3 Bad Men (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) – After John Ford had a major hit with his epic of westward expansion The Iron Horse, he returned to the old west and the theme of the settling of the frontier two years later with 3 Bad Men (1926). George O’Brien (Sunrise and Seventh Heaven) stars as Dan O’Malley, a hard-working Irish immigrant who goes west to stake his claim in the Dakota Territory, and silent movie beauty Olive Borden is Lee Carlton, the daughter of a Southern Colonel. When her father is murdered by rustlers, the three bad men of the title (Tom Santschi, J. Farrell MacDonald, and Frank Campeau) chase the bandits off and sign on as her new hands and self-appointed guardians, following the sentimental tradition of scruffy but honorable outlaws touched by the plight of a defenseless young woman. When the gang leader spots the courage and chivalry of Dan, he plays matchmaker and hires the strong, strapping young man as another hand.
It is a classic American tale of immigrant opportunity, outlaw redemption, and two-gun justice in the face of a corrupt sheriff (a slick, sleazy Lou Tellegen) who uses his office to cheat, rob, and murder the naïve settlers. The third act is a thrilling dramatization of the Dakota Land Rush of the 1870s, with hundreds of civilians on horseback and in wagons racing to stake out what they hope will be a gold-laden claim, or at least a homestead on which to start a new life. It is sentimental and the plot makes the battle between the crooked sheriff and the redeemed outlaw personal, but Ford sets it against a grand landscape and a rousing story of the American Dream on the frontier. Ford scholar Joseph McBride, who contributes an informative commentary track, calls it Ford’s finest silent movie.
There is no information about the print source on the disc, which appears to be mastered from the same 35mm print used for the DVD in the “Ford at Fox” box set. It is preserved but unrestored, with scuffing and scratching throughout, and some sequences appear to come from alternate sources, but the image is perfectly watchable and the HD mastering brings out greater clarity and detail than the previous DVD. It features the same Dana Kaprov score as the 2007 DVD, a lovely and fitting soundtrack seeped in folk music and Americana performed by a trio of piano, fiddle, and guitar. New to the disc is the commentary track by Ford scholar and biographer Joseph McBride, filled with historical background and critical observations.
Destiny (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray, DVD) is Fritz Lang’s first masterpiece. Even Lang thinks so, and seeing the new restoration by the Murnau Siftung Foundation in Germany merely confirms that critical consensus. Technique, sensibility, cinematic vision, and story all come together in this epic drama of love, death, myth, and sacrifice, a mix of supernatural drama and mythic parable produced in the shadow of World War I.
A young woman (Lil Dagover) finds her fiancé (Walter Janssen) suddenly gone, dead before his time (as were many young men in the war), and appeals to Death (Bernhard Goetzke) to bring her fiancé back. Death (who is indeed weary of his toils) gives her three chances to stop the candle of life from going out and this becomes the framework for an anthology of stories of love and death through the ages, each tale in a different exotic time and place. A commoner is condemned by a Caliph for wooing his daughter in ancient Baghdad, a jealous man plots the murder of a romantic rival in 17th century Venice, and a wizard plays games with an abducted couple for the amusement of the Emperor in Imperial China. Dagover and Janssen the roles of the doomed lovers in each story, which inevitably end in tragedy, yet Lang offers a different kind of triumph thanks to love and sacrifice.
Lang creates fantastical sets for each story and for Death’s domain, a mythical realm with an epic scale, and his groundbreaking special effects, still awe-inspiring in their delicacy and grandeur, inspired Douglas Fairbanks to create The Thief of Bagdad. But where Fairbanks created giddy adventure with wide-eyed wonder, Lang’s baroque designs and spectacular magic are put to a story of regret, sacrifice, and somber poetry. His first undeniable masterpiece looks ahead to the visual splendor, operatic drama, epic visions, and emotional intensity of Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, M, and the Dr. Mabuse films.
This new edition has been mastered from a new restoration by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in Germany, which played theaters around the world before coming to Blu-ray and DVD. Features a new orchestral score, commentary by film historian Tim Lucas, and a featurette on the restoration.
Before Destiny, however, Lang had popular success with The Spiders (Kino Classics, Blu-ray, DVD), an exotic, globe-trotting thriller from 1919 featuring hidden treasures, criminal gangs, daring robberies, and expeditions to the jungles of South America and India. It’s actually two short silent features that were the first of a proposed quartet of self-contained serialized chapters, the adventures of high society adventurer Kay Hoog (Carl De Vogt, whose gaunt, expressionless face resembles a younger William S. Hart) and his arch-nemeses, a secret organization known as The Spiders, a crime syndicate ruled by femme fatale Lio Sha (Ressel Orla). Part One (“The Golden Lake”) is a treasure hunt that takes both Kay and Sha to Peru, where they battle primitive Incas (who capture Lio for a human sacrifice) and each other for a fortune in hidden gold. Part Two (“The Diamond Ship”) is a longer and far more intricate conspiracy involving a hidden criminal underground beneath the streets of Chinatown, a legendary lost jewel known as “The Buddha Head Diamond,” and an ambitious plot to rule all of Asia.
Full of secret passages, coded messages, treasure maps, double crosses and death defying escapes and driven with breakneck-paced direction, Lang’s pulpy action fantasy borrows from the crazy serials of Louis Feuillaude (notably the deliriously entertaining Les Vampires) but the exotic locations (suggested by impressive sets) are pure Lang. The conspiratorial schemes look forward to the secret criminal organizations and ruthless crime bosses of Dr. Mabuse and M and there’s a dark undercurrent of death and doom which transforms his gallant hero into a brooding, vengeful spirit.
This is mastered from a restoration by the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in association with National Film Archive of Prague and the Royal Film Archive of Belgium, previously released on DVD and mastered in HD for the Blu-ray debut. It’s not as exhaustive a restoration as Destiny and it shows more age-related damage, but it also show more detail and a sharper image than the earlier DVD. No supplements, features a synthesizer score by Ben Model.