Believe Your Eyes: It's A Blu-ray/4K Consumer Guide

Bathing Beauty (Warner Archive Blu-ray) A

I nev­er believed in the crit­ic­ally half-baked notion called “vul­gar auteur­ism” (which didn’t have much of a vogue any­way) but if I did, George Sidney would be in my pan­theon. To demon­strate the thes­is behind it, I would con­trast the edit­ing style of his 1966 The Swinger with that of any ran­dom Russ Meyer movie, or maybe, just to keep the them­at­ic con­tent rel­at­ively close togeth­er, Meyer’s The Seven Minutes. Very sim­il­ar. And alas not evid­ent here in this 1944 pic­ture that’s the first of what would be sev­er­al pic­tures fea­tur­ing Esther Williams doing what she’d been doing beau­ti­fully since before her teens. Yes, my friends, there was a time in motion pic­ture view­ing his­tory in which grown adults would pay real money to watch an attract­ive woman in a vari­ety of form-fitting, col­or­ful bathing suits…swim. That’s it. Swim. While smil­ing, that’s some­thing. Actually Esther was quite a swim­mer, and an appeal­ing act­ress, and this pic­ture is a remark­able example of how MGM could take a trifle and spin it out and fluff it up into the most elab­or­ate cot­ton candy treat ever. Back to Sidney and edit­ing: the pace here is con­sist­ently bouncy and cheer­ful, not an easy thing to sus­tain for an hour and forty. While her third motion pic­ture appear­ance, this is her first as “Esther Williams,” so to speak.  But the style of the EW music­al was already mature here, what with a metic­u­lous pro named Busby Berkeley cho­reo­graph­ing all the movie’s abund­ant water bal­lets. What’s the thing about? Oh I have no idea. But it does have Basil Rathbone, Margaret Dumont AND Xavier Cugat gal­li­vant­ing around. And boy, Harry James sure can blow his glow­ing golden trum­pet. This Warner Archive disc boasts gor­geous repro­duc­tion of gor­geous Technicolor because of course it does. Some of the shots give you that 3D effect. Red Skelton is cute when his char­ac­ter goes on about want­ing to write “Symphonies, tone poems, son­atas.”  He’s an odd romantic match with Esther but then again some­times it’s nice to see a rel­at­ive schnook win over the lead­ing lady. Refreshing, you could say.  —A

The Beast With Five Fingers (Warner Archive Blu-ray) A

You all know the story of how Luis Buñuel, dur­ing his pre World-War-II Hollywood sojourn, kinda-sorta came up with the idea for this pic­ture. You prob­ably also know that he him­self used this move’s disembodied-hand gag in his own mas­ter­piece The Exterminating Angel.  But with a dif­fer­ence. As I wrote in a book­let essay for Radiance’s superb Nothing Is Sacred: Three Heresies by Luis Buñuel box set, “[t]he limb is clearly a floppy prop hand, not unlike some­thing you’d get at a nov­elty store. If we take the use of such a plainly fake prop as delib­er­ate — and there’s no reas­on why we should not — this con­sti­tutes the director’s harshest state­ment on the con­di­tion of his char­ac­ters: that they are so lack­ing in ima­gin­at­ive fac­ulties that even their night­mares are ersatz.” In this 1946 clas­sic, dir­ec­ted by Robert Florey from a script by Curt Siodmak and star­ring Peter Lorre in one of his puffy phases, the hand is more often than not a real one, made to look dis­em­bod­ied via effects wiz­ardry. When it’s chok­ing Lorre it is a prop hand, bet­ter than Buñuel’s, but still not that con­vin­cing. Nevertheless the whole B enter­prise has stick­ing power because it does execute the title con­ceit with energy and con­vic­tion. No won­der Oliver Stone recon­jured the concept for his worth-seeking-out The Hand.  The pic­ture qual­ity here is gor­geous, with very rich blacks. One only wishes for a sim­il­ar upgrade for 1940’s Stranger on the Third Floor, a Skinny Lorre chiller with sim­il­arly eer­ie mise-en-scene. — A

The Beyond (Grindhouse 4K Ultra disc)

I think I’ve men­tioned before my lov­able Uncle Bob, who in the late-80s though the early 90s ran a small chain of video stores in west­ern Jersey. One of which was man­aged by my mom, who had Keith Jarrett as a reg­u­lar cus­tom­er there. Yeah, and how I loaned Jarrett a laser disc of Vadim’s Dangerous Liaisons by proxy — he wanted to see it because Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were fea­tured therein, and Monk had con­trib­uted the score prop­er. Sure I did. I for­get now if I men­tioned that Bob developed a slight fix­a­tion for extreme Italian hor­ror movies that were trick­ling into the mar­ket in utter garbage trans­fers on to VHS tape no less. It was through such goods that I first became acquain­ted with the oeuvre of Lucio Fulci, and I was rather neg­at­ively impressed. 1982’s New York Ripper is a foul pic­ture that gains noth­ing from LOOKING foul. Now that it’s avail­able in s pristine 4K edi­tion from Blue Underground, I admit a not even par­tic­u­larly grudging admir­a­tion for it. I’ll get to what turned me around in a minute. As for Ripper’s pre­de­cessor, 1981’s The Beyond, it’s also set and shot in the U.S.; way down yon­der in New Orleans to be exact. This gives Fulci a pre­text to use a lot of fog. Miasma, in the EC Comics sense, I like to think, although I have no idea wheth­er Lucio knew of EC Comics or not. It would stand to reas­on I guess. Anyway, the abund­ant gore in this kind of splits the dif­fer­ence between super gnarly and fake look­ing, and some­times the fake-looking factor doesn’t even apply because the con­cep­tu­al point being driv­en home, so to speak, is so repel­lent. This comes with more extras than I’ve been able to begin to explore, and also a “Composer’s Cut” fea­tur­ing a rethink of the score by Fabio Frizzi, which a lot of fans have been look­ing askance at. Essentially it’s a largely elec­tron­ic remake of the ori­gin­al orches­tral score. I’m not offen­ded by it; essen­tially, it’s like, “Okay, but what if Goblin?”  But its necessity/attractiveness no doubt exists fore­most in the mind of, well, Fabio Frizzi. But it doesn’t take away from the per­verse mag­ni­fi­cence of the pack­age as a whole, which I mis­takenly had shipped to my father-in-law’s res­id­ence. Once I real­ized this you can ima­gine the pan­icked “don’t open that pack­age” call I made there.  — A+

Dirty Harry

Outlaw Josey Wales

Pale Rider (Warner Brothers 4K Ultra discs)

By now we all know that Eastwood’s a great film­maker, so we don’t need, say, to trot out Orson Welles’ enthu­si­ast­ic endorse­ment of 1976’s The Outlaw Josey Wales on The Tonight Show to bol­ster our pos­i­tion, although, sure, it’s a nice thing to have. Bruce Surtees is a god, what can I tell you. Wales’ cold blue of morn­ing open­ing minutes are as visu­ally breath­tak­ing as…well, the rest of the movie, frankly. Pale Rider, made about a dec­ade later, is also superb even if it’s not the mas­ter­piece Josey is. It’s mighty sat­is­fy­ing in a way that recalls Leone, any­how. And if Josey had nev­er been made it WOULD be a mas­ter­piece, so there. Both were shot by Bruce Surtees, a mag­ni­fi­cent cine­ma­to­graph­er who was intro­duced to Eastwood by Don Siegel, on the great The Beguiled. And yes, Surtees also shot Dirty Harry, which remains Dirty Harry, and whose most notori­ous scene encom­passes a movie mar­quee announ­cing Play Misty for Me, anoth­er remark­able Surtees out­ing. These three 4K Ultras, released sim­ul­tan­eously, are reference-level products, incred­ible pic­ture qual­ity through­out. And no, Harry does NOT have any kind of teal over­lay.  — A+ for the bunch

I Remember Mama (Warner Archive Blu-ray) A+

From the screen­writer of Cat People. No really. Not a “what incred­ible irony” obser­va­tion, just a note that Dewitt Bodean, for that is his name, had admir­able range. Bodean adap­ted from a John Van Druten play that had itself been adap­ted from a pop­u­lar Kathryn Forbes book. The big news is that this is a George Stevens pic­ture, the first fic­tion fea­ture he was actu­ally able to com­plete after return­ing from his yeo­man ser­vice mak­ing pic­tures related to the war effort. More than one crit­ic has examined how Stevens changed as a film­maker after the war. The change wasn’t instant­an­eous; this sub­ject was one that wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing com­ing from pre-war Stevens. But one can ima­gine that his exper­i­ences might have shaped his approach. This heart warm­er is, among oth­er things, a ter­rific­ally pro-immigrant state­ment. In The American Cinema Sarris called it “the most restrained of the immigrant-family sagas,” but I think that restraint con­trib­utes to its power. Renoir said McCarey was one of the great American dir­ect­ors because he really under­stood people. I’d extend that assess­ment to George Stevens, which would be pre­sump­tu­ous because, you know, I’m not Renoir. That said, Stevens could not have pulled this human­ist gem off without the spec­tac­u­lar Irene Dunne in the lead. Even though she was fifty at the time of shoot­ing, she had to be made up to look older and the fact that she didn’t mind demon­strates how com­mit­ted she was to her role. The fas­cin­at­ing cast also included a very cozy Oskar Homolka, Ellen Corby, Rudy Vallee and Edgar Bergen. A truly lovely pic­ture. —A+

Th King of Kings (Flicker Alley)

This is a phant­asmagor­ia. Truly. The col­or sequences — the open­ing orgi­asts, includ­ing “Mary Magdelena,” in the court of Herod, in an early Technicolor pro­cess, or the hand-tinted flam­ing torches against the night blue in the garden of Gethsemane — are mind­bog­gling, while the sepi­as of much of the dra­mat­ic meat of the pic­ture is immacu­lately rendered. And the nar­rat­ive itself is fas­cin­at­ing. While Nick Ray’s remake of Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 pic­ture had the whole Mary and Joseph bit, DeMille’s ori­gin­al begins almost in media res, JC bio­graphy wise — in Herod’s lair he’s spoken of almost as a rumor of war, and then we see him a‑preachin’ and a ‑heal­in’ up a storm. Intertitles give us scrip­ture verse to assure us that DeMille’s storytelling is his­tor­ic­ally on the level, which of course it is not. What it is is over­whelm­ingly DeMillean, which is to say kind of awe-inspiring in its nerve. Not everyone’s cup of meat, of course. But no film­maker staged a bet­ter tableau than DeMille — and the intro­duc­tion of sound would not put any kin do halt to that. Flicker Alley just keeps top­ping itself; the pack­age fea­tures the 161-minute “road­show” ver­sion (my pre­ferred one), a trim 115-minute recon­struc­tion of the gen­er­al release cut, and a truck­load of extras from the film’s pro­duc­tion, première, and some info on the res­tor­a­tion. A mir­acle. — A+

The Spanish Main (Warner Archive) A

Here’s a fas­cin­at­ing pro­duc­tion, to be sure. For back­story: act­or Paul Henreid, as Viktor Laszlo, you may recall, ulti­mately does get Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa at the end of Casablanca. Nevertheless, it’s a pyrrhic vic­tory because every­one knows right­eous pro­pa­gand­ist Laszlo is the eth­ic­al but drab choice, his hero­ism not­with­stand­ing. Hasn’t got a patch on the romantic and even­tu­ally self-sacrificing Rick Blaine. He’s not exactly in the Ralph Bellamy pos­i­tion but where he’s at isn’t great either. So. Henreid wrote in his mem­oirs that her was “get­ting tired of being cast as the suave ladies’ man and I had def­in­itely decided no more Nazis so I star­ted think­ing in terms of some­thing that would be more fun, a swash­buck­ling part in a pir­ate story.” Okay, sure, and since he clearly wanted to be more col­or­ful and sexy, what bet­ter role than that of a pir­ate. But I also believe Henreid was up to some­thing more. He didn’t want to get the girl because the romantic and self-sacrificing oth­er guy decided to cede her to him. No. He wanted to get the girl because he was a badass, and what’s more badass than a pir­ate?  And who’s the girl you want to get more than Maureen O’Hara? If these con­triv­ances don’t sound like fun to you, I don’t know what to tell you. The movie really is. Fun, that is. Pantheon dir­ect­or Frank Borzage doesn’t take things too ser­i­ously but he def­in­itely doesn’t phone it in. This has sweep, scope, grandeur, but also a very appeal­ing wink. And again, glor­i­ous Technicolor as Warner Archive delights in deliv­er­ing. — A

Side Street

The Tall Target (Warner Archive Blu-rays)

Even when not work­ing with ori­gin­al Prince of Darkness cine­ma­to­graph­er John Alton, Anthony Mann’s noir visu­als were always on point. His frantic thrill­er Side Street opens with a remark­able bunch of aer­i­al shots of NYC, stuff that, to bor­row an Armond White turn of phrase, puts today’s gen­er­ic drone views to shame. A nar­rat­or informs us that in the naked city “two per­sons liv­ing twenty feet apart may nev­er meet,” a notion that would later become a theme of Joseph McElroy’s mad­den­ing door­stop nov­el Women and Men. Just so you know. Mann’s pic­ture begins at a gal­lop, with Farley Granger think­ing he’s lift­ing $200 from a guy who’s chisel­ing him but actu­ally steal­ing 30 grand.  A vari­ation of this plot would anim­ate Don Siegel’s Charley Varrick dec­ades later.  As soon as Farley strikes it ‘rich,” a thin film of sweat comes over his face and nev­er quite dries up. Poor inno­cent wife Cathy O’Donnell has a baby on the way; the act­ress is win­ning and earn­est. Lensed by the great Joseph Ruttenberg, every shot has an unusu­al numin­ous dynam­ism. Mann’s style is as dis­tinct­ive in a more humane mode as it is in the more rough-and-tumble T‑Men and Raw Deal. Target, about Dick Powell try­ing to foil a Lincoln assas­sin­a­tion scheme, is set on a richly shad­owed night train (lensed by Paul C. Vogel) and fea­tures Ruby Dee, who incarn­ates the movie’s anti-racist theme. It’s rich in sus­pense and plot twists. Both essen­tial lib­rary items. — A+ for both