5 Top Shelf Blu-rays From the Warner Archive

George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast to review five all-time great classic films released on Blu-ray in December.  We go through each of the films and the included extras to help you decide if you want to add these films to your home collection.

We start with the highly requested  TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1932) from MGM starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan.  This terrific casting made this film a hit on its initial release and led to a series of films.  But this is the one that started it all and the new 4K scan means that you now get to see and hear the film in the best condition since its initial release.  The same can be said for our next film, ANNA CHRISTIE (1930) starring Greta Garbo in her first "talkie" film.  Garbo shines, and the film still packs a punch 93 years after its initial release.  Next is the Academy Award-winning film THE GREAT ZIEGFELD (1936) starring the irrepressible William Powell, Best Actress winner Luise Rainer, and Myrna Loy in the biopic on the famous entertainer.  We review all of the extras on this packed disc and George details the restoration and many of the stars of the film.  Our fourth film is the powerful drama MADAME BOVARY (1949), starring Jennifer Jones, Van Heflin, Louis Jourdan, and James Mason.   We discuss the powerful teaming of director Vincente Minnelli and composer Miklos Rozsa and their importance to the film.  And we detail the extras, especially the MGM 25th Anniversary retrospective film.  We wrap up our discussion with the fan favorite GENTLEMAN JIM (1942) starring Errol Flynn in his favorite role and directed by one of his favorite collaborators, director Raoul Walsh.  This is pure entertainment at its best, combining drama, comedy, and sport. The disc is loaded with extras and makes for a tantalizing release.

Purchase links:
TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1932)
MADAME BOVARY (1949)
THE GREAT ZIEGFELD  (1936)
GENTLEMAN JIM (1942)
ANNA CHRISTIE (1930)

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

Hello and welcome to the extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and the release on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4k or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Larger, host, and joining me for our first podcast of 2024 is George Felstein to review some of the December Blu-ray releases from the Warner archive.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Hi George, hello Tim, and happy new year to all.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Happy new year. How was your holiday?

Speaker 2: 0:45

Well, a lot of my time during the holiday was spent working on upcoming releases, which is a joy. Yeah, it's a good thing.

Speaker 1: 0:55

Well, as you've mentioned in our last podcast, we had a terrific 2023 for the Warner archive Lots of fun things already announced for January. So there's a lot of films between December and January, which is a bit unusual because December is often a light month for you, but not this year. So we have a lot to talk about today. Absolutely Well, because I've been a little busy, I wasn't able to go through all of the films in the December releases, but I did focus on the five classic films that were released on December 12th and I thought it'd be fun to kind of go a little bit out of order.

Speaker 1: 1:34

So I wanted to start our discussion with what I assume is a fan favorite and highly requested and one that you mentioned in our last podcast has already sold very well, and that's the 1932 film, tarzan the Ape man. Yes, I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It's got a fun plot and it holds up pretty well. You know it's an older film here, precode, and part of that is because the chemistry between Moreno Sullivan and Johnny Weismiller is terrific, and I was watching the documentary on this release and it sounds like the casting of those two was a, you know, a little bit of a risky move because neither one of them was a big star or anything. Right.

Speaker 2: 2:16

He had never, to my knowledge, been in any kind of narrative film. I know there is film of him when he was an Olympic champion, but I think this was his first acting role and Moreno Sullivan was a young contract player at MGM just starting out, and it turned into be one of the great teamings of film history, because Johnny Weismiller went on to make five more Tarzan movies at MGM and continued making them on slimmer budgets at RKO in the 1940s. But when he moved to RKO, moreno Sullivan did not go with the package. An actress named Brenda Joyce took on the role of Jane, and the later 1940s RKO Tarzans aren't nearly as good as the MGM productions, but this is the granddaddy of them all and I think I may have mentioned this before when we talked about the announcement of this title, and that is that there is no apocryphal saying of the line me Tarzan, you Jane.

Speaker 2: 3:32

That never happens, but they established the character and the chemistry between them was, as you say, fantastic. The big, big takeaway here is the restoration, because I've never seen this film look good and now it looks amazing for something especially that's over 90 years old and where the original negative was long destroyed. So we worked with the best available elements to try to make this as gorgeous as we could, and I'm hoping that we succeeded.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Yeah, I thought it looked terrific and the sound of course as well. And this is, I mean, we're talking 1932, so it's still pre-code. And yeah, I mean, what, the outfits that they have marine in, and then also just some of the innuendo, maybe that's included in there is totally pre-code right and that makes it a lot of fun and kind of holds up maybe to the modern audience. But back to the how it looks and sounds. It comes across and looks terrific on my 4k monitor.

Speaker 2: 4:40

Yeah, it's pretty spectacular. You know you mentioned the pre-code nature of it that the following film, the second film, tarzan and his mate in 1934, which many people consider even better than Tarzan the eight man I'm hoping that that will be something that we will be able to tackle because that one is particularly pre-code in that there's actually a nude swim with a body double for marino Sullivan that was. It became part of the way we distributed the film decades ago, but that version of it was pulled with the production code and the swimming sequence and so forth was removed from the film, from subsequent viewings and television viewings. It's long been around, but if this seems a little pre-code, tarzan and his mate seems even more so. So that's why I'm hoping that the universe will smile down upon the Warner Archive and allow us to proceed with that and the as you mentioned and I shared with you earlier initial sales on this among many of these December titles. They've all been really really well received and the sales have been very impressive. But I'm feeling guardedly optimistic. I'll get a green light to be able to move forward on Tarzan and his mate and hopefully more thereafter, because we we have a lot of Tarzan, but this is the grandaddy as far as talking pictures.

Speaker 2: 6:20

There had been a silent Tarzan of the apes, I think in 1918, with Elmo Lincoln, if I have my names and dates correct, but Tarzan had been in silent screen with not much impact.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Tarzan the Ape man and MGM behind it was a box office bonanza and you know it was the earliest MGM movies to come out as a videocassette. And you think about what the industry was like in the very early 1980s when MGM started to do that. Tarzan and his mate was like a night the opera wizard of Oz, in terms of the essential classics that people who didn't know classic cinema in depth would know. These films need to come out and Tarzan the A man was one of those movies. So it's been available to own for over 40 years and that's why physical media is so important, because people want to be able to continue to own their own copy that no one can take away. I'm very proud of the Tarzan the A man disc because it has that terrific documentary that we had put together for the DVD and A substantial overview of Tarzan, the property, tarzan film series, johnny Weismore, the people in it, and it was nice to be able to carry that through along with some other other goodies.

Speaker 1: 7:54

Yeah, I learned a lot of the background stuff from that documentary and watching it starts from the very beginning and it has the historians and they're telling the the history of the Tarzan series from the book and everything that was fascinating. I mean, I didn't realize there were that many Tarzans done in the teens and twenties and thirties, but the author had really did an amazing kind of job of making sure that the Tarzan property got out there.

Speaker 2: 8:23

Edgar Rice Burroughs right, yes, you know it's very interesting because Edgar Rice Burroughs created this with MGM but he continued to have other rights to continue making other Tarzan movies. So there's a whole other series of Tarzan films that were produced by a gentleman named Sal Lesser. There was a serial and there was a Buster Krabb Tarzan and Herman Bricks Tarzan you know just all these different Tarzans in the 1930s. At the same time MGM was making theirs. So it was really Tarzania, tarzan mania.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Yeah, I mean, what a great era for literature. I love that era of the stories and they've just, you know they were then made into movies, so they're great fun, these adventure stories from that era. Do you have a couple other HD cartoons on here for extras that were quite good, and then the Teochco trailer, which is a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 9:30

Well, we're thrilled with the disc and we hope to be able to satiate more fan appetite with more Tarzan in the future. So fingers and toes crossed on that.

Speaker 1: 9:41

Well, let's talk about the next one, and we're going to jump back a couple of years to Anna Christie, and you and I talked a little bit about this in the last podcast for other reasons. I mean, it's a historical film because of it's the first one where Garble talks, of course, but it's also a quite a compelling film. I know it's not a perfect film, but it's a fascinating film to me because it's taken from the Eugene O'Neill play and from that very first scene on the barge with Marie Dressler and George Marion, where they're just bantering. I mean it, you know they have heavy accents, but you, you get a sense right off of the characters and then they move to the bar where Anna arrives. I mean, I was just drawn into the story, this kind of tragic story, there, and ninety-two years later I feel like the film still really packs a punch.

Speaker 2: 10:37

Oh, absolutely, and again you said it, eugene O'Neill, really I'd say the first of our great American 20th century playwrights I mean in the class by himself, and most of his works are stunning classics and Anna Christie is among them. And Anna Christie was filmed as a silent film in 1923. I believe with Blanche Suite, if I'm correct, and MGM bought the property. They wanted Garbo's sound debut to really be a knockout because the question of whether or not she could survive in talkies was a big one. Her last silent film was the last silent film MGM ever made, not counting silent versions of sound movies that were needed for little pokey towns that didn't have theaters with sound equipment. They still had to make silent versions in the early 30s. To satiate Didn't last very long. But her last film, the Kiss with Lou Ares in 1929. That was a silent release when everybody else had already switched basically entirely to sound. Valberg and Mayor and MGM were all deeply concerned that Garbo, who is already really their biggest female star of the time, whether or not she would make the transition, and the excellence of the film and the fact that the film holds up so well is a direct product of Irving Thalberg's genius at how he handled production at the studio and who worked on what film and who was cast in what film. He was very involved in the nitty gritty. He made sure that Garbo's debut would really make a killing at the box office, and it did, and probably more people saw Eugene O'Neill work via this film than had previously seen any of his work on the stage, and we talked about this on our announcement podcast.

Speaker 2: 13:00

But there were multiple foreign language versions of this film made because they had not yet perfected dubbing for international territories, and these would be filmed at night on the sets with different casts, and in the case of Garbo she spoke all the different languages in each of the foreign language versions, with different casts and different directors, and the only one that survives, at least in our vaults, is the German version. If there is the French version or some of the other versions, we don't have any remnant of that. But we're lucky to have what we have because there were many MGM films made in multiple languages in that early period and we do have a few alternate versions. But for Anna Christie this German version is particularly notable because there are those who actually think it is a better film than the English language version. I don't know if I necessarily agree with that, but the director certainly was more fluid in his camera work and one of Garbo's dear friends played the Marie Dressler role. To have that on there as an extra, and while we didn't have the funding to be able to restore it, we did create a new HD master so that it wouldn't be a standard definition master that would have interlacing. It's much more digestible and viewable, even though we couldn't do our usual aim to pristine, immaculate clean-up. It just wasn't possible financially. But I think it's there as an overall presentation of how this film was experienced by different audiences, particularly in German-speaking countries.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Also on the disc we have a radio production from Lux Radio Theater, done in the late 30s with Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy From Lux Radio Theater. You always find these fascinating things and I thought it would be appropriate to put that on this disc. That was something we had done on the DVD. Then, further to that, we added the MGM Parade episode that talked about Garbo's earlier career. We had previously released another episode that talked about for later career on one of our releases earlier in the year. I think it's a great package. Again, the team at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Mijin gets a tremendous job in the restoration of the movie and we're very proud of it.

Speaker 1: 16:00

I'll jump back a little bit just to say that I did watch part of the German version. I found it fascinating watching the film, having just watched the English version, to see Garbo just so natural and everything of course, in that version, just like in the English version. But then you have a whole different set of actors. The costumes are a little bit different. There's just slight little differences in it. It was a fascinating bit of film history for me just to watch that. I think you've tried to include these other versions on the films when they're available. I mean it's a terrific thing to have on there. Then, as you say, the package of that with the other extras that you have really makes this a robust disc. Obviously, if you love the film and you love Greta Garbo, you're going to get it just for that film. But then when you look at just all these extras that you've put on here and how great they are, it really is, as you just said, a terrific package for the fans.

Speaker 2: 17:08

Absolutely. We're very, very proud of it. I hope people will support it because people want more Garbo. Buying Anna Christie and Camille and Queen Christina those are in one year having three Garbo essentials certainly stimulates an appetite to fill in the gaps with others that we're hoping to bring to Blu-ray.

Speaker 1: 17:36

Yeah, and they're all very different, aren't they? Yes, they are Just in terms of action adventure versus drama versus romance. Yeah, it's a great range. She had she's always Garbo but it means quite the range of different genres there.

Speaker 2: 17:55

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it and we're hoping to bring more for everybody.

Speaker 1: 17:59

Yeah, Well, next on our list is, I think, another, probably just fan favorite from what I'm seeing so far and was highly anticipated when you announced it, and that's the 1936 best picture Oscar winner, the great Zegfeld. The acting in this film I thought was terrific, but really I was just overwhelmed with the pageantry and how terrific your film looks and sounds. You wanted to look great and sound great because of all of that pageantry.

Speaker 2: 18:34

It's a remarkable, unique production and it's also, you know, it is a musical because there's so many musical sequences, but all the musical performances are on stage. It's not a musical where the characters sing, except on stage. This is a project that was actually under development and planned to be made at Universal Pictures. Universal started preparing it in 1934 and they were assuming it was going to be a huge production with them. Universal struggled financially through multiple decades in the early talky era and really up through the 40s and 50s. They were always having financial trouble, but particularly at this time the cost of this film was going to be so high that they decided that they couldn't move forward with it and they sold the whole package to MGM. And it was in, I think, probably early 1935 that the deal was locked in and they took over the project. And when they did so, mgm made arrangements with Billy Burke, the famous actress Glenda Goodwich of the North, who was Ziegfeld's widow, to buy the rights to the Ziegfeld name for motion picture making, and that ended up leading to Ziegfeld Girl in 1941, ziegfeld Follies, which was ultimately released in 1946. But the studio had other plans they were going to think of maybe doing Ziegfeld Follies shows on Broadway that they would produce and using the name. But the main focus was making this movie.

Speaker 2: 20:43

First and foremost and I think really one of the most impressive aspects of it it's really the key to what makes the film work or not is the performance of William Powell as Florence Ziegfeld. He is just tremendous in the film, very compelling. The film is not, as with many biographies of that era. The film is not very accurate in terms of telling the story of Ziegfeld and even in the credits they say, you know, influenced by certain moments of paraphrasing badly, but moments and achievements during the career of Ziegfeld. They really wanted to make something that was representative of who Ziegfeld was and what he did on the stage. But they had to deal with his financial ups and downs. They had to deal with the fact that he was a bit of a womanizer, a ladies man, and I don't mean that in a pejorative, negative sense, but his first wife, anna Held, was not particularly crazy about the fact that he was going out with lots of showgirls.

Speaker 2: 22:03

You have Louise Reiner in a performance that some people agree with me in thinking that it's a remarkable performance. It's really down to the one scene on the telephone after she's talking to Florence Ziegfeld after their divorce and she finds out that he's remarried. That telephone scene is what considered to be the factor that won her the best actress Oscar, which she would win again the following year for her leading lady role in the Good Earth 1937. Very rare that people win consecutive Oscars, especially in the best actor or actress category, but Louise Reiner is one of those people. She was a much more remarkable person as well as an actress. Then she was able to exhibit on the screen. She left the screen and left MGM several years later because she just didn't want to put up with a lot of the politics and behaviors and so forth. But the small cinematic legacy that she left is there to impress. I always find her work in this film to be quite notable and quite remarkable.

Speaker 2: 23:28

Then of course, you have William Powell's other half on screen, if you will, myrna Loy playing Billy Burke, ziegfeld's second wife. Always seeing Powell and Loy on the screen together is a joy. Billy Burke was working at MGM and performing on the screen and very active. She had her eye on the way the film was being constructed. It would be respectful of Ziegfeld and his legacy. Also, their daughter. Ziegfeld and Billy Burke had a daughter, patricia Ziegfeld, who is in the documentary on our disc. It was originally thought that she would be. When Universal was making the movie they announced that they were gonna have Patricia Ziegfeld help cast it. That didn't happen at MGM but she obviously had very positive things to say in our little documentary that's on the disc.

Speaker 2: 24:37

The main thrust of what makes this film so different for its time is it's three hours long and what we're presenting on the disc is overture, intermission, exit music.

Speaker 2: 24:54

That hadn't been until we did it for the DVD. That hadn't been shown with the film since its premiere engagements I think it only was used in New York and Los Angeles and we uncovered that when we were preparing it for DVD, which was close to 20 years ago. And now with the Blu-ray, again with the film where the original negative burnt up, working with various elements from the preservation, photochemical preservation side of things, we're able to make the film look and sound really wonderful. I'm very proud of it. This has been very much like Tarzan the Ape man. This is something people knew they had to own, is one of those elusive best picture Oscar winners that wasn't available on Blu-ray and now it is, and we're very proud of the package and I certainly hope people are enjoying it. That is what my messaging has been so far, from reviews and also friends and people within the industry who have gotten the disc and have really liked it.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Yeah, the massive wedding cake sequence, that scene. I mean wow to see it in this new 4K scan. It looks amazing and, of course, the filming and direction on that is fantastic. It was interesting to hear that this started off the Universal because it feels so much like an MGM film. I mean it just feels like it.

Speaker 2: 26:30

It very much is, and if Universal had made it it would have been completely different Doesn't mean that they wouldn't have done a good job, because they were still capable of making great films. 1935 was Bride of Frankenstein, 1936 was their version of Showboat. Both of them are heralded classics. But MGM MGM had yet to become the musical studio. That would happen, really, with the rise of Arthur Fried as a producer, starting in 1939, but they were making musicals. But for this film they pulled out all the stops. Mgm was the Tiffany of Motion Picture Studios. It was the greatest dream factory and they had the finest people in every way to get together and put this together.

Speaker 2: 27:26

And the pretty girls, like a melody wedding cake number, cost somewhere between a quarter of a million and $300,000 to film. Now put that into today's dollars. That would be probably $5 to $6 million to film. Just that sequence. It is so overwhelming because it mixes all forms of entertainment. You know the Berlin song is the primary melody that carries the production number through, but you've got little nods to classical themes and all sorts of forms of dance. You've got a little swiff of rhapsody and blue in there, which at the time was only a 11, 12 year old composition, but already so well known. It was astounding, and it was the end of Act.

Speaker 2: 28:24

One because it precedes the intermission, it left people gasping at its enormity. And then, almost 40 years later, when MGM put together that's entertainment or I should say more properly, when Jack Haley Jr made that's entertainment for MGM they did something really unique with a pretty girls like a melody, in that they positioned it early in the story of telling the rise and fall of the MGM musical. They put the pretty girls like a melody sequence and excerpt of it early in the film and they blew it up because the original presentations of that's entertainment were in 70 millimeter and they had the screen open up. They were cutting off the top and the bottom, which nobody really cared about back in 1974, but the thrilling effect of that in the theater was accompanied by that they were able to create true stereophonic audio for that number and Sinatra's narration was if it could be filmed today, maybe this is what it would look like Back in 1974, seeing that on a big 70 millimeter screen was pretty thrilling and it was one of the many highlights of that great compilation which, incidentally, is going to turn 50 this coming May.

Speaker 2: 29:53

To have the great Ziegfeld always at your fingertips for entertainment, you get to see some actual Ziegfeld performers, including the great Fanny Bryce.

Speaker 2: 30:05

There are also performers within the on stage performances that actually were never in a Ziegfeld follies but have become recent MGM contract players, like Ray Bolger and this is one of the more prominent showcases for his unique, eccentric dancing and he's terrific in it.

Speaker 2: 30:28

Eddie Cantor is portrayed by another performer who was known for imitating him. Because Cantor was under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, they couldn't get him, might not have been able to afford him. And then another person very famous for being in Ziegfeld follies was comedian Will Rogers. Mgm would have had to borrow him from Fox, but he actually had been killed in a plane crash and they hired a guy who was known for doing a good Will Rogers impression to take his spot, as both of those performers were very integral in what made the follies so substantial, this film was an enormous financial success and it was among the many pre-1948 MGM movies that went to television in 1956, so it's never been away. But this new presentation on the Blu-ray really makes it shine and shimmer, and our folks did a great job on the pictorial restoration as well as the audio restoration, and I'm so happy it's now on Blu-ray for people to own and enjoy.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Yeah, and I'll just throw in a couple of comments here, real briefly, about the X-Trade. You mentioned the retrospective Ziegfeld on film feature that's on there, which was quite informative. And then you had the vintage newsreel excerpt and the classic Warner Brothers cartoon, oh, and then an audio only Leo is on the air promotional program and the theatrical trailer. So well, you throw in the three hours for the film and then all of these extras and just how terrific the looks and sounds. This is a terrific package for this film.

Speaker 2: 32:21

And I also have to tip our hat to the authoring crew, because when you're dealing with a three hour motion picture plus extras and you want to keep my mandatory high bit rate, they did a great job and the disc is really something of which we're very proud and I really hope people will support it so that we can bring more films. I know people are hungry for more Powell and Lloyd, so the success of this will certainly bode well for more of their non-thin man films to arrive on Blu-ray.

Speaker 1: 32:56

Well, next on our list that I wanted to talk about is Madame Bovary, from 1949. I watched it last night. The story itself, of course, is so strong from the novel, but the film it's very, very well done. And I did want to mention the directing, which I thought was fantastic, by one of your favorite directors, Vincent Manelli. But it's just so smooth and seamless and natural. There's a lot of things to the story. There's a lot of ups and downs and tragedy and joy, but the directing really keeps it together. And then of course, the acting is terrific in here. But probably the most celebrated part of this film is that music by Nicholas Rosa and that ballroom scene. I mean it's the defining moment of the film in my mind. As Emma Bovary has just swept up in the allure of her fantasies and the tantalizing element that maybe they're within reach, I mean that's a fantastic scene and really this film is quite, quite good.

Speaker 2: 34:03

This is, in my opinion, one of Manelli's greatest masterpieces and that's a very tough category because there are so many. But when you look and I've said this before when we've talked about Vincent Manelli this man could basically handle every genre. He was, of course, known for his musicals, but he could do drama, he could do light comedy, he could do screwball comedy, he could do sophisticated comedy and what he did with musicals was really in the class by itself. But this is unlike anything I think he ever did before or after, because it tugs at your heart, it draws you into the storytelling. Every actor is so phenomenal and I think it's Jennifer Jones' best performance on screen. She won the Oscar in 1944 for the song of Bernadette, but I think this is the best performance she ever gave.

Speaker 2: 35:18

I think a lot of that had to do with Manelli's direction, but the combination of Roja's music, which is playing a vital role in this film, as any of the leading players, his music not just in, of course, the great Waltz dance scene, but all the way through the music is a character. It's helping to shape the storytelling and it's magnificently shot. The restoration is beautiful. This is the first time we've ever had a high definition presentation. We scanned our preservation elements in 4K and the net result is shimmering beauty. And I'm terribly happy that we finally have been able to bring this out, because Madame Bovery has been made into a motion picture several times. But I don't think any of the other iterations can touch what Manelli did in 1949. It is a masterpiece.

Speaker 1: 36:26

Yeah, I mean, if you're a fan of this film, you're obviously going to want to buy it, because this restoration I guess we always talk about it, but in this film when you're watching the scenes and they have some great sets, it just looks terrific. And then, of course, because of that music, the sound was so important for this. Well, of course it was important for Great Ziegfeld I don't want to make too much of it, but it really was important. The restoration work that you guys did to make it sound terrific. Because that's the emotional, that's what's driving the emotion right, that music and the sound in this and so much is driving that emotional story as it carries you along.

Speaker 2: 37:07

You've hit on a great point, tim. The more we can bring excellence to a presentation, the more likely we are for people to increase their ability to enjoy and be taken in by the Craftsmanship by which these films have been created. You're getting to see the MGM Dream Factory, as it were, really operating at full throttle. There were dark days to come years later, but at that point they had honed their departments to be able to just achieve anything. There are some remarkable, interesting casting choices in this, because you have James Mason in one of his earliest American film appearances, maybe even his first, I am not sure. But the way they framed the whole storytelling with the courtroom and so forth and so on, he was phenomenal. Louis Jordan was terrific and darkly menacing. And another underrated actor, van Heflin. People don't know who Van Heflin is now unless they're classic movie fans, but this man was really, I think, underrated as an actor because he could do so much and you feel for his character, you empathize for his character.

Speaker 2: 38:49

Everybody is just sensational, but Manelli could bring out those performances in actors. He knew exactly what to do and he conceptualized his films almost the way Hitchcock did and storyboarding things and planning things out. And if you think about it, you can see that that same mind, two years later, was crafting the unprecedented American in Paris and its signature ballet. At the end of the film there are, I think, creative links to the Bovery dance sequence and what was done in the American in Paris ballet. I can't say enough good things about Manelli. He didn't always direct perfect movies. There are some that aren't as good as others, but he rose to the challenge. The majority of his filmography is really superb.

Speaker 2: 39:57

There are several others of his films that have yet to make the jump to blue, and I'm hoping we'll be able to do that, maybe even this year, who knows?

Speaker 1: 40:08

Well, there's also a terrific extra on here. Oh, yes, that's that MGM 25th anniversary retrospective film Some of the Best. That's also an HD. Yes, that was a lot of fun to watch, was it? Lionel Barrymore is kind of the host of that.

Speaker 2: 40:28

He's the host behind the desk.

Speaker 1: 40:30

Yeah, and then he kind of takes you through one film from each of the 25 years that they've chosen and it's just a great snapshot. As I'm watching it I'm like, wow, that's one of our guys released recently. You know there are quite a few in there that you've released in the last two, three years, but it was. It was a fun, very entertaining moves quickly and great retrospective for the MGM 25th year. And then it was fun because at the end you know he says and these are some of our upcoming films, and of course they've got Madame Bovary in there as one of their upcoming films, so you get to see.

Speaker 2: 41:03

Exactly why I put it on this disk. Yeah, and they did some of the best in 1944 for their 20th anniversary. And then they decided to up their game and expand upon it for their 25th anniversary. We had had this available in standard definition previously, but to have a new HD transfer of it to add as an extra I thought was very substantial. And it does show a lot of the MGM 25th anniversary luncheon footage, much of which was also seen by the public years later in that's entertainment. But it just underscored the enormity of the star power of the studio that rightly proclaimed more stars than there are in heaven, and I was delighted to be able to add that to this disk.

Speaker 1: 42:04

And it was fun to see Jennifer Jones. She's there at that luncheon and she's the only one who looks like she dressed well, looks like she's wearing one of her outfits from the film.

Speaker 2: 42:13

It was in costume. There are a couple of people in there. Maria Lanz is also in his costume from a musical he was shooting. There are a few people that literally walked from the set to the soundstage where they were doing the luncheon and wore their costume while they ate, and they just were very careful not to leave any crumbs.

Speaker 1: 42:35

Yeah, I mean you have to be paying attention. But when I saw her and then she's got the veil over her face, I'm like, oh well, that's directly from the film and it was kind of fun. I mean, other folks there are just wearing their normal attire or whatever, their suits and dresses. But I've seen that footage many times, as you mentioned. But it's always great to see it. I'm just happy to be able to see all of those stars just at that luncheon. And then you have a couple of cartoons on there and the theatrical trailer as well.

Speaker 2: 43:05

Yes, you know, we always like to be able to add heft to the presentation and make it more attractive as something to own on your shelf. The film's the thing, but if you can put extras on, as you very well know, that only adds to the value of having the motion picture in your collection.

Speaker 1: 43:30

I feel like all of these films we've talked about, we could have talked more about them, but we're giving everybody just a good kind of overview. But each of these films really are spectacular in their own way. Having said that, I did save my own personal favorite for last the combination of a great star like Errol Flynn. But then this story where there's a mixture of comedy. I mean, I found myself laughing out loud because of the fighting of the Corbett brothers and just kind of some of the I don't want to call it slapstick, but you know, they just mix in some physical comedy as well and everything. But the character that Flynn plays, he's so charming, flynn is just so fantastic and this is a gentleman Jim from 1942, of course that we're talking about but I just enjoyed it. I mean, I love movies where you laugh. It's serious as well, it's got drama, and this film really just has all of that.

Speaker 2: 44:31

Well, this was allegedly Errol Flynn's favorite role of all the roles he played. I would assume that has to be true, because he's superb in it and it is one of the times where he's not swashbuckling or not being a Western hero, he's being a debonair gentleman who just happens to be a fine boxer Right. And he was portraying, of course, a real life story. And this was a situation where Warner Brothers bought the rights to make the film from his widow, again with a biographical film. It's not 100% accurate in terms of the truth of Corbett's life, but he really helped to raise the acceptability of heavyweight boxing as a sport that was given a little bit more respect. There really are very few Flynn films that stand out as unique, but I think this is definitely one of them. You've also got another one of my favorite directors, raoul Walsh, who Flynn got along with famously. They really loved working with each other. The net result of this is just it's just a film that makes you feel good. You know, right, you feel that way, tim.

Speaker 1: 46:11

I did. I mean, as I mentioned, I literally was laughing out loud at times and it's not a comedy. I mean this is not a date the races which we'll talk about before too long but because of the charm and the ease of which you're watching this story, and even in the story they're making fun of the character you know, paging Mr Corbett, paging Mr Corbett, running gag, so to speak, right at the club where he's at. They're just light touches that Walsh has of comedy through this and it's fantastic. It makes for great storytelling. Like you said, it might not be as accurate to do that, but for the audience it's terrific because then your viewing experience is so much fun and they mix in just enough of the fighting with the drama and the romance of course is terrific in here as well so that it just makes for a terrific entertainment.

Speaker 1: 47:14

I really enjoyed it. It looks terrific, the fighting scenes are fantastic. You know it's not always easy to mix all that boxing in with drama, but it comes across pretty realistically. You know, the fighting scenes and everything, how they shot that and everything. It's fun. I just really enjoyed it. That's kind of why I saved it for last, for just personal reasons here, because I thought it was a terrific film, looks great, and then you have a great, great package with it.

Speaker 2: 47:43

This is a fan favorite. You know, people who love Flynn love this movie. It just gave him an opportunity to show a different side. It was different than anything he had done before. It was tremendously successful when it was released and it continues to be. You know, when we announced this was coming out, people were like, oh, finally, and people want more of Flynn. And my goodness, we have so much more of his work that we need to deliver, and I'm hoping that we will be able to do that. You know, the screenplay was a skeleton based around Corbett's autobiography and that's what his wife sold the rights to to Warner Brothers in the very, very early 40s. And then the film came out in 1942 and was a smash from the get-go and has been beloved ever since.

Speaker 1: 48:47

And then we should just probably talk a little bit about these extras on here. You have the classical cartoons the Dover Boys at Pimentel University and I was watching that and that was. That was quite amusing, and that's an HD. And then you've got Phony Fables and HD Hobby Horse Laughs and HD. You've got the audio only Lady Esther's Green Guild Playhouse, broadcast with Errol Flynn and Alexis Smith, and the theatrical trailer. I mean that's a. That's a nice package of extras on here as well, very entertaining.

Speaker 2: 49:18

Well, we want to. You know, as I've said before, it's a Warner Night the movie is. If you went to see this in a Warner Brothers theater you'd likely see maybe one, maybe two cartoons from the studio, but not four. But we wanted to give more of an opportunity to show some obscure 1942 cartoons. And then Dover Boys is Chuck Jones classic. It's been something we've made available several times before but I felt thematically it fit very well with the elegance of this film and the way it is crafted. It seemed like a good fit. And the radio show is also quite enjoyable because they do manage to effectively tell the story in a very limited timeframe.

Speaker 1: 50:12

That's. You know. It's a terrific way to end the year of 2023, George for the Warner Archive, with these five classic films we've discussed today and there are more films that we didn't get to today, but these five, I mean. It just finishes off the year on a high, high note. I hope the fans are able to get them and support the Warner Archive, but I can't imagine that, of these five films that most people listening to this podcast isn't a fan of at least one or two of them, and then to see them with these restorations and the whole package of extras that you've put on here just really was a high note to the year.

Speaker 2: 50:52

Well, and I'm hoping you'll get a chance to see Saving Grace and Midwinter's Tale, which, for the other, december releases, so we can talk about those. They're a more contemporary vintage but they are modern classics and there's a lot to talk about there. And then of course, we'll get a chance to talk about the January releases when that happens, and then we'll also get a chance to talk about what's coming in February when we're ready to make those announcements. So a lot of fun is in store, folks.

Speaker 1: 51:26

For sure, for sure. There's a terrific amount of movies here right at the end of the year and to start the next year or so. It's a great way to end and finish and, of course, it's just the turning of the calendar. From the release schedule perspective, it's just great to see so many in the pipeline here. So, as always, george, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 51:44

Well, thank you, Tim, and I appreciate everything you're doing to help support our efforts and for people listening to this podcast. Thank you for supporting the Warner Archive and here's to 2024.

Speaker 1: 52:04

Well, as always. Thanks to George for coming on the podcast to review five of the December Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive, and I will have purchase links in the podcast show notes and on our website for those of you interested in purchasing these titles. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Mallard, Stay slightly obsessed.