In one of my favorite restorations in recent years, Stanley Donen’s “Funny Face” fairly leaps off the small screen in practically psychedelic primary colors — perhaps the sharpest and brightest representation of the glories of VistaVision and three-strip Technicolor we’re ever likely to see on a Blu-ray disc.
This is the best MGM musical that MGM never made — when Paramount refused to loan out Audrey Hepburn for one of her most iconic roles, Metro magnanimously sold that studio package that included a story Leonard Gershe had developed around an (almost) all-Gershwin score as well as the services of Donen, Fred Astaire, Freed unit producer Roger Edens and a slew of MGM music arrangers. Paramount threw in cinematographer Ray June (an MGM alumnus) and its own superb technical staff as well as designer Edith Head. (Paramount returned the favor to MGM when it decided “North by Northwest,” which had been developed for Hitchcock on Melrose Avenue, was going to cost too much).
The most famous number in “Funny Face” is an interpolation — Edens and Gershe wrote “Think Pink” especially for Kay Thompson, the legendary MGM vocal arranger and Liza Minnelli godmother, who kills in her only significant on-screen appearance as an imperious fashion editor modeled on Diana Vreeland. (She also joins Astaire and Hepburn in a spirited “Bonjour Paris!” as well as Astaire for “Clap Yo Hands!”)
The film has a totally different plot than the 1927 Gershwin musical of the same name that Astaire had starred in with his sister Adele. Hepburn plays a Beatnik-ish clerk at a Greenwich Village book store who is conscripted by Thompson and photographer Astaire for a Paris photo shoot — if she isn’t distracted by a local philosopher (Michel Auclair). It’s a delight from beginning to end. This Warner Home Video release ports over the substantial special features from Paramount’s “Centennial Collection” DVD.
At the same time Warner is releasing Paramount catalog titles on Blu-ray, Paramount is licensing to Olive Films a number of films it owns that were made by producer Milton Sperling (Harry Warner’s son-in-law) and his United States Pictures, a semi-independent whose films were financed, released and largely staffed by Warner Bros.
The latest arrival of these is Gordon Douglas’ “Young at Heart” (1954), a loose remake (Herman Wouk co-scripted) of Warner’s 1938 Best Picture nominee “Four Daughters,” which made John Garfield a screen star in his film debut. I say loose because the character names are all changed and there are now only three daughters (including the long-suffering Dorothy Malone), the youngest of whom is now played by soon-to-be-ex-Warner contractee Doris Day instead of Priscilla Lane.
The Garfield role is now interestingly played by Frank Sinatra (in his first post-Oscar role after “From Here to Eternity”), but Sinatra reportedly balked at his character dying like Garfield in 1938 — though Douglas and cameraman Sid Hickok manage to stage his suicide attempt in a far more memorable way than the great Michael Curtiz did back in the day.
“Young at Heart” unfavorably compares with “Four Daughers” pretty much right down the line — there’s absolutely no Sinatra-Day chemistry, and Robert Keith, Ethel Barrymore and Alan Hale Jr. are no Claude Rains, May Robson and Eddie Albert. But the charming Gig Young is a decided improvement over Jeffrey Lynn in the original; there’s Sinatra singing “One for My Baby” and that eponymous title song; and the whole thing is something of a studio-bound 1950s time capsule. Shot in oft-problematic WarnerColor, this bright widescreen transfer is probably the best the film has looked since its original release 60 years ago.
A rare deep catalog title actually released on video by Paramount, Cecil B. DeMille’s “Samson and Delilah” is a lavishly saturated Blu-ray upgrade of a 4K restoration that looked pretty incredible in its initial iteration on DVD that I reviewed years ago.
I can’t begin to explain how Warner Home Video ended up distributing a beautiful restoration of William Friedkin’s 1977 flop-turned-cult favorite “Sorcerer” (the wildly misleading title didn’t help), which was co-sponsored by Paramount and Universal.
A sort-of remake of the famous French thriller “The Wages of Fear,” it’s about four fugitives trying to make a financial score by transporting nitroglycerine over hundreds of miles of rough terrain in Central America to an oil-well fire.
A two-hour film whose lurching narrative makes it feel longer, this really works best on a purely visual level. The famous edge-of-your-seat sequence — in an excerpt from his self-serving memoir included in the DigiBook packaging, Friedkin claims it took a month to shoot and cost $1 million — is a large truck attempting to cross a very rickety rope-and-wood bridge over a steep ravine during a driving rainstorm. I also much liked a prologue scene set in Elizabeth, NJ, where Roy Scheider (the only Hollywood name in the cast, hot off “Jaws”) and his colleagues unwisely try to rob a church with mob connections, forcing him to leave the country.
Some other notable recent Blu-ray releases:
“Sabrina” (1954): If you prefer your Audrey Hepburn in gleaming black-and-white, Billy Wilder’s Lubitchean romantic comedy has also gotten a handsome Blu-ray upgrade from Paramount and Warner. And it’s noteworthy that unlike its 1:33 DVD iterations, this gem is apparently being presented for the first time in 1:77. (IMDB lists this as a 1:33 title, but from “Shane” on, Paramount’s premiere engagements of major titles were presented in cropped widescreen until the arrival of VistaVision, a month before “Sabrina,” in November 1954.) Audrey looks lovely and so does William Holden, but the extra definition does no favors to a haggard-looking Humphrey Bogart — though he clearly relishes a rare comedy role.
“Betty Boop Essential Collection, Vol. 3”: Through its inheritance of the NTA/Republic library (now copyrighted by “Melange Pictures”), Paramount now owns a passel of Fleischer Brothers cartoons (and a handful of features) it released theatrically and sold off decades ago. Licensee Olive Film’s third collection of high-def transfers includes some of the pre-code cutie’s most surreal adventures, with much political incorrectness and live-action appearances by jazz greats like Cab Calloway, who also provide the soundtrack for her cartoons. (In one case, the disembodied singing head of Louis Armstrong chases Betty.) “Minnie the Moocher,” “I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You” and “Old Man of the Mountain” have circulated in public-domain collections for years, but it’s fantastic to finally see them in first-rate transfers from original or near-original elements. It seems almost churlish to complain about the logos from long-defunct TV distributor UM&M.
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1923): Like another Lon Chaney classic, “The Phantom of the Opera,” this apparently exists complete only in 16mm elements derived from Universal’s 1920s experiments in very early filmed home entertainment. Flicker Alley is distributing a very good HD scan, with digital cleanup of some tinted Blackhawk print used for the Image-released “ultimate edition” DVD in 2007. This is about as good as I’ve ever seen this title look, with a full symphonic score and modest features, including some brief footage of Chaney out of makeup on set.
“Coming Attractions”: Flicker Alley will release a Blu-ray set of Charlie Chaplin’s 12 Mutual studio comedies on Aug. 5, along with a Blu-ray “Mack Sennett Collection.” The latter features 50 titles, all but two shorts. Two of the shorts are talkies, including the W.C. Fields gem “The Fatal Glass of Beer” making its high-def debut.
Warner Home Video plans to issue a “40th Anniversary Limited Edition Revisited” of “Woodstock” on Blu-ray July 20. Along with new swag, there are 11 “never-before-seen” numbers featuring the likes of Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Joan Baez, Santana and others.
On Aug. 16, WHV will provide a 2-disc Blu-ray upgrade for the documentary “Elvis: That’s the Way It Is” as well as a 50th anniversary edition of Presley’s beloved “Viva Las Vegas” in new DigiBook packaging.
WHV also advises there will be “brand new features” included in its 75th edition Blu-ray edition of “Gone With the Wind,” which will drop sometime this fall. Stay tuned.
On the DVD front, WHV’s latest collaboration with Paramount is an SD-only “Grace Kelly Collection” that puts together “Mogambo,” “Dial M For Murder,” “The Country Girl,” “The Bridges of Toko-Ri,” “To Catch a Thief” and “High Society” and throws in an interview with Her Majesty that Pierre Salinger conducted 10 days before her untimely death.
The Warner Archive Collection manufacture-on-demand program continues exploring the nether reaches of the bottomless Warner/Turner library. New titles released on Tuesday include Herbert Wilcox’s “Irene” (1940) with Ray Milland and a double feature of “Radio Stars on Parade” starring Alan Carney and Wally Brown and “The Mayor of 44th Street” with George Murphy, Anne Shirley and Richard Barthlemess, as well as a reissue of Frank Capra’s Paramount-owned “Broadway Bill” (1933) starring Warner Baxter and Myrna Loy.