MGM/UA Home Video coined the slogan “in glorious black and white” to compete with color back catalogue movies back in the VHS era, but it’s successor format Blu-ray that has offered some of the most striking monochrome transfers ever available to home audiences. Here are three new ones of classic films, from three different eras:
‘The Pawnbroker’
I missed the world premiere of this spectacular restoration co-sponsored by Library of Congress and Paramount Pictures at the TCM Classic Film Festival, but it’s still quite an eyeful in this high-definition release from Olive Films. Historically important as one of the first American films (in 1964) to take on the Holocaust, it was produced independently by Ely Landau who could only find theatrical distribution through American International Pictures, which generally specialized in drive-in fare.
Oscar-nominated Rod Steiger gives perhaps his greatest performance as the title character, a survivor who suppresses his painful concentration camp memories until his underworld-connected backer (Brock Peters) makes that impossible. Top-drawer cast includes Jaime Sanchez, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Juano Hernandez and Raymond St. Jacques. (Morgan Freeman appears fleetingly in his screen debut).
Sidney Lumet’s unsparing drama, photographed by the great Boris Kaufman (“On the Waterfront”) offers vivid street views of mid-century New York City, particularly Harlem, that really pop in high definition.
‘All the King’s Men’
This won an Academy Award for Best Picture and the gleaming transfer of a new restoration is the sharpest I’ve seen for a Columbia film from a era known for its soft images. But for the film’s 65th anniversary, owner Sony has licensed it to another boutique label, Twilight Time, for a limited edition of 3,000 copies. (Steve Zaillian’s flop 2006 remake with a miscast Sean Penn was a major embarrassment for the studio).
Oscar winner Broderick Crawford — who had been bouncing around Hollywood for a dozen years in the comic likes of “Butch Minds the Baby” — does beautifully modulated work as an upwardly mobile politician that original author Robert Penn Warren based on Louisiana despot Huey Long. Writer-director-producer Robert Rossen (“The Hustler”) pulls no punches in the toughest American political movie since “Meet John Doe”).
Mercedes McCambridge is unforgettable in her screen debut as a cynical political operative with a weakness for Crawford, and there is very fine supporting work by John Ireland, Joanne Dru, Shepperd Strudwick, Anne Seymour, Ralph Dumke and even John Derek as Crawford’s unfortunate son.
The transfer highlights what a fantastic job director of photography Burnett Guffey did, shooting at a variety of California locations on a tight budget.
‘The Women’
This new 75th anniversary restoration also premiered at this year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, where it was hilariously introduced by Ben Mankiewicz and actress Anna Kendrick (unfortunately not on the Blu-ray). My old film instructor at CCNY, Ernst Lubitsch biographer Herman G. Weinberg, insisted that Lubitch was originally set to direct this very funny adaptation of Claire Booth Luce’s play, but after George Cukor was fired from “Gone With the Wind,” MGM decided to salve Cukor’s ego with this plum and permitted Lubitch to instead do a small passion project — “The Shop Around the Corner.”
Rosalind Russell nearly steals the show in a supporting part that reinvented her career, but the engine driving the all-female cast (imagine Joan Fontaine, Paulette Goddard and Marjorie Main in one movie) is the real-life rivalry between top billed MGM divas Norma Shearer (in her best post-code performance) and Joan Crawford. There’s an ample suite of features ported over from the DVD, including the trailer for this and the neglected 1956 musical remake “The Opposite Sex” (but not Dianne English’s misbegotten 2008 remake starring Meg Ryan).
Two Oscar winners (Oliver T. Marsh, Joseph Ruttenberg) share the cinematography honors, though I suspect the Technicolor fashion show may have been done by an uncredited photographer contractually supplied by that company along with their cameras.
The new transfer is a huge improvement over the DVD, with just enough grain to provide a theatrical-like experience and highlighting not only the cast but the huge contribution of Cedric Gibbons and his production designers.