The Golden Year Collection: 5 Classic Films from 1939 (Warner, Blu-ray) – Peter Bogdanovich crowned 1939 the greatest year for Hollywood movies in an essay for Esquire magazine decades ago and it’s since been accepted as an article of faith. Whether you agree or not, it was an exceptional year movie. This set collects five classic films from 1939 on Blu-ray—Dark Victory, Dodge City, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ninotchka, Gone With the Wind—four of them in their respective HD debuts (and also available individually).
Ninotchka (Warner, Blu-ray), a sparkling, witty, elegant romantic comedy from Ernst Lubitsch, played off the well-known screen persona of Greta Garbo, the famed “I vant to be alone” suffering romantic. When she made her sound film debut in Anna Christie, the posters proclaimed “Garbo speaks.” This was promoted with the promise: “Garbo laughs,” and indeed she did, her dour, administrative frown breaking into a lovely smile as peels of giggles melt her icy facade. She’s a humorless Russian bureaucrat sent to Paris to secure the return to the Russian crown jewels. Melvyn Douglas is the frivolous but debonair playboy lawyer who stops sparring and starts wooing the ice princess, melting her icy resolve and finding a romantic under all the practicality of Soviet sensibility.
Lubtisch’s marvelous romantic comedy is an equal opportunity lampooner: neither communism nor capitalism are safe from his barbed zingers (courtesy a delicious screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett), but true love, well that’s another story. Garbo proves quite adept as a comedienne and never looks less than elegant even in drab working uniforms, while Douglas proves a lightweight if charming romantic lead with effortless delivery and impeccable poise. Bela Lugosi is almost unrecognizable as a Russian diplomat seduced by French nightlife and Parisian plenty with his comrades in sin Sig Ruman and Felix Bressart.
Features two vintage short subjects from 1939: the Academy Award® nominated Prophet Without Honor and the MGM cartoon The Blue Danube, neither available on the earlier DVD release, plus the trailer.
Dark Victory (Warner, Blu-ray) gave Bette Davis one of her defining roles: Judith Traherne is a spoiled heiress who discovers she has a brain tumor and chooses to live her last months to their fullest, transforming herself from a selfish socialite (she goes on a bender with Ronald Reagan) to caring, loving wife of her doctor (George Brent). Geraldine Fitzgerald is her devoted secretary and best friend and pre-star Humphrey Bogart her horse trainer. Edmund Goulding directs the classic weepy in high Hollywood style: glossy and elegant to the end.
Features the supplements from the previous DVD release—commentary by film historian James Ursini and film critic Paul Clinton and the featurette “1939: Tough Competition for Dark Victory“—plus a new “Warner Night at the Movies” collection of short subjects from 1939 (live action short Old Hickory, Warner Bros. cartoon Robin Hood Makes Good, a newsreel and a trailer) and a Lux Radio Theater adaptation of the film from 1940 (audio only).
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Warner, Blu-ray) stars Charles Laughton in the role that Lon Chaney had indelibly played in the grand silent version of the film. This remake is equally as lavish (Paris is recreated in the San Fernando Valley) and features a great supporting cast: Maureen O’Hara (who made her screen debut opposite Laughton in Jamaica Inn earlier that year) as Esmerelda, Cedric Hardwicke as Frollo, Thomas Mitchell as the king of beggars, and Edmond O’Brien (in his film debut) as the romantic hero. Director William Dieterle creates a handsome, is somewhat talky, production, showing off every dollar spent on the set, but it’s Laughton’s tortured, tormented performance that gives it life.
The Blu-ray debut features an interview with Maureen O’Hara and two vintage short subjects from 1939, the Oscar-nominated live action Drunk Driving and the animated The Lone Stranger and Porky, plus the trailer.
‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’
Dodge City (Warner, Blu-ray) is Errol Flynn’s first western and the only new-to-Blu film in the set that was shot in Technicolor. In fact, it’s the first Hollywood western to use the new three-strip Technicolor. Titles aside, he’s not Wyatt Earp but a cattleman who takes on the position of sheriff to clean up the corruption of the lawless town. Olivia de Havilland is by his side as his usual romantic interest and Alan Hale (Little John to his Robin Hood) is once again in sidekick mode. There were color registration problems in the original DVD release. This disc is gorgeous, with those beautiful, rich, deep colors of the early Technicolor productions.
This includes the supplements from the DVD release: the featurette Dodge City: Go West, Errol Flynn and the “Warner Night at the Movies” program hosted by Leonard Maltin with the Academy Award-winning dramatic short Sons of Liberty, the cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo, a newsreel, and a 1939 trailer gallery.
All of the above films are also available as individual titles, with the listed supplements included.
Completing the set is Gone With the Wind, which has previously been given the lavish box set treatment but in this set receives a more bare-bones presentation, with commentary but none of the other supplements of previous releases.
There is also a bonus DVD featuring the 2009-produced documentary 1939: Hollywood’s Greatest Year, narrated by Kenneth Branagh and previously available on the Gone with the Wind 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition, and a collection of vintage shorts from 1939: the live-action short subjects Breakdowns of 1939, Sword Fishing, Sons of Liberty (also on the Dodge City disc), Drunk Driving (also on the The Hunchback of Notre Dame disc), and Prophet Without Honor (also on the Ninotchka disc), and the animated Detouring America and Peace on Earth.
Most of these films (as reported by Robert Harris) were mastered from original camera negatives, with Ninotchka from a fine grain master (the negative was lost in a fire). The added clarity, texture, and sharpness is readily apparent. Warner sets a high standard for its Blu-ray releases and this upholds that standard.
The list price of $69.95 and marked down to around $50 through many outlets. That’s a pretty good deal for the four Blu-ray debuts, which are also available individually at $20 apiece.
John Wayne Westerns Film Collection (Warner, Blu-ray) collects five films, including two new-to-Blu-ray titles, which are also available in individual volumes. Wayne made a lot of westerns and this features three of his greatest. The two new-to-Blu are not those.
The Train Robbers (Warner, Blu-ray) is a different kind of train robbery. This easy-going 1973 western stars Wayne, Rod Taylor, and Ben Johnson as civil war vets who team up to help a widow (Ann-Margret) find a small fortune in gold stolen by her husband (who just wants to return it and clear his name). It’s written and directed by Wayne buddy Burt Kennedy, who gives the film a striking look and builds a colorful cast of characters around Wayne’s familiar, slow-drawl performance, and it co-stars Christopher George, Bobby Vinton, and Ricardo Montalban. The disc includes the featurettes “John Wayne: Working with a Western Legend” and “The Wayne Train” and the trailer.
Also from 1973 is Cahill United States Marshal (Warner, Blu-ray), a more meandering picture directed by another Wayne buddy, Andrew V. McLaglen, and featuring Wayne as the widower father of two boys are so neglected by him that they join outlaw George Kennedy to rob a bank. Neville Brand plays a half-Indian tracker who is Cahill’s best friend and a great cast of veteran faces fill out small roles: Marie Windsor, Royal Dano, Denver Pyle, Jackie Coogan, Harry Carey Jr., Walter Barnes, Paul Fix, and Hank Worden. It’s pokey and old-fashioned, a lazier film than The Train Robbers, but Wayne still commands when he’s in the saddle or pulling a pistol. With commentary by director Andrew V. McLaglen and the featurette “The Man Behind the Star.”
The set is filled out by Fort Apache, The Searchers, and Rio Bravo (complete with the all the respective supplements of the earlier Blu-ray releases), which great if haven’t picked them up yet but rather disappointing if you already have them. The new films are hardly essentials to anyone but die-hard Wayne fans or western buffs, so unless you need to pick up or upgrade the other three, this is a pretty inessential set.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD
