The Extras
The Extras
Warner Archive July Blu-ray Reviews Part 2: "The Last Time I Saw Paris," "Land of the Pharaohs," "Helen of Troy," & "The Fastest Gun Alive"
George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive joins the podcast for a fun and informative review of four of the July Blu-ray releases. We review each film, provide background on the restoration and all of the extras on each release, and share our insights into why these films are worth adding to your Blu-ray collection.
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LAND OF THE PHARAOHS
HELEN OF TROY
THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS
THE FASTEST GUN ALIVE
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Hello and welcome to the Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies and animation and then release on digital DVD, blu-ray and 4K or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Lager, host In our last podcast. George Feltonstein joined me for a review of three of the July Blu-ray releases from the Warner Archive. We'll also picture Oscar winners the Broadway Melody from 1929, and Simran from 1931. We also discussed the MGM musical comedy you Berry Was a Lady from 1943, starring Lucille Ball, red Skelton and Gene Kelly. In part two we'll review four more Blu-ray releases, all from the 1950s. The next film we're jumping into the 50s, george, and that's the last time I saw Paris and I really enjoyed this film. I thought, wow, what an emotional love story drama and I just thought it had great performances from Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson and everybody Walter Pigeon, donna Reed. I really enjoyed this movie.
Speaker 2:And this is one of the very last films to be shot in the Technicolor process, released in 1954,. By that time the industry was pretty much switching over to Eastwind Color Camera Negative and there were very few three-strip Technicolor films being made. This was, I think, one of the last three that MGM did in 1954, and the location photography is very impressive. But also, I think what's really key is Elizabeth Taylor was 21 when she made this film and had been a movie star for 11 years Wow, yeah, you know you go back to Lassie, come home in 1943. But this film was like a first opportunity for her to get a meaty roll and sinker chops into it, and it's based on a work by F Scott Fitzgerald Babylon Revisited, and the theme of the title song, the Last Time I Saw Paris, which was actually first brought to the public about 13 years before, when it was featured in an MGM movie called Lady Be Good, and Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II wrote that song after Paris fell to the Nazis, and the way it's used as a consistent underscoring theme really contributes greatly to the charm of the love story.
Speaker 2:And you're right, everybody is really given moving performances and a shout out to the director, richard Brooks, who's, I think, terribly underrated and underappreciated as director. He made some really magnificent films and many of them are available from the War Archive on Blu-ray, like Cat on the Hot Tin Roof and Sweet Bird Review. He's really a very, very talented, amazing filmmaker and his body of work speaks for itself. But there is so much to be impressed by with this film. But I think the fact that we're finally seeing it restored because people have been looking at awful versions of it for years and to have it in the proper aspect ratio and restored it just changes your experience. It has to, and again we added some short entertainment pieces of the period to add to the experience of it and overall we're very delighted and I know a lot of the Elizabeth Taylor fans, of which there are many. We're particularly excited about this release, so we're very, very happy to have brought it forth in proper presentation.
Speaker 1:It looks great, I mean, and the fact that they shot this on location in Paris let you really enjoy and immerse yourself in the city. And there were some shots in there which I just I was kind of mind boggling. I thought to see like when they you know, this isn't really giving anything away from a plot point but like when they're at the Arc de Triomphe and they're relighting it, the city, for the first time. I'm like how did they redo that scene? And then I don't know if they used footage from some of the actual end of the European conflict in there of the people celebrating everything and then mixed it in with some of the live action. But I thought it was very seamless and it looked terrific.
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed just immersing myself in that locale in Paris for the storyline. And it was written by the Epstein brothers, who also wrote Casablanca, and it's got that flavor right Of the international, the love, the bit of tragedy, bittersweet. It's got all that mixed in which I'm a sucker for and I really enjoyed it for that reason. And you know, when I was younger we lived in Europe as well. So I don't know, I just liked all of the elements that are part of this film and Elizabeth Taylor like you said you kidding me she's 21, because she really she has to play a role that ages right, right, and she does a terrific job and I don't know. I thought it was really great. I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend this. And then the extras on there are just a fun little addition as well. So I'm so glad you released this film.
Speaker 2:It's all my. And that takes us to the next year, uh, 1955, and over here at Warner Brothers, when in fact I really should be giving credit to over there, meaning across the sea, because land of the Pharaohs, directed by the great Howard Hawks, released in 1955 for Warner Brothers, was shot on location in Egypt and it is really a remarkable achievement because they had a massive cast, massive amount of extras. This was one of those cinema scope, big screen historical epics that was designed to lure people away from their little 19 inch televisions, black and white, at home, and get them into the movie theater for spectacle. And not only do you get spectacle, but you also get Joan Collins, who gives a just unforgettable performance in this movie. This is really I believe this was her first American film and she made quite the impression on the American movie going public. Right, and it just shows the versatility of Howard Hawks.
Speaker 2:I always find Howard Hawks fascinating because he could make screwball comedies, you know, bringing up baby, and musicals like gentlemen prefer blondes, and westerns like Rio Bravo and war films like Air Force. He could do anything and he's one of my very favorite directors and I know that this film has a huge cult following among cineists and one of its biggest supporters is Martin Scorsese and he's always saying the praises of this film. And in fact this is one of the 10 Warner Brothers films that was restored with the promotional support of the Film Foundation. Restoration was done at MPI by MPI, but the Film Foundation was integrally involved in those 10 films being part of our 100th anniversary celebration. And to have this where the Warner color, which we've talked about, is so problematic, the colors burst off the screen and it looks better than it ever has. And the sound with 5.1 is really, really impressive and the whole presentation is just luscious. I think that's the best word to describe it. We're very proud of it.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, those shots with all of those extras and all of those panoramas of the desert and their building of the pyramids. I mean, it's something to see in this new restoration that you've done for this, along with the Film Foundation. I mean anybody who is a fan of this film. There's just really nothing else to say other than you need to get this blu-ray to see it in the way that it was intended to be seen.
Speaker 2:Well, and this was supposed to be released last month and we ran into a little bit of a delay because we had a problem here. That was the same as we had with Angel Face where, because we were coming off the original negative, there were more frames in the negative scattered throughout the film than the secondary elements that were used to make the prior standard definition transfers. And here you have the rare opportunity of hearing the great late Peter Bogdanovich amazing film director in his own right, but also a film historian and really critically involved in the early days of film history being looked at from a more modern lens, as he wrote about in the 60s, before he started directing, and he also interviewed his favorite directors. And he interviewed Howard Hawks, and some of his interview footage with Howard Hawks not footage but audio recordings, I should say are part of the commentary and so the way these commentaries were put together for the DVDs they're not separate. So the only way we could solve this was to have the standard definition source with the commentary in the special features. So I know that comes across as a little weird, but it was the only way we could save the commentary there was.
Speaker 2:Really. It would have been heartbreaking to not continue that. We really don't like having something on the prior release that isn't carried over as a legacy bonus feature. So it delayed the release a little bit but we were able to save it and hopefully this won't happen again to us. But twice within. Like the same month we did get Angel Face out for June, but Landon Farrell's got a little delayed. But I think it was ultimately worth it and I've just gotten a lot of. I've been reading the reviews. People are really enjoying the disc and that's very gratifying.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the acting with Jack Hawkins and June Collins is really fun, so that it has that kind of drama that's of this Farrell who is really building these pyramids for his own tomb, for all of this wealth and everything, and so the plot itself too to go back to the story a little bit is really fun. That's woven through while you get all of these great, great, great epic shots and of the building of the actual pyramids and things of that nature. So it's really fun. I mean I think this is a great package as well.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then the other thing is the music from Dimitri Tiamkin really is a great part of this film as well.
Speaker 2:A lot of people, I think, would want to have this movie just for the score, because it's one of the times not unlike when we talked about the old man in the sea last month Tiamkin's score is as much a character in the film for Land of the Farrell as he was with the old man in the sea. His work was in a class by itself. It's not that he was better than anybody else he was unique but he's certainly one of our great classic era film composers and I find his work fascinating and his contribution to a film means so much, and certainly does here, and it's something we're very proud of.
Speaker 1:Well, the next film, Helen of Troy, came out just a year later. George, I think that was a real time for the sword and sandal type epics that were being made. I think what 10 Commandments came out in 56 as well? Mm-hmm, and it's a lot of fun. I was a literature major when I was in college, so I know this story very well and I thought that it was a very, very well done movie and it just it hits all the notes of the story and has some really great performances and great visuals.
Speaker 2:And this was directed by Robert Wise. I mean, he had already established his ability as a director, but he didn't yet have the success he would have just a few years down the road with films like West Side Story and the Sound of Music and the Sand Pebbles. But he was already, in many people's view, a fine director. And you've got a cast of Rosanna Podesta and Jacques Sernas, who Warner Brothers in the United States called Jack. Only in the US do you see him build his jacket, not Jacques. But they're really good in the movie. And again, it is a spectacle. It is in cinema scope, it does look better than it ever has before and it benefits again from a 5-1 audio track that has power and it is irresistible fun One of the things that's super fun about this disc is that we have three different excerpts from the Warner Brothers Presents television series.
Speaker 2:And Warner Brothers Presents was an anthology series that had three separate shows in rotation An adaptation of Casablanca starring Charles McGraw, an adaptation of King's Row based on the film that Ronald Reagan and Anne Sheridan were in, and then there was a Western starring Clint Walker called Cheyenne. It was not based on the 1947 movie of the same title, Just used the same title. But Cheyenne Bodie was the breakout star from that rotating series and went on for six more seasons. And what each one of those episodes would do was really Warner Brothers' first venture into television, and they did it with ABC. And right before the last 10 minutes of each hour-long episode they would take like a six-minute segment for Gig Young to act as a host to take people behind the camera for films that Warner Brothers was producing at the time.
Speaker 2:And we have three behind-the-camera sequences promoting Helen of Troy on this disc and one of them is really interesting because it kind of has nothing to do with Helen of Troy. They use it sort of as a reason to show off old Vitaphone equipment, which I thought was a kind of specious connection. But the fun part of it is that nobody gets to see that series anymore and this is like a rare chunk of it and there's still hope that we can free up the whole thing at some point, Because I think it would be an important part of both the company's history and television history. But in the meantime we have these little excerpts and we've used them for other films and I hope we get to use more of them in the future and present the shows in their entirety. But you do get a little backstage behind the scenes aspect of Helen of Troy, as well as the way the studio very ingeniously wove other things into these little sequences and made them quite compelling. So they're on the disc as well.
Speaker 2:And it adds to the fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm assuming that one of the reasons why they did these segments to push this film and to promote this film is because it was a big gamble, wasn't it? For the studio.
Speaker 2:Huge. Yeah, these were big budget movies and the studio was teeter, tottering. The whole industry was because television had taken such a huge bite out of the audiences. And the government's divorcement decree, which forced the studios to sell their theaters, was like a one-two punch that nearly destroyed these studios completely. And one of the ways Warner Brothers was able to survive was by going into full television production and supplying ABC.
Speaker 2:So to see these big screen epics that they were producing to try to draw people away from the television represents the conflict of the time, the byproduct of which is we as historians and viewers and audiences can enjoy the films and with a beautiful blu-ray and a restoration. Helen of Troy was also another title that was Restorted MPI with the promotional support of the Film Foundation. So we're very grateful for their help in saluting our hundredth with a variety of different kinds of films and I know that we have a little bit of interest bubble up for Helen of Troy. I'm seeing either 19 or 20 years ago, when Brad Pitt's Troy movie came out, wolfgang Peterson's film and suddenly people were asking for Helen of Troy, but the way it looked then on DVD compared to the way it looks now with this new 4K scan off the camera negative and with the color and audio fully restored, it's really a knockout.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then you have a couple other extras I'll just mention, and that's the Napoleon bunny part in the theatrical trailer, which we're great to have as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, and anytime we can put Looney Tunes of the and Mary Melodies of the era of the year, specifically what you would have experienced in the movie theater. It's like a miniature version of when we do the full tilt one or the night the movies, and I just think it adds a lot more to the experience of just having a movie on the disc and it brings you back to what it would have been like if you were seeing this movie in 1956. You very likely would have seen a 1956 cartoon with it. So, leading of 1956, that is the year of release also of the last film we're going to talk about today, which is kind of the antithesis of a big budget color cinemascope, stereophonic epic, and this is a very impressive and exciting, tightly made western with one of the most underrated leading men, I think, in from Hollywood's Golden Age and thereafter. Glen Ford stars in the fastest gun alive, along with Gene Crane and a very young Russ Tamblin.
Speaker 2:I think this is a terrific little western. It was shot in black and white, it was shot in white screen. It did not have stereophonic sound. There was a cheap process called Perspective Sound that moved mono optical audio around the theater using tones, but it was, despite what certain people say it was fake stereo. It was not real and this is an authentic, clear mono track and the presentation again, it's a scan off the camera, negative and the benefits are quite remarkable because I've never seen this film look that good. The film never looked bad, but now it looks fantastic and it's a really exciting, very, very economically made and well written western with the traditional tropes of the 1950s western.
Speaker 2:But Glen Ford could be the lead in any kind of movie and pull it off. I've seen him in romantic comedies, in dramas that are deeply serious, gangster films, but westerns. He had a special relationship with western characters. He worked a lot at MGM, also was under contract to Columbia before that and he kind of teeter-tottered around various other studios. But the man is just not well remembered enough for the great work he did on the screen. One of the things I also like about this film is the bad guy is played by Broderick Crawford and he's always terrific in everything.
Speaker 2:And then, as I mentioned before, russ Hamlin coming off the heels of being in Seven Brides of Seven Brothers. You know, in Seven Brides of Seven Brothers three of the brothers were couldn't dance and Howard Keough was one of them. Jeff Richards was another one, and Russ Hamlin wasn't a dancer but what he was was a tumbler and he was able to learn how to move and dance in Seven Brides so well that they managed to find a little dance sequence in this movie for him, which is just cute and charming, and you know so many people are fond of him. He's had such a long career. Thankfully he's still very much with us and very active and he was at the TCM Film Festival recently.
Speaker 2:People know him from being Riff and West Side Story. People also know him from Twin Peaks. You know he's had this amazing career. But MGM was his home for many years. You know he's a little brother and father of the bride. We watched him grow up from Rusty Tamlin to Russ Tamlin to being in Son of a Gunfighter, which is a spaghetti Western in the 60s. He's had an amazing career, yeah, but he just adds to the entertainment value of this film.
Speaker 1:I really enjoyed this Western, george, and I enjoy Westerns a lot. This one, glen Ford, as you mentioned, does a terrific performance and there's a good story here as well. We don't want to give anything away, but it's got a slow build and they've got that little Rust Tamlin sequence in there to bring a little lightness. And then the rest of the story just builds and builds and builds to this very, very interesting, fun ending. That's very dramatic and it's a terrific way to finish out that Western. But Glen Ford I mean, what can you say? You've said it all here. He just deserves so much more credit for playing.
Speaker 2:Well, there are many more of his excellent films, mostly on the Warner Brothers side, but a couple on the RKO side, and I can think of at least one on the Warner Brothers side that I would love to bring to Blu-ray, and I think a lot of the fans out there would like to see those as well. And we do have some, but not enough. So we're always keeping our eye out for more Glenn Ford and you know it's an embarrassment of riches in our library because there's so much great stuff to choose from and it's just what can be ready. When and how can we get to the public to look the best that it can be and sound the best that it can be. That makes July a very exciting month.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are a couple of extras on that release. Yes, there are the two Tom and Jerry cartoons Blue Cat Blues and Downbeat Bear.
Speaker 2:And they're very different also and very much representative of the change that was going on in animation, and they're in high definition and they look terrific and I think it just wraps it up for a very nifty 1956 Blu-ray release and it's very pleasing to have such a diverse group of entertaining films that people can enjoy and add to their collections. There's something here for everyone, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a range of different sorting sandals, western, 20s, 30s, you know, various decades, various genres. So it's a terrific month and I really enjoyed these movies so well. As always, thanks for coming on and giving us a review and giving us a background, and it's always fun for you and I to kind of chit chat and give our impressions and personal opinions about these films.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm excited when I get to hear what you think after you've seen them.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, because one of the things I'm working on these releases is you spend so much time with the film and making sure everything is absolutely the best that it can be that you end up watching certain sequences or the whole thing 10, 20 times. And the real fun is after you've completed a project and it is, it's been set out to see and you know for all the people to own and love and to hear the response. But then to revisit it maybe six months or a year later and, looking at it again, it's doubly gratifying because when you're in the thick of it it's overwhelming Right and we have to make sure every detail is correct. And I'm looking forward to the next time we get together to talk about the August releases, because that's an equally diverse group.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, for sure, for sure. That's a great lineup as well. This is part two of our July Blu-ray reviews from the Warner Archive. If you missed it, be sure and listen to part one, where we review the Academy Award winning films the Broadway melody from 1929 and Simeron from 1931. We also reviewed the Technicolor comedy DeBerry was a lady from 1943 starring Lucille Ball, red Skelton and Gene Kelly.
Speaker 1:For those of you interested in ordering the films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at wwwtheexterstv, so be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And you're invited to our Facebook group for fans of Warner Archive films, called the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers catalog group, and you can find that link either on the Facebook page or in the show notes. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to follow and leave us a review at iTunes, spotify or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time you've been listening to Tim Mellard, stay slightly obsessed.