Early in 2013, 20th Century Fox invited consumers to vote on what they wanted to see released on Blu-ray from the Fox archives. The ballot was limited to about 50 films released between 1930 and 1969 for which Fox already had good original materials, all of which have been previously released on DVD, but it got folks involved and excited to see some of the studio’s classics in Blu-ray HD and the response prompted Fox to double their original release slate. Instead of one film per decade, Fox chose the top two most popular films from each decade.
The films got their long-awaited release this week and true to their track record of Blu-ray releases of archival classics, they are terrific-looking editions of well-crafted Hollywood movies. At least the few I’ve watched since they arrived the other day (I sampled through the rest).
Being a Tyrone Power fan, I first grabbed The Black Swan (1942) (Fox, Blu-ray), Fox’s bid to make their handsome romantic lead into an Errol Flynn-style swashbuckling hero. It shouldn’t have been a good fit – Power is more at home as the glib, arrogant golden boy (who evolves over the course of the film) or brooding as the earnest, driven young visionary – but he brings a bit of both the flashy arrogant and the brooding hero to the role. His Jamie Waring is clearly unfulfilled as a pirate captain pillaging Spanish colonies and ships, but he’s not so sure he’s any happier when he teams up with Captain Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar), the former pirate king appointed by Britain to take over as Governor of Jamaica. It sets him against his former, more savage partners in pillage, especially Billy Leech (George Sanders in a wild red beard), and his outlaw instincts don’t fit into polite society. Complicating matters is his nearly fatal attraction to Lady Margaret Denby, daughter of the former Governor, played with flashing eyes and furious temper by Maureen O’Hara.
It’s based on a novel by Rafael Sabatini, who also wrote The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood, and it’s kind of a poor cousin to those in terms of both story and action, but what Technicolor glory! They set sail against Maxfield Parish skylines and battle in a riot of indigos and royal blues and crimson reds with flourishes of gold. Sturdy Henry King directs and the disc carries over the commentary by film historian Rudy Behlmer and actress Maureen O’Hara from the DVD.
Before The Black Swan, King directed Power in the western Jesse James (1939) (Fox, Blu-ray), with Power in classic brooding mode and Henry Fonda as brother Frank in Hollywood’s romanticized take on the outlaw. Randolph Scott plays a sympathetic sheriff and Henry Hull, Nancy Kelly, Slim Summerville, John Carradine, and Jane Darwell costar. It’s another Technicolor beauty and the disc features two Fox Movietone News featurettes.
Continuing on in a western vein, there are two late films with the Duke. John Wayne and Stewart Granger team-up as gold prospectors in North to Alaska (Fox, Blu-ray) but find themselves falling out over beautiful dance hall girl (Capucine). Henry Hathaway directs this brawling 1960 Northwestern comedy with his usual brawny professionalism, Fabian co-stars as the boys’ young partner, and Ernie Kovaks is the conniving saloon owner and gambler. The disc includes newsreel footage of the film’s premiere. In Undefeated (1969) (Fox, Blu-ray), Wayne is a former Union Cavalry officer who teams up in an uneasy alliance with former Confederate Colonel Rock Hudson when their paths cross in Mexico in the days after the American Civil War. Andrew V. McLaglen directs and Ben Johnson co-stars.
We shift to moody black and white for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Fox, Blu-ray), starring Fox’s most elegant screen beauty Gene Tierney as an independent-minded young widow who, desperate to escape her oppressive in-laws, falls in love with a grand seaside house and moves in. Only then does she discover the cantankerous ghost of the hot tempered Sea Captain (a histrionically flamboyantly performance by Rex Harrison) and earn his respect when she stands up to his bellowing attempts to scare her away. George Sanders at his smarmy smoothest as a charismatic suitor and Bernard Herrmann’s haunting score matches the melancholy photography of the picaresque turn of the century New England coast setting. Also features little Natalie Wood in a supporting role. Less ghost story than romantic fantasy of impossible love, Joseph Mankiewicz’s moody 1947 classic is a refreshingly mature and down to earth bittersweet romance. Carried over from the earlier DVD release is a pair of commentary tracks, one by contemporary visual effects artist Greg Kimble and Bernard Herrmann expert Christopher Husted, the other by film historian and professor Jeanine Bassinger and Joseph Mankiewicz biographer Kenneth Geist.
Otto Preminger directs Carmen Jones (Fox, Blu-ray), the 1954 film version of Oscar Hammerstein’s unusual updating of Bizet’s “Carmen,” starring the very sexy Dorothy Dandridge as the seductive “gypsy” who seduces MP Harry Belafonte as he takes her to prison. Set stateside during World War II, with an all-black cast, surreally stylized sets that suggest more the artifice of theater than cinema, and a striking poetry to the new lyrics, it’s a CinemaScope treat in rich color. Preminger’s crisp direction and long, languorous takes is as handsome as ever, but Dandridge powers the film with her simmering sexuality, impulsive energy, and devil-may-care love of life.
The collection is filled out by the 1935 version of Call of the Wild (Fox, Blu-ray), directed by William Wellman and starring Clark Gable, Loretta Young and Jack Oakie (the disc features commentary by writer Darwin Porter), and Desk Set (Fox, Blu-ray), the eighth pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn and their first color film together. This one features commentary by co-star Dina Merrill and actor John Lee and a Movietone News short on the design of the film.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD