Can you believe there is NOT a domestic-issue DVD of one of the absolute crown jewels of American cinema, Josef von Sternberg’s 1932 Shanghai Express? No, I can scarcely credit the fact myself. And yet it is true. Just another example of the utility value of the overseas disc. A good French version of Express is the subject of my rapture in today’s Foreign Region Report, at The Daily Notebook, as I hope it ever shall be.
That’s my former lifestyle coach Eugene Pallette above, in a screen capture from the disc. He utters several of the film’s undeniably immortal asides/aperçus, including the observation, as he heads to the dining car, that it’s once again time to put on “the old nosebag,” or words to that effect.
I suspect we might see such a DVD (or Blu-ray) coming out within the next year from Criterion.
I caught a restored print of SHANGHAI EXPRESS at the Miami Beach Cinematheque earlier this year, and they seemed to be showing a series distributed by sister company Criterion’s sister company Janus films. While there was nothing indicating this print belonged to them, I believe it may have. Usually, that’s as good an indicator as any we’ll see something from Criterion soon.
Here’s hoping. (Anyone who may know more about this, please feel free to correct me.)
It would make sense for Criterion to have picked up a number of Universal-owned Paramount titles, so maybe they acquired some of the von Sternberg sound titles when they picked up Make Way for Tomorrow or the silent JVS titles.
As Universal seems intent on ignoring nearly everything in its catalogue (with occasionally surprising exceptions of WC Fields, Marx Brothers and the one-off Pre-Code set, etc) one only hopes that Criterion will come to the rescue to remedy this tragic state of affairs. Would be great to see releases anywhere of JVS’s “Crime and Punishment” and “An American Tragedy” as well!
I am reliably told that the big fire destroyed a lot of Universal masters, so they are behind the eight-ball, although I share and probably exceed the wrath over their cavalier approach to the treasures in their catalogue. I yearn for a copy of this one and as someone I know may be in Paris soon, I will probably demand that this be brought back for me, freefalling dollar be damned.
Just a mention that they are all available in England as well, without the possibility of forced French subs.
There is a Danish release of Crime and Punishment, which is quite good, and the movie quite great. I believe it is the same Universal-disc that can be found in Spain (see screencaps on criterionforum here: http://www.criterionforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=6177&start=25 ) and a number of different European countries.
This is a film theater, sir.
A FILM theater!
Land.
They showed a pretty good print of this on TCM a few years back. It’s one of my favorite Von Sternberg movies, because of, rather in spite of, how odd it is.
And Eugene Palette is one of my favorite character actors, not least of which because of that voice.
The French (and UK and other PAL version) discs all use a print which has a crucial cut during the scene in which Warner Oland is interviewing the French Officer (Emile Chautard) with Dietrich translating for him from French to English. The cut removes a couple of lines of dialogue in which Chautard confesses he is wearing his military decorations, actually not his as a ruse to impress his daughter, when in fact he had never actually earned them. The scene has been cut ever since Universal released a VHS and Laser (gatefold) of the title in 1995. I have no idea why or how this happened but one theory is the dialogue was cut to placate the French Legion of Honor!! The film certainly played complete prior to this.
I hope any new print restores it. It’s been in the works with Crit since probably 2008. The restoration of the cut scene may be the stumbling block to them releasing it.
The Sony Spain Crime and Punishment is gorgeous. Grover Crisp indicated some sort of release over a year ago, but now that Sony is moving to VOD that may be the platform for it stateside.
In other news the first Sternberg to come out on BluRay will be Shanghai Gesture early next year, courtesy of WildSide BluRay in France! Start saving those dollars.
Eugene Pallette is a screen treasure (especially love him in MY MAN GODFREY and THE HALF NAKED TRUTH), but one keeps hoping that something will come up to refute that story about Otto Preminger having him sacked from ARMY WIVES for praising Hitler and spouting racial epithets.
Jbryant: I don’t think, unfortunately, it can be refuted– I’ve read a couple other stories about some of Pallette’s views (none, perhaps fortunately, that I can recall in any detail at the moment), especially towards the end of his life, that are all of a piece with that story. Still, as you say, a screen treasure, and always a very welcome presence.
A much nicer story about the man that I’ve read more than once is that as soon as sound came into the picture, the once-slim Pallette deliberately fattened himself up so that he could get character parts. If true, that’s kind of awesome, and also pretty damn canny.
You know, this has me thinking. There’s always a need of course to separate a work of art from the artists who made it. But I’ll freely admit as a fallible human being that I can’t always do this, that sometimes, some little part of me remembers some terrible detail about an actor and makes it difficult to enjoy their performances. I had some difficulty, for example, sitting through a certain Mel Gibson performance not too long ago, with some of his recent misadventures being fresh in my mind. And yet, I can watch Eugene Pallette– who was, as Mr. Bryant mentioned, known to drop some epitaphs in his time– with nary a wince.
This could be because I enjoy Mr. Pallette’s work a lot more than most of Mr. Gibson’s. But I also wonder if it has something to do with the nature of Pallette’s screen presence, and this is what’s got me thinking. As it’s two-thirty in the morning here, and I’m more than a little tired, it’s quite possible that the following might not quite make sense. Not an excuse, just a warning. 🙂
Pallette, like Edward Everett Horton, often played a specific type– the “Eugene Pallette” role, as it were. When I think of Pallette, whenever he first shows up in a movie and I think, “Hey, that’s Eugene Pallette!, cool beans”, I think of that persona (the heft, the voice, the facial expressions), just as, when I think of a “star” like Bogart or The Duke, I think of their personae, of their iconic-ness. I see Bogart, I flash to a cigarette dangling from his lip, and then I watch the movie. And while I know some of the facts of their personal lives, it doesn’t even begin to threaten to infringe on my enjoyment of, and engagement with, their work. And I think it’s precisely because, character actors and classic Hollywood stars alike, there’s a well-defined persona there that extends beyond and separate from the person who created or embodied it. There’s Eugene Pallette and then there’s “Eugene Pallette”, John Wayne and then there’s “John Wayne”. It’s easy to separate the art from the artist because in some ways they’re already separated, the fact and the legend, and my brain prints the legend.
Whereas with an actor like Gibson, while exceptionally talented and even pretty daring in some of his roles, who I think qualifies as a “star” in the sense of his movies make (or made) a lot of money, but who doesn’t have that same larger-than-life iconic quality, the first thing that pops into my head when I see him on screen now is, “you look like a pig in heat”.
Calling for a German victory mid-way through America’s involvement in WWII? Pallette was lucky all he saw was a pink slip, as opposed to the inside of an internment camp.
@“david hare”: the possibility of a Criterion SHANGHAI EXPRESS has been “in the works” (though it’s apparently NOT in the works at the moment) since more like 1998, which was about the time someone I know was asked to write liner notes for an edition that never materialized.
btw, the French officer is on his way to visit his sister, not his daughter.