Another major gap among classic films mysteriously not on available on digital formats in this country will filled next Tuesday with the Criterion Collection’s much-welcome release of Fritz Lang’s “Ministry of Fear,” a thriller based on a Graham Greene novel that Lang made for Paramount Pictures in 1944 (and long owned by Universal, which licensed it to Criterion for this near-flawless black-and-white restoration on Blu-ray and DVD).
The most Hitchcockian of Lang’s Hollywood films, it’s a stylistic departure from the anti-Nazi propagandizing of the director’s two preceding films, “Man Hunt” (1941) and “Hangmen Also Die!” (1943). As my pal Glenn Kenny says in his excellent notes on the film, it’s a return to the more morally grey areas of the emigre director’s German films, complete with a pervasive sense of dread you can cut with a knife.
Ray Milland is aces as a man just released from an asylum where he served time for the mercy killing of his wife. Winning a cake at a charity fete (one of the great Macguffins of all time) accidentally enmeshes Milland in a spy plot in World War II London, though Milland and the audience are challenged to figure out exactly who’s on what side.
There are several wonderful set pieces scattered throughout the fast-moving 87 minutes, as well as an evening spent in an Underground Station during an air raid. The excellent cast includes Dan Duryea, Carl Esmond and a pair of future Abbott and Costello leading ladies: Marjorie Reynolds (who made “Holiday Inn” the year before) as Milland’s love interest, and Hillary Brooke as a shady medium. Neither Lang nor Greene were fans of producer Seton Miller’s script, but “Ministry of Fear” holds up better than some better-known noirs from this era. The only extra is an enlightening interview with Lang scholar Joe McElhaney.
Another, more obscure, Lang film, “Secret Beyond the Door” (1948) is among the plethora of offerings licensed from Paramount’s Republic library holdings by the enteprising Olive Films. Lang’s third collaboration with Joan Bennett isn’t in the same class with their classics “The Woman in the Window” (1944) and “Scarlet Street” (1945), but it’s certainly has its moments.
A femme fatale in the two earlier films, Bennett is here cast against her then-type as a spinster heiress who takes travels to a hilariously sound-staged Mexico before marrying a dull but nice guy. There she meets an enigmatic architect played by Michael Redgrave — who’s obviously got a few screws loose — and impulsively marries him.
Things go from bad to worse when she moves into the family mansion in upstate New York, which the newlyweds share with his creepy sister (Anne Revere) and even creepier former nanny (Barbara O’Neil), not to mention his creepy teenage son by a dead wife (neither of which poor Joan had any idea existed). And then there’s Redgrave’s unusual hobby, showing off the spare rooms he’s decorated as murder scenes — except for the one he keeps locked. The screenplay, by reported Lang mistress Silivia Richards, lays on the Freudian stuff rather thickly as Bennett and Redgrave head for a climactic figure. But it’s never boring. And Olive’s bare-bones releases (of a film originally distributed by Universal, which recut it at the request of the film’s producer, Bennett husband Walter Wanger) looks fine. You can find much more juicy behind-the-scenes gossip in Moira Finnie’s excellent writeup at TCM’s website.
Olive’s Republic porfolio — films that showed in heavy rotation in TV syndication for years but can often be hard to find now — also includes “It’s in the Bag!” a singular vehicle for popular radio comedian Fred Allen, who appeared sporadically in films from 1935 (“Thanks a Million”) to 1952 (unforgettably teamed with Oscar Levant for Howard Hawks’ “Ransom of Red Chief” segment of “O. Henry’s Full House”).
Loosely adapted from the same Russian treasure-hunt novel that served as the source of Mel Brooks’ “The Twelve Chairs,” this favorite of Martin Scorsese is mostly an excuse for guest appearances by the likes of Jack Benny (with whom Allen carried on a mock feud previously immortalized in “Love Thy Neighbor”), William Bendix (spoofing his tough-guy image); the trio of Don Ameche, Rudy Vallee and Victor Moore as has-been versions of themselves, reduced to working as singing waiters a Manhattan Gay ’90s restauant; and Minerva Pious, reprising her role as Mrs. Nussbaum from Allen’s radio show.
The story proper, which peaks with Fred’s hilarious attempts to find a seat at a massive wartime movie palace, was adapted by at least five writers, including Alma Reville (Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock, played by Helen Mirren in the recent “Hitchcock”) and provides roles for such fan-pleasers as Robert Benchley, Sidney Toler (as a non-Chinese detective), Jerry Colonna (as a psychiatrist), John Carradine and many more familiar faces.Richard Wallace (whose subsequent RKO Technicolor spectacular “Sinbad the Sailor” was recently released by the Warner Archive Collection) directs with an agreeably light hand for producer Jack Skirball (of Skirball Center and “Shadow of a Doubt” fame).
Olive has also been digging into Republic library titles that were actually made by Republic Pictures. Few are stranger than “The Red Menace” (1949), an early and especially infamous entry in Hollywood’s red scare genre that Farran Smith Nehme unsuccessfully suggested for the 2010 Turner Classic Movies series we helped curate, “Shadows of Russia.”
Rarely shown on TV — but previously available on VHS and Laserdisc — this oddity directed by Republic’s prolific western hand R.G. Springsteen stars a cast of mostly unknowns headed by Robert Rockwell, who would become best known for playing Mr. Boynton, Eve Arden’s love interest on the TV version of “Our Miss Brooks” (he’s also in the movie feature, available from WAC). Rockwell plays a former GI who’s recruited to the Communist Party after being taken in by a real-estate scam.
The narration by Los Angeles City Council member Lloyd G. Davies (who also plays an immigration official) promises an expose of the domestic dangers posed by the Communist Party. But the actual story depicts C.P. preoccupied with keeping its own members in line with the ever-changing orthodoxy being issued from Moscow. When their acclaimed local poet questions the originality of Karl Marx’s political theories, he’s shunned and eventually encouraged to jump out a window to his death — much to the distress of the cell’s only black member, who writes their newsletter.
Rockwell appears mostly in the opening and closing sequences, which depict him and a beautiful emigre (Hannelore Axman) who’s also been duped by the Commmies, fleeing from their former comrades. Eventually they turn themselves into a sheriff who suggests everything will be alright if they find a Justice of the Peace and raise “good American children.” Despite a huge promotional push by Republic, “The Red Menace” — anonymously produced, possibly by future “Master of Disaster” Irwin Allen — was as big a flop as most Red Scare films, including “My Son John” (also available from Olive) and “I Married a Communist” (aka “The Woman on Pier 13”).
Universal is quietly releasing several films available previously only through its manufacture-on-demand program, the Universal Vault, on three pressed discs as part of a “10 Classic Westerns: 10 Movie Collection” next Tuesday, available for a bargain-priced $12 at Amazon. According to Classic Flix, the titles include “When the Daltons Rode” (1940) with Randolph Scott and Broderick Crawford, “Texas Rangers Ride Again” (1940) starring John Howard and Anthony Quinn; the 1948 Technicolor remake of “The Virginian” (1946) with Joel McCrea; and another Technicolor oater, “Whispering Smith” (1948) starring Alan Ladd.
The Warner Archive Collection is taking pre-orders for a pair of early ’80s rarieties that will be released on March 19: Buck Henry’s political satire “First Family” with Bob Newhart, Gilda Radner and Madeline Kahn; Hal Ashby’s romantic comedy “Second Hand Hearts” starring Robert Blake and Barbara Harris; and “Die Laughing,” a comedy thriller with a singing Robby Benson backed up by Charles Durning, Elsa Lanchester and Bud Cort.
The Sony Pictures MOD program will release Carol Reed’s World War II drama “The Key” (1958), starring William Holden and Sophia Loren, on April 23.
On the Blu-ray front, Fox will release Gene Kelly’s “Hello, Dolly” (1965) starring Barbara Streisand and Walter Matthau, on April 2 — four weeks before Sony’s Blu-ray bow of “Funny Girl” (1963), with Streisand in her Oscar-winning debut under the director of William Wyler. Fox has also has also scheduled the 50th anniversary Blu-ray debut of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ “Cleopatra” starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison for May 2. In addition to the 243-minute roadshow version, two-disc release includes Ken Burns’ two-hour AMC documentary “Cleopatra: The Film That Challenged Hollywood” and a bunch of old and new featurettes, as well as a full-color book.
Fox has also scheduled the Blu-ray debut of the never-on-DVD 1933 Oscar winning Best Picture “Cavalcade” for August 6. This restoration of Frank Lloyd’s adaptation of Noel Coward’s epic predecessor to “Downton Abbey,” starring Clive Brook and Diana Wynward, has been in the works a while. Fox indicated that it received the most write-in votes of over 8,000 submitted to its recent online “Voice Your Choice” poll.
The winners, and the first runner up, for each decade from the 1930s through the 1960s, will all be released on Blu-ray Dec. 3. And they are…Henry King’s “Jesse James” (1939) starring Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda and Randolph Scott; William Wellman’s “Call of the Wild” (1935) with Clark Gable and Loretta Young; King’s Technicolored “Black Swan” with Power and Maureen O’Hara; Mankiewicz’ “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir” (1947) starring Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney. Also, Otto Preminger’s “Carmen Jones” (1954) with Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Danridge; Walter Lang’s “Desk Set” (1957) starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn; and a pair of John Wayne vehicles from the 1960s, Henry Hathaway’s “North to Alaska” with Stewart Granger and Ernie Kovacs, and Andrew McLaglen’s “The Undefeated,” co-starring Rock Hudson. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing at least some of the “losers” in 2014.
And Olive Films has scheduled yet another round of Republic library titles, due on both Blu-ray and DVD April 30: Fred Zinnemann’s “The Men” (1950), starring Marlon Brando as a paraplegic in his movie debut; Irving Pichel’s notorious religious drama “The Miracle of the Bells” (1948) starring Fred MacMurray, Alida Valli and (as a priest) Frank Sinatra; as well as John Wayne starring in both Bernard Vorhaus’ “Three Faces West” (1940) with Sigrid Gurie and Charles Coburn as well as the three Mesquiteers B-western “Pals of the Saddle,” directed by George Sherman.