The new Kino Lorber Studio Classics line follows the model that Olive initiated with its releases from the Paramount catalog. Kino’s licensing deal with MGM (the current MGM entity, which is largely made up of United Artists productions; the grand old MGM studio library belongs to Warner) gives them access to the new high-definition masters from a portion of the catalog as well as access to elements to create new HD masters, plus access to select supplements from previous disc releases. Kino has been expanding in the home video market in the last few years, striking releasing deals with Britain’s Redemption and producer Alfred Leone and distribution deals with Raro Video, Palisades Tartan, and Scorpion. This new deal, no surprise, was announced after Frank Tarzi left Olive, where he was the label’s head of acquisitions, and joined Kino. More than 40 releases have been announced through the end of 2014 via their dedicated Facebook page, with eight films rolling out in the first wave. I held my request to five discs and was (for the most part) well pleased with the quality I saw in these.
“Classics” is of course a fungible term, meaning everything from acknowledged masterpiece to practically anything more than 25 or 30 years old. The eight film of the first wave are largely plucked from the fifties and sixties, with a mix of acknowledged classics, award winners, and genre pictures. But for me, the highlights of the debut wave are two by Billy Wilder: Witness for the Prosecution (1957) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970).
Based on the stage play by Agatha Christie, Witness for the Prosecution (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) isn’t opened up for the screen so much as it is perked up with witty dialogue and wily characterizations, two strengths of Wilder and writing and producing partner I.A.L. Diamond. Charles Laughton plays the legendary barrister who defies doctor’s order and a heart condition to defend amiable but shiftless American Tyrone Power from a murder charge and Marlene Dietrich plays his German wife, a cool, suspicious character whose testimony seems to doom Power’s chances of acquittal. Of course, it’s a Christie plot so nothing is that simple, especially when incriminating letters are discovered, but the plot and the succession of twists is less interesting than the characters.
Charles Laughton, John Williams and Marlene Dietrich
Laughton takes what could have been a hammy role – the brilliant legal mind, theatrical courtroom performer, and wily curmudgeon sneaking brandy and cigars over the objections of his nurse (Elsa Lanchester) – and invests it with a sense of passion for his work and a sense of duty and honor beyond winning, all the while lobbing plum lines with perfect timing. He knows how to growl a witty riposte with a mix of cranky old man and affectionate codger and Lanchester responds with the perfect attitude of patient parent of an unruly child. Power plays to his strengths, a mix of cocky American brashness and showy earnestness, while Dietrich enters with a defining dignity and gravitas and then upends all sense of trust and expectations. The Old Bailey set itself, designed by the great Alexander Trauner, is as much a character as the performers and Wilder uses it well in the film’s dramatic courtroom scenes. And the flashbacks that show Power meeting Dietrich in occupied Germany echo with Wilder’s earlier A Foreign Affair, his first collaboration with Dietrich, as well as giving defining insight into Power’s true moral compass.
The disc is mastered for the Blu-ray debut and new DVD edition from vault materials (unspecified in press release or on disc), though some sequences feature visibly inferior footage, likely from archival prints, to replace damaged footage. These scenes show less detail, fading and minor surface scuffs, and there is a thin vertical scratch in one section of the third act. The balance of the presentation looks excellent, with strong contrasts, good detail (it’s a tad soft compared to the Criterion standard) and an image that preserves the texture of a 1957 black and white film.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) is one of the loveliest of Wilder’s pictures, a sly, bittersweet, autumnal film that approaches the Holmes legacy with a sense of humor and a sense of respect. Robert Stephenson plays Holmes as a genial, witty fellow well aware of his reputation and quite a bit more socially deft than subsequent incarnations of the great detective. Colin Blakely is a jolly, loyal Watson, nothing like the buffoon played by Nigel Bruce in the Basil Rathbone films but definitely an excitable fellow with a rather socially conservative bent. They are a delightful pair of friends whose affection for one another is palpable in their joking and in Watson’s serious concern for Holmes’ addiction, which flares up when he’s bored. And he is very bored until a foreign beauty (Geneviève Page) is fished out of the Thames with Holmes’ card in her pocket and a few enigmatic clues on her person. The game is afoot, indeed, in a case that takes Holmes and Watson in the orbit of Mycroft (Christopher Lee in the most imperious incarnation I’ve seen of the character), a bizarre mystery involving missing midgets, and the Loch Ness monster. Along the way, Wilder plays quite cleverly with the homo-erotic readings of the Holmes and Watson relationship while spinning a melancholy tale of a logician hiding the heart of a wounded romantic.
It is also, unfortunately, the weakest disc I’ve seen from the initial releases in terms of image quality, much of it traced back to the condition of the original elements. The color is faded, there is plenty of grit and scuffs on the print, damage at reel ends, visible cue marks in spots, a pulsing image intensity, light damage that washes out the edges of the image in some sequence of the third act, and a near-constant haze over the image. The film was shot with a heavy use of filters but it becomes more like video noise in the digital transfer. This is candidate for a full-blown restoration before the original elements are beyond salvaging.
These two releases are among the few with supplements. Witness features excerpts from Billy Wilder Speaks with Wilder discussing the film and the source material. Private Life has the most interesting extras, all carried over from previous editions. There are 50 minutes of deleted scenes, reconstructed from incomplete elements. By which I mean, some of it presents film footage with no audio and an epilogue offers audio with no footage (a single still stands in for the image track). There are also video interviews with Christopher Lee (who apparently is the only actor to play both Sherlock Holmes and Mycroft Holmes) and editor Ernest Walter, who discusses why so much footage was cut from the film.
Daniel Mann directs a pair of modern plays on the big screen. Marty (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) is based on a teleplay, actually, written by Paddy Chayefsky and broadcast in 1953 with Rod Steiger and Nancy Marchand in the leading roles. Ernest Borgnine, who was best known then as Hollywood’s ruthless bulldog of a heavy, took the lead for the big screen, and he made the most of his first chance to show his amiable, warm side. He plays Brooklyn butcher and aging bachelor Marti Piletti, a lonely guy living with his overbearing widowed mother who takes a chance on a lonely girl (Betsy Blair). It’s expanded from the near-perfection of the 50-minute original, adding more characters and an extended family with their own relationship problems. It makes the film a little livelier and a little less intimate than the original TV play but Chayefsky kept the story focused on working class folks and the drama rooted in their everyday lives. It won the Palm d’or at Cannes and four Academy Awards – Best Actor (Borgnine), Screenplay (Chayefsky), Director (Daniel Mann), and Picture, and gave Borgnine’s career a boost into a much wider range of roles.
It’s released in Academy ratio, though research by Bob Furmaneck shows the film was released widescreen and should have been presented that way on disc. It’s not overly distracting (though to be fair I’m kind of used to seeing it this way) but the open headroom and loose framing is obvious in some scenes. The transfer, however, looks good, if a tad soft.
Terence Rattigan knits a pair of his one-act plays together in Separate Tables (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), a kind of somber Grand Hotel of lonely and repressed lives at a British seaside hotel in the dreary off-season. David Niven and Wendy Hiller earned well deserved Oscars for their subdued turns, as a blustery old warhorse hiding a guilty secret and the efficient hotel proprietress, respectively. Burt Lancaster is the alcoholic American whose secret affair with Hiller is complicated when his former wife (Rita Hayworth) breezes in and reopens old emotional wounds and Deborah Kerr is a mousy woman whose secret love for Niven is shattered by scandal. Daniel Mann remains true to the good manners and quiet desperation that keeps these sad souls isolated at separate tables. He gracefully floats between the two dramas and patiently allows his repressed characters to open up and reveal their true feelings in their own, quiet fashion. It’s an intelligent, handsome drama, a little too respectful of the words and stage origins to take on a life of its own, but satisfying nonetheless. This release features commentary by director Daniel Mann, carried over from the earlier DVD released by MGM over a decade ago.
The Scalphunters (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), a 1968 western directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Burt Lancaster, mixes western comedy with cruel frontier violence, a strange combination to be sure but not out of tune with the times, when lighthearted westerns like Support Your Local Sheriff coexisted with the more hard-edged style adapted from the spaghetti westerns. Lancaster is a trapper whose winter haul is stolen by the local Indian tribe, who “swap” him a runaway slave (Ossie Davis), and then stolen from them by a ruthless gang of robbers and scalphunters led by Telly Savalas. The stubborn trapper isn’t leaving without his furs and he dogs the scurvy gang and starts killing them off until they return his goods. The balance of humor and brutality is pretty odd at times and the score by Elmer Bernstein has a rollicking quality to it. But I do like the distinctive desert locations, Lancaster’s muscular physical performance, and the way Davis walks a fine line between subservience and calculation as the smartest guy in the desert. It’s a fine looking disc with no supplements.
Two more westerns from this wave that I did not request (because I simply didn’t have time to see them all) are Sabata (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), a spaghetti western with Lee Van Cleef, and Duel at Diablo (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) with James Garner and Sidney Poitier. And I did not watch Paris Blues (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD), directed by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman, Sidney Poitier, Joanne Woodard, Diahann Carroll and Louis Armstrong, but early word on the quality is good of this film, which is making both its respective DVD and Blu-ray debuts.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD
Colin Blakely and Robert Stephenson as Watson and Holmes