Movies

John Ford’s Columbia Pictures released on DVD

Already paid tribute with a massive Fox DVD set and a smaller one from Warner, the only winner of (three or) four Best Director Oscars now has all five of is titles for another studio collected in “John Ford: The Columbia Films Collection,” the latest exemplary offering from the TCM Vault Collection’s ongoing collaboration with Sony Pictures Entertainment and the Film Foundation.

It’s paradoxic that probably the most eagerly awaited of the three DVD premieres in this set is a film that’s defied decades of efforts by auterists to find Ford’s directorial signature on. As people have been saying at least since the 1960s, if you cut the credits off the delightful “The Whole Town’s Talking” (1935), you’d swear it was the work of Columbia’s leading director, Frank Capra. That’s in no small measure due to a screwball comedy script contributed by Capra’s favorite screenwriter, Robert Riskin as well as another frequent Capra collaborator, Jo Swerling.

Moreover, the breezy pacing seems more typical of Capra than Ford (except maybe in the wacky “Four Men and a Prayer”) as Edward G. Robinson gives a superb dual performance as a mild-mannered bookkeeper who happens to be a dead-ringer for a notorious gangster. Robinson has a great time sending up his tough-guy image in the second of a handful of gangster spoofs he made, but he’s equally fine as the perplexed bookkeeper. Another Capra standby, Jean Arthur, is very funny as his sort-of girlfriend, especially when she pretends to be the gangster’s moll for a thick-witted detective (the ubiquitous Arthur Hohl)

Wallace Ford, the only one of the Ford stock players on hand, is amusing as a reporter hired by the bookkeeper’s boss to exploit the publicity, and Ford spotlights such character aces as Donald Meek and Edward Brophy. But the end results (in a crisp new remastering of Joseph August’s gleaming cinematography) still seems more like Capra than Ford.

Ford did not return to Columbia for two decades. As Maltin says in his introduction, your enjoyment of “The Long Grey Line” (1955) will depend on your tolerance of Irish blarney. Certainly there’s plenty of schmaltz on hand in this slow-moving biopic about an Irish immigrant who spends 50 years becoming the Mr. Chips of West Point. Tyrone Power is a bit long in the tooth as the youthful version of the hero, though as Maltin observes his old-age makeup in the opening sequence, where he arrives to tell his life story to President Eisenhower (!) is excellent for the era. The new Cinemascope transfer of this title, which was out of print on DVD, looks great.

Ford provided the narration for Ford’s Irish-filmed “The Rising of the Moon” (1957), which played mostly at art houses and is available from the Warner Archive Collection. Ford relocated to England for the next film in the set, “Gideon’s Day” (1958), which also got the art-house treatment (except in Times Square, where England’s Odeon chain briefly renamed the large theater whose various names included the Victoria and Movieland). By then, it was renamed “Gideon of Scotland Yard,” trimmed to 91 minutes, and F.A. Young’s Technicolor cinematography was offered only in black-and-white prints (it was initially released that way to television, too).

Maltin terms that version “unbelievably dull.. a surprising dud from director Ford” in his Classic Movie Guide, but is a bit more enthusiastic about the 100-minute British cut presented here, though that still seems to be a bit short of the reported 118-minute running time, and it’s the weakest of the new transfers in the set. But there are certainly recognizably Fordian moments in this atypical tale of a Scotland Yard inspector (the great Jack Hawkins) balancing domestic and work duties during the course of a single day in a dryly humorous script by Ealing Studios vet T.E.B. Clarke. The approach is not dissimilar to one Alfred Hitchcock would apply to “Frenzy” a decade later; both films feature Anna Massey (Raymond’s daughter) who makes her screen debut in “Gideon’s Day” as Hawkins’ daughter.

Ford was in the final phase of his career when he made “The Last Hurrah,” which was made after “Gideon’s Day” but released first — in October 1958 — in the United States. This adaptation of Frank O’Connor’s novel by one of Ford’s favorite writers, the ex movie-critic Frank Nugent, is my favorite of the director’s autumnal works, uncompromised by the age-inappropriate casting and backlot shooting that mars “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.”

Spencer Tracy heads the hand-picked cast as Frank Skeffington, the long-time mayor of unnamed New England City — everyone knew at the time that O’Connor based the character on Boston’s James Curly. Tracy, who was in his mid-50s but looked much older and was considering retiring, hadn’t worked with Ford since Tracy’s screen debut, in 1930 (MGM reneged on an agreement to loan Tracy to RKO for Ford’s “The Plough and the Stars” and the director made do with contract player Preston Foster.

Like many of Ford’s late (and middle-period) works, the aptly named “Last Hurrah” is about the passing of an era in a tightly-knit community. In this case, the pragmatic machine pol Skeffington is attempting a last run for mayor against a telegenic newcomer backed by his political enemies, including a prominent banker (Basil Rathbone), an editor (John Carradine) and the cardinal (Donald Crisp)

Team Skeffington includes old-timers like Pat O’Brien (star of Ford’s 1932 sadly-not-on-DVD and very Hawksian “Airmail”), James Gleason (from Ford’s 1952 remake of Hawks’ “What Price Glory?” and Ricardo Cortez, who hadn’t worked for Ford since 1934’s “Flesh.” Cortez, nee Jacob Krantz, who had retired from the screen in 1950 to pursue a lucrative career on Wall Street, seems particularly delighted to be playing the mayor’s representative to Boston’s Jewish community.

And bringing the set full circle back to “The Whole Town’s Talking,” Ford gives the role of his career to the generally comedic character actor Edward Brophy as Ditto, the most doggedly loyal ally of Tracy, who is doubly crushed by the end of the film. O’Connor’s book is seen through the eyes of Skeffington’s sports writer nephew, played by second-billed Jeffrey Hunter. But it’s Brophy, unforgettably in his final big-screen appearance, who Ford makes the bleeding heart and soul of “The Last Hurrah.”

This black-and-white film has been beautifully remastered since its previous DVD incarnation — here’s hoping that Twilight Time will give Charles Lawton’s great work a Blu-ray upgrade in the future.

According to the IMDB, Brophy died during production (it’s unclear who, if anyone, replaced him) of the final Ford in the TCM set, “Two Ride Together” (1961), which is making its belated DVD debut despite the presence of such popular stars as James Stewart and Richard Widmark. As Maltin observes, this western invites unfavorable comparisons to “The Searchers” and like some of Ford’s very late works, can be maddeningly uneven in terms of craft. But even here, there’s a scene or two where the greatest of American directors is still at the top of his game.

Coming attractions: Big news, and let’s get the disclaimer out of the way first: I’ve thrilled to have been asked to contribute my first Criterion Collection essay for a super-deluxe edition of Stanley Kramer’s “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World,” out Jan 21. Copious extras include a new high-definition transfer (supervised by Robert A. Harris) of a new extended version “including some scenes that have been returned to the film here for the first time.” There’s also a new commentary track by Mark Evanier, Michael Schlesinger, and Paul Scrabo, as well as a new documentary on the film’s visual and sound effects, including some making-of footage. There are also tons of archival goodies, including Stan Freberg’s TV and radio ads, with a new introduction by the man himself. The five-disc, dual format release includes all material in both DVD and Blu-ray.

A week earlier, Criterion will be releasing dual-format editions of Jules Dassin’s “Rififi” (1955) and Michael Mann’s “Thief” (1981), the latter with a commentary track featuring Mann and star James Caan.

Twilight Time, which has sold out many of its limited-edition titles, is stepping the pace of its release schedule, with four titles scheduled for Blu-ray row on Jan. 21: Lew Landers’ “Man in the Dark” (1953) with Edmond O’Brien, the first classic-era 3-D movie to arrive in that format from the Sony/Columbia vaults; Cy Enfield’s “Zulu” (1963) starring Michael Caine, out for its 50th anniversary; TT’s first MGM-controlled release, Basil Deardon’s “Khartoum” (1966) with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier; and via Fox, Julie Taymor’s Shakespearean adaptation “Titus” (1966) starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lang.

For Feb. 11, Twilight Time is promising five great high-def debuts: George Sidney’s music biopic “The Eddy Duchin Story” (1956) with Tyrone Power and Kim Novak; John Guillerman’s World War I adventure “The Blue Max’ (1966) with George Peppard and James Mason; Michael Cimino’s “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot” (1974) with Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges; Martin Ritt’s blacklist dramedy “The Front” (1976) starring Woody Allen and Zero Mostel, and Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors” with Alan Alda, Martin Landau and Anjelica Huston. The presence of a title as prominent as “Crimes” sort of makes you wonder how much longer Fox is going to continue distributing MGM-owned product.