHS like Anthony Mann's Strange Impersonation (1946), Douglas Sirk's Lured (1947), Edgar Ulmer's Carnegie Hall (1947), and Jules Dassin's Brute Force (1947), available on VHS only. For more information on the titles carried by Kino, visit their web site at Kino International.
By Jeff Stafford
BLOOD ON THE SUN
For years Blood on the Sun (1945), a James Cagney suspense thriller set in pre-World War II Japan, has been subjected to one indignity after another. After falling into public domain, prints of the film have been turning up in poor 16mm and 35mm dupes, making it virtually impossible to see Blood on the Sun as it was originally intended. To make matters worse, a colorized version was distributed on television and numerous VHS bootlegs versions of bad to awful quality have been released into the marketplace. But good things come to those who wait and James Cagney fans will be happy to know that Hal Roach Studios have recently licensed a DVD version of Blood on the Sun to Image Entertainment. The film has been digitally mastered from the original nitrate camera negative and kudos go to Image for post-producing, manufacturing, and releasing it. This new DVD release is easily the best version of Blood on the Sun currently available. Although there is some very minor image deterioration resulting in random incidents of speckling, scratches, and audio hiss, the print quality is uniformly sharp and clean. As for DVD collectors spoiled by all the recent extras on this format, don't expect any supplementary material because there isn't any. Besides the nine chapter breaks, the box art features two different versions of the original poster for the film. The cover art is particularly garish and perfectly captures the melodramatic quality of the film.
For those of you who are not familiar with Blood on the Sun, it was made during a lull in Cagney's career. Sandwiched between Johnny Come Lately (1943) and 13 Rue Madeleine (1946), Blood on the Sun is clearly a product of its era. Produced by James' brother, William, and directed by Frank Lloyd, the film attempts to demonstrate in dramatic terms how the Japanese "Co-Prosperity Sphere" came into direct conflict with the U.S. and accelerated the war in the Pacific. James Cagney plays an American reporter based in pre-war Japan who is given a purloined copy of the top secret Japanese document by another newspaper reporter (Wallace Ford) for safekeeping. The Japanese know Ford has uncovered their secret and are willing to perform any act - including murder - to prevent their true intentions from being revealed.
To say that Blood on the Sun is jingoistic, flag-waving melodrama is to state the obvious. It also happens to be a fast-paced, entertaining B-movie with an energetic performance by Cagney (wait till you see him dispatch his Japanese opponents with some well-timed Judo moves - or is that a stunt man?) and plenty of campy extras like Sylvia Sydney as an exotic Japanese spy with a secret racial heritage or the Far Eastern-themed score by Miklos Rosza or the supporting cast of mostly American actors like Robert Armstrong (of King Kong fame) and Marvin Miller (from the TV series, The Millionaire), costumed and made-up as Asian villains. Cagney fans will definitely want to check it out and so will anyone else who is the least bit curious about Hollywood's take on Japan during World War II. We can only hope that the other public domain releases being offered by Image Entertainment and licensed through Hal Roach Studios such as Dave Fleischer's animated feature, Gulliver's Travels (1939) or Laurel and Hardy in The Flying Deuces (1939), or Barbara Stanwyck in the film noir favorite, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946), are just as handsomely presented as their Blood on the Sun release. For more information on the titles carried by Image Entertainment, visit their web site at Image
By Jeff Stafford
STANLEY KUBRICK'S SPARTACUS
Whether you were amused or vexed by Gladiator, you shouldn't miss the classic manly men vs. Rome epic Spartacus (1960). It won four Oscars, marked Stanley Kubrick's first studio film (after taking over from Anthony Mann), broke ground by ignoring the blacklist against screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and is undeniably a memorable film experience. Spartacus is now available in a sterling DVD (from Criterion) that does full justice to its status. At the core, of course, is a new enhanced widescreen transfer of the restored version of the film. But there's much more. An audio commentary features many of the key participants (such as Kirk Douglas, novelist Howard Fast, restorer Robert Harris) plus you can get scene analyses from scripter Dalton Trumbo and even more of Alex North's music. An entire second disc is given over to deleted scenes, newsreels, brief documentaries, Kubrick's drawings and other goodies. You might still find the earlier DVD in stores though it not only lacks all the extras but the older transfer won't look as nice; just check the packaging to see what you're getting. (Trivia alert: An earlier version of the historical tale of slave rebel Spartacus was made in Italy in 1954 by cult director Riccardo Freda with the English-language title Sins of Rome.)
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN IS FINALLY ON DVD!
The Magnificent Seven (1960), one of the greatest Westerns, finally makes its DVD appearance in a fascinating special edition full of bonus material. (Return of the Magnificent Seven (1966) has also been released but with no extras.) From its first appearance in 1960, The Magnificent Seven has been both an audience and critical favorite, one of that year's highest grossing films and a popular Western title ever since. A remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), the film shows a Mexican village continually terrorized by bandits. In desperation the villagers enlist seven American misfits for help but what can seven men do against a hundred? The Magnificent Seven fleshes out this story with a wonderful ensemble cast who were equally at home with the drama as well as the stunts and gun fighting. Yul Brynner was already familiar at the time but actors just starting to make a lasting impression on audiences were Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, James Coburn and Eli Wallach. The score by Elmer Bernstein was equally unforgettable and was later used in commercials. A guitar instrumental version even cracked the Top 40 on the radio.
The special edition DVD does justice to this film. The wide spaces necessary to follow the action are well presented in anamorphic letterbox. There's a wealth of background information in the audio commentary by Eli Wallach, James Coburn and producer Walter Mirisch. You can also view a new documentary about the making of the film, the original trailer and a gallery of still photos. The sound is 5.1 Dolby Digital with options for closed captioning, subtitles (French and Spanish) or alternate audio tracks (also French and Spanish).
OTHER RECENT DVDs OF NOTE
Marilyn Monroe: The Diamond Collection - this boxset of five DVDs includes favorites like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and The Seven Year Itch but the real treat for fans is a two-hour documentary that includes an assembled 40-minute section (as much as possible) of Monroe's last and unfinished film Something's Got to Give.
Fall of the House of Usher - This 1928 French film is an avant-garde horror classic. Credited to Jean Epstein, according to some reports it was co-directed by Luis Bunuel who was Epstein's assistant and whose landmark Un Chien Andalou was still a year in the future. Stars Margeuritte Gance, Abel's wife.
How to Irritate People - While waiting for TCM's Star of the Month featurette on W.C. Fields which is narrated by John Cleese you might want to check out Cleese's brief satirical feature made shortly before the birth of Monty Python and starring a few of his future comrades in comedy.
La Notte - Michaelangelo Antonioni followed his breakthrough L'Avventura with this stylishly opaque tale of a marriage in trouble that turned heads back in the early '60s. Stars Jeanne Moreau, Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti.
Mississippi Mermaid (1969) - Though it's not indicated on the box, Francois Truffaut's powerful drama appeared on DVD restored to its original running time of 123 minutes, which is 13 longer than any other video version.
The Man from Planet X (1951) - Director Edgar G. Ulmer was a master at making the most from a low budget. In other hands, this film might have been forgettable but Ulmer makes it a stylish, humanist plea for tolerance.
5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953) - The only live-action film done by the legendary Dr. Seuss is a funny, surrealistic take on piano lessons, childhood and beanie hats.
Black Narcissus (1947) - If you were intrigued by cinematographer Jack Cardiff's recent honorary Oscar here's the best place to start if you haven't seen any of his work. Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the film is a beautiful, unforgettable story of five nuns trying to establish a school in the Himalayas. The DVD includes a documentary on Cardiff's work plus a commentary by director Powell and Martin Scorsese.
