3 Classic Films from the 1950s: The Nun's Story, Friendly Persuasion, & Devil's Doorway Reviews
May 22, 2024Episode 147
George Feltenstein
What do you get when you team 3 STARS - COOPER, HEPBURN, & TAYLOR with 3 all-time great DIRECTORS in WYLER, ZINNEMANN, & MANN? Three amazing films, of course, in "The Nun's Story," "Friendly Persuasion," & "Devil's Doorway." George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast to review these three classics from the 1950s that now look better than ever in high-definition Blu-ray. We go through the superb performances in each film, the keen-eyed direction from these film masters, and the fantastic restoration and package of extras that the Warner Archive has created for each release.
What do you get when you team 3 STARS - COOPER, HEPBURN, & TAYLOR with 3 all-time great DIRECTORS in WYLER, ZINNEMANN, & MANN? Three amazing films, of course, in "The Nun's Story," "Friendly Persuasion," & "Devil's Doorway." George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast to review these three classics from the 1950s that now look better than ever in high-definition Blu-ray. We go through the superb performances in each film, the keen-eyed direction from these film masters, and the fantastic restoration and package of extras that the Warner Archive has created for each release.
Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and their release on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host and joining me today is George Feltenstein, to review the April and May Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. Eltenstein to review the April and May Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive, and we recorded this in one session, but I've broken this into two different podcasts because we had such a great discussion on these, and in this first one we're going to talk about three fantastic releases from the 1950s. Hi, george, hey Tim, great to be with you again to talk about our new releases.
Speaker 2:
Sam, great to be with you again to talk about our new releases.
Speaker 1:
Well, let's jump ahead to 1950, to the Devil's Doorway, and I have to say this was kind of a heartbreaking story. I was moved and it's just wonderfully told by director Anthony Mann. Robert Taylor, as Lance Poole, I mean, he starts off. He's riding home on the horse. He's so looking forward to getting home and seeing some of the people from town and you can see that he's well-respected.
Speaker 2:
And proud of how he served his country, and proud he's a war hero.
Speaker 1:
You know, he's been anointed in Washington and he's, you know, and he's so desperate to come home only to find dot, dot, dot brightness of his character, the hope, and then, over the course of this film as it unfolds, you see him just kind of sliding deeper into this darkness as he feels the you know the encroachment of the sheep farmers and the despair when he finds out that he really has no rights to his own country because he's a Native American.
Speaker 2:
This film is antithetical to the kinds of films that MGM was making only a few years earlier, because they weren't dealing with cutting edge social issues, as opposed to Warner Brothers, who were always making films that were cutting edge social issues. We're always making films that were cutting edge social issues, but here Devil's Doorway is. So, on the side of making people look at, of having a Caucasian actor playing a Native American, the power of Taylor's performance as Lance Poole in the leading role is so gargantuan in its importance that it would wipe out any of those politically correct conversations. Right, it doesn't matter that he has makeup on. He gives a fantastic performance. He is generally, I believe, underrated as an actor. He's known for being very, very handsome, especially in his younger day, and for his westerns and action, and this is a whole other level. His acting, his performance, is just phenomenal and I have to think the societal expose of this even though, granted, it took place expose of this, even though, granted, it took place. You know, in the 1860s this was a byproduct of Dori Sherry becoming head of production at MGM While LB Mayer was still there. Dori Sherry wanted to make films that made a social statement and MGM was actually flummoxed as to how to market this movie and if it would have any possibility at all of making its money back and doing business. And what happened was that, just a little bit before, james Stewart starred in a film for Fox called Broken Arrow, which also gave the audience a chance to see things from the Native American point of view, and that was such a hit that MGM decided they didn't have anything to worry about and they went ahead with this film.
Speaker 2:
Went ahead with this film and again Anthony Mann, not yet under contract to MGM, but still being borrowed from the Eagle Lion studio where they had borrowed him before. That's where he was under contract and MGM had borrowed him previously and they once again borrowed him again to helm this. And so when the Anthony Mann is behind the camera, when you've got a Western or a noir or, in this case, you've got a Western historical piece that still has some kind of noir tinge to it in some ways I don't know if that's an accurate description, but that's how I came away with it, because you didn't know quite where things were going to go and the shock is when you're watching a movie that's almost 75 years old, coming from MGM, and there is no happy ending, right? You know, this is the studio that was all about the happy endings. Well, this is not a happy story and there was no happy ending, right.
Speaker 2:
To learn tolerance, then even more, and this film conveys that message without hitting you over the head as some kind of, let's say, thematic propaganda. It's not that at all. It's telling the story as it is. It's telling a story that was based on truth and the way people were mistreated. That it was based on truth and the way people were mistreated, and everybody gives a sensational performance. I have to also call out John Alton, the cinematographer who is tremendously appreciated by others who dig great cinematographers and the work that they do. He could have done anything. John Alton was the cinematographer for the ballet sequence in An American in Paris. He really had such a great sense of shadow and light and that comes through in this movie. And, of course, the Blu-ray, being a 4K scan from our preservation elements, really takes full advantage of his cinematographer palette, if you will, and you see.
Speaker 1:
I mean, you see why Lance Poole loves this valley and he wants to, you know, live there and have his people live there. That's their land, that's where they've traditionally lived and so, yeah, it's a beautifully shot film. I did want to go back and talk a little bit about Paula Raymond who plays the lawyer. Who plays the lawyer and, to your point, I thought it gave a fair treatment in terms of showing kind of how the Robert Taylor character tries to use the law to help and support his claim and then he finds out just how little the law really is behind him and that he can use really is behind him and that he can use. But it also, you know, I think it treats the sheep, farmers and everybody in a fair way as it deals with this kind of, you know, the message of the film.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's not just, it's not one side. You get to see the other side.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, and then that's done through in part, this Paula Raymond character and the use of, you know, trying to do it legally, and that's kind of what makes it heartbreaking is when the law doesn't support, in this case the Native Americans Right and Lance Poole. But she has a very fine performance and I'm with you. You know you're hoping kind of for the positive outcome but it just doesn't happen. But it's a fantastic film, looks fantastic with the restoration you guys have done, and then it does have a few extras, the classic cartoons that you have on there.
Speaker 2:
And that just gives it more of again what it was like going to the movies at that time. We did not have anything thematically in terms of other pieces that would tie directly, so again we went for you know 1950 era cartoons just to add to the enjoyment. And of course they're remasters so they look great. But Paula Raymond was under contract to MGM just for a brief period of time and she's very prolific around 1949, 50, 51. And she had a career doing guest shots on TV shows for many, many years thereafter, but not a very well-known actress, but I think her performance is quite good.
Speaker 2:
And she also did a film for Anthony Mann at MGM in 1951, which I'm very fond of, called the Tall Target, and that is another cult film that has a huge following. People are hoping to see come out on Blu-ray and I'm hoping the same thing. So more Paula Raymond would be a good thing in that respect. And of course I can't get enough of Anthony Mann because so much of his work is heads and tails above others. So much of his work is heads and tails above others and I'm glad that in this particular era, for many years now, he was not a director that people were talking about with reverence decades ago, but now people realize how exceptionally gifted he was and he is a body of cinematic work that speaks for itself in terms of excellence.
Speaker 1:
That just made me think, george. We're going to be talking about a lot of terrific directors coming up here as we go into more of these reviews. Anthony Mann you've just mentioned. But how about this next one, friendly Persuasion, another 1950s film we have three this month from 1956. And William Wyler. I mean what a fantastic director he is.
Speaker 1:
And then this film stars, you know, gary Cooper, of course, in Friendly Persuasion as Jess Birdwell, and you know he's a Quaker in this, and I just found this movie to be, I guess, the best way to say it is just a pleasure to watch. I'm smiling, I'm laughing that that silly goose from the very beginning that that runs through the story, just this wonderful family, this kind of patriarch that Cooper is playing now as a, as an older man, and just seeing this family, it was so heartwarming. Their faith, their life on this farm in Indiana. And yet you have this kind of impending. I don't want to say doom, but the Confederates are nearby and you're just wondering how are they going to deal with this challenge to their belief system.
Speaker 2:
This was a hit at the box office and you know I can't picture anybody else but Gary Cooper. He's perfect, he is absolutely perfect. This film was so successful that it even got a reissue in the 60s before it eventually ended up on television. I remember watching this as a child on TV with my dad and he was explaining to me the background of Quakers and so forth and so on, and I found it very, very fascinating.
Speaker 2:
But the thing I think that's prevalent in the work of William Wyler is you would be hard pressed to find a film of his that just didn't reek of excellence and care in every respect. His body of work is so incredibly impressive. And we'reists was the A label of B label, monogram pictures, and they started Allied Artists around 1948 to make A level movies and they only did a few a year and eventually they just got rid of the monogram name and everything became Allied Artists and they mostly made B pictures with the Bowery Boys and so forth and so on. But every once in a while they would put up some significant money to do a high budget film and when you have a cast like Gary Cooper and Dorothy McGuire and basically the introduction of a very young Anthony Perkins.
Speaker 2:
It's spectacular. Everything about this movie is wonderful. I never have seen it look good until this Blu-ray, and I think Warner Brothers Special Picture Imaging did a spectacular job. They're working directly from the camera, negative scanning at 4K, and the results are heads and tails above what you saw on the DVD. We created gosh, I think, in the late 90s or 2000 or something like that, so the jump to the New Master is really spectacular.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and it's a beloved movie. It had what? Six Academy Award nominations Best Picture. Dorothy McGuire won some awards at the National Board of Review for Best Actress. I mean, there was just so many fine performances in this. And then, of course, anthony Perkins. This is his first, what major film appearance and he just was a breakout role for him.
Speaker 2:
It absolutely made him a star because by he was starring in movies at Paramount. And then, of course, four years later, he'd be Norman Bates, which everybody remembers him for.
Speaker 1:
Well, he's terrific in this role and it's so different from, of course, the Norman Bates role that he did later. He's got that youth, he's got that angst. He wants to, you know, he wants to take up arms and fight and that goes against his faith, and so that kind of inner turmoil and drama is really fun and interesting to watch and he he just does a terrific job portraying that. I just think this is a film you can watch over and over again, and now, with this new HD version and the upgrades and the sound, everything, it's just going to be a fun one to have in your collection so that you can do that, you know, so that you can watch it. And it looks pristine, looks great. You're not going to find it looking like this anywhere else and I doubt any streaming services are going to have this film very often. So I mean, this is a, this is a great one, I think, a great opportunity for fans to add them, add this one to their collection.
Speaker 2:
You know I always say 1939 was the greatest year, you know, the greatest single year of classic Hollywood. But 1956 is one of those years as as 1951 is also in my opinion where it comes close in terms of just the dramatic amount of great films that came out of the industry that year, and you're dealing with Giant and the King, and I and the Ten Commandments and Around the World in 80 Days won the Oscar that year. There are so many fine films that were made in 1956, but I think Friendly Persuasion is at the very, very top and it was up to us to make sure that it got a new coat of paint, because what everybody has been looking at generations away from the original and not it doesn't have everything always look pasty and yellow and it finally has the color palette as weiler designed it, and I think he would be very proud I hope he would be of what our folks at warner Motion Picture Imaging were able to do to make the movie look so good.
Speaker 1:
And I enjoyed that Wide, Wide World television series behind the scenes piece that shows them on the set of Friendly Persuasion. It's in black and white and it shows some of them running lines. It shows them on set. I thought that was really fascinating and a terrific extra. And then of course, it also has the trailer, which is always fun to watch on these. But that's a really fun look behind the scenes.
Speaker 2:
And quite a rarity. It is very rare that you get to see any kind of behind the scenes footage on a film from that era, and you started to see it around the same time when Warner Brothers was doing Warner Brothers Presents and had a behind the camera sequence on every episode, and you got to see new Warner films in production. Mgm did something similar with MGM Parade, but it really wasn't until much later that people saw the value in documenting how a film was made, and that little piece of footage is just the cherry on the sundae for what I think is a terrific Blu-ray disc.
Speaker 1:
Well, we have one more film from the 1950s, and this is from 1959. Another great year, by the way yes, talking about great years of cinema and another great director, fred Zinnemann, and this is the Nun Story, with another fantastic actress, Audrey Hepburn. I grew up in a religious family, george, and so when I watched this film and knowing, of course, zinnemann's style, you know he has that background in documentary, so he really takes you through the process, gabrielle, that Audrey Hepburn plays choosing to become a nun and going and getting her training. You just really get pulled into the world and the little moments of her training and the decisions that she has to make along the way. It's a terrific story and it's what?
Speaker 1:
Two and a half hours long, it's a long film, but it doesn't feel that way At least it didn't to me because I just was absorbed with this journey of this young woman. And it's a story of faith, but it's also a story of a woman who struggles to stay within the confines of her vows over the course of this whole film. But it's a beautiful, beautiful story and the new restoration looks fantastic.
Speaker 2:
Well, this is one not unlike Friendly Persuasion, but even more so in the case of the Nun Story. People have been asking for this for years and we have so many films that should have made their debut on Blu-ray 10 years ago, 12 years ago, because this was a huge financial and critical success. Everything about it justified it getting an upgrade, and it was a fight to get it done. But this was the year that things fell into place for several long-awaited projects, and the Nunn story was one of them. And one of the interesting things we found is that we assumed since this was shot during 1958 and released in 1959, we assumed that we were going to have problems with the camera negative having what we call yellow layer failure, meaning the blue channel is collapsed in the dye of the camera negative, Because this film was processed in London as opposed to processed here in the United States. Somehow, films of that era shot on that kind of stock but processed overseas a lot of times the negative is in much better shape in terms of its color than one would think, and it turned out we didn't have to rely on using the separations to bring back the color. The colorist came into my office so excited. The colorist came into my office so excited he said you need to see this and he brought me a little, just a couple of frames, of what they were able to do and it really thrilled me that I knew this was going to be a gorgeous release and that's what it deserved. Zinneman was integral in getting it made. He had bought the rights to the novel, which was kind of autobiographical because it was written by a woman who had been a nun and left the nunnery and he just thought it was going to make a tremendous movie. It was a little bit out of character for Jack Warner to get behind this, but he did and the whole studio got behind this as their big, prestigious release for 1959. And of course we were talking about 1956 before 1959 was incredibly dominated, and justifiably so, by the enormity and amazing qualities of Ben-Hur. Ben-hur towered over everything else but Ben-Hur didn't have a strong leading lady. It had a strong leading man in Charlton Heston Lady. It had a strong leading man in Charlton Heston.
Speaker 2:
So Audrey Hepburn nominated, of course, for the Oscar, but not winning was somewhat surprising because I think in my having seen everything that she did on terms of feature films, I think this is her best work and that's saying something. Taking into account Wait Until Dark and Breakfast at Tiffany's, I think this is her best work and that's saying something, taking into account Wait Until Dark and Breakfast at Tiffany's. I mean, she's so great in so many films, but the work here is multi-level and she gives a spectacular performance. She lost the Oscar to Simone Signore for Room at the Top, which was a European, a slash European-American production, you know. And so Hollywood decided to give the nod to Miss Signore. And of course, Audrey Hepburn had already won an Oscar in 1953 for Roman Holiday, her very first Hollywood movie, for Roman Holiday, her very first Hollywood movie. But I think this is a case where she really deserved the award.
Speaker 2:
And when you look at this film, the film would not be the masterpiece that it is without Audrey Hepburn and without Fred Zinneman. I think it's a convocation of artists coming together. I have to mention also the amazing score by Franz Waxman, one of the great, great classic Hollywood era film composers who did work at MGM and Fox and Paramount and at Warner Brothers, and his film score was so impressive that he got major billing in all of the advertising and when you think about this movie, the score resonates in your mind. You hear those strings and those dissonant chords and whatnot. It's really quite, quite remarkable and it's an astounding achievement that I'm proud to say. We've now given it a proper presentation and no longer is drab and faded looking. It's quite wonderful.
Speaker 1:
And I want to add to what you just said. And I want to add to what you just said, part of becoming a nun is there's a lot of silence in this film and that score it's vital to have that score to keep the energy, to keep the, you know, to fill this kind of silence where there's not a lot of dialogue, and that score becomes that much more important in a film like this. And to your comments about Audrey Hepburn, I mean, this is her, this is the nun's story. She is in, I think, every scene. She is the film.
Speaker 1:
Yeah she is the film and she portrays Gabrielle in, I thought, such a tender and understanding way. Nothing feels forced, it feels real, including the conflict. But because, again, not much dialogue, she has to do it with her eyes, her face, her mannerisms, underneath the habit, you know, and everything, so much of it is on her face. I mean, I agree with you that it's a fantastic performance by her and probably, you know, very worthy of winning the award. But to see it now in the HD, you get, you know, you don't miss any of that, and it's just wonderful to see and just a fantastic, fantastic film.
Speaker 2:
These opportunities where we're given the incredible gift to be able to work directly from the negative, not from a secondary or third generation source. It peels away, you know, the onion skin that keeps you distanced from the movie. It brings you right into it. There's no other way I can properly articulate that. Yeah, but this was unlike anything I had ever seen in terms of this movie. I'd seen 35 millimeter dyed transfer technicolor prints in repertory theaters. I've never seen the film like this and it made such an impact. When I finally got to watch, when the master was completed, I was so excited. I was particularly excited to see what our consumers, our fans, the people who've been so supportive of Warner Archive what would be their reaction when they heard we were finally doing this? Because people have been asking 10, 15 years, like when is the Nun story coming to Blu-ray? Well, it took a long time, but we're here and we're very, very proud of the release.
Speaker 1:
And I guess, before we move on from this film, george, we should, we should mention that there's. You know, there are other great performances in here. Oh, that's, that's what.
Speaker 2:
Edith Evans, dame Edith Evans, absolutely.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and and Peter Finch is the the surgeon there in the Belgian Congo for not being in the film that started for a large portion. He really makes an impact as that you know cynical but dedicated doctor and so important to her character there. So Audrey Hepburn has great supporting actors working with her through this. I don't want to make it sound like she's working alone by any means, but it's a terrific film with terrific performances from a terrific director.
Speaker 2:
There you go, and I should mention, in a very small role. You see the feature film debut of Colleen Dewhurst. She's got a very small part in the film but it would be many, many years before she became much better known beyond the New York stage, much better known beyond the New York stage, and this was her first time in front of the film cameras. That's very notable because I think she was one of our great actresses of the 20th century, and primarily in her stage work. But she gave some amazing film performances and this was the beginning of her film career.
Speaker 1:
As I mentioned earlier, this is one part of my discussion with George Feldstein about the April-May Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive, and there will be another episode upcoming talking about the other Blu-rays that George and I discussed. As always, there are purchase links in the podcast show notes and on our website for those interested in purchasing the films that we reviewed today. They're all fantastic films and the new HD Blu-rays look terrific, and if you aren't yet subscribed or following the show at your favorite podcast provider, please do that. That really helps the show and that way you won't miss anything that's coming up Until next time you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed.