David Lean Centenary; Special Events, Theatrical Showings, new 10 DVD Box Set… March 10, 2008
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, DVD News & Info, British Film , 5 commentsThis is Sir David Lean’s centenary year.
To mark the event, and as a tribute to the great director - born 25 March 1908, died 16 April, 1991 - 10 films directed by Lean during the 1940s and ’50s have been ‘faithfully restored’ by the BFI National Archive, in partnership with Granada 
International. Alongside many special events both at home and abroad, the films will be shown theatrically and form a special season on the film channel Film 4, before being released in the U.K. in a David Lean Cententary Collection box set come August.
The blurb:
…The sparkling new restorations were announced as part of a year-long programme of events, screenings, tributes, book and DVD releases involving different organisations and allowing people across Britain to discover and rediscover Lean’s work.
The £1 million restoration project was completed thanks to generous funding from the David Lean Foundation. The Foundation was set up at Lean’s request to promote the appreciation of film as an art form and to encourage skills and technical excellence in filmmaking.
David Lean remains one of Britain’s most widely known and respected directors and many of his films are part of our national memory, whether the forlorn couple in the station café or that tiny figure shimmering on the desert horizon. A master of visual storytelling, Lean was meticulous in his craft and admired by filmmakers for his loving attention to detail. Like Hitchcock, Lean loved to explore the nature of British or English identity whether on the Home Front of wartime drama, literary adaptations and doomed romances, or on the larger canvas of his later Hollywood-backed epics.
Most of us know the great Lean epics that won many awards here and in Hollywood - The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965) - but he directed 16 fiction films and edited numerous others in a career that spanned six decades. The BFI and its partners aim to cast new light on his earlier work which includes the classics In Which We Serve (1942), Brief Encounter (1945) and Great Expectations (1946), also enabling people to rediscover lesser-known films such as The Passionate Friends (1948), to be released by the BFI in June.
At BFI Southbank in June and July there will be a retrospective of the 16 feature films Lean directed, as well as a number of the more significant ones he edited, including Pygmalion (1938) by Anthony Asquith and 49th Parallel (1941), directed by Michael Powell. The two month season, in association with Film 4, will also include events with documentary clips, discussions and feature presentations from experts exploring themes around his career and working style.
Throughout the year, brand new 35mm and high definition digital prints of the restored films will be screened up and down the country by Granada International, through its theatrical partners Park Circus and the BFI, and by Canal Plus. A complete season is also planned for screening on Film 4 in September, taking Lean’s films to a wider audience across Britain. Also ITV DVD and Optimum will release the newly restored pictures on DVD in the UK in August.
BAFTA is a charity organisation with long-established links with David Lean, which supports, develops and promotes the art forms of the moving image. BAFTA will be holding events and screenings in London, New York and Los Angeles for the public and for Academy members, which started with a tribute to David Lean at the Orange British Academy Film Awards on 10 February. There will be further tributes in the US later in the year, and during the first weekend in August four restored prints will be screened publicly at BAFTA’s headquarters on Piccadilly. The annual David Lean Lecture will also take place as usual this year, details of the date and 2008 lecturer are yet to be announced.
Carnforth Tribute
Also paying tribute to David Lean will be Carnforth Station in Lancashire, the location for most of the key scenes in Brief Encounter (1945). This poignant story of unfulfilled passion and guilt will be shown along with other Lean classics during a week of screenings in March at the station itself or in nearby Lancaster.
A week-long calendar of ‘fun-filled activities’ at both Carnforth Station Visitor Centre and the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster will be launched on Saturday 22 March. There will be special screenings of the newly restored films Great Expectations; Brief Encounter; Dr Zhivago and Oliver Twist at both venues, and there will be a David Lean exhibition at Carnforth Station to commemorate the life and career of ‘one of the most iconic film directors of all time’:
DAVID LEAN CENTENARY CELEBRATIONS PROGRAMME
22nd – 29th March 2008
Sat 22nd March
LAUNCH DAY
3pm Great Expectations Dukes
6pm Brief Encounter Carnforth
6pm-8pm Evening meal / Browse Visitor Centre Carnforth
8pm Brief Encounter Carnforth
Tues 25th March
CENTENARY DAY
7.30pm Oliver Twist Carnforth
Thurs 27th March
5.15pm Dr Zhivago Dukes
8.30pm David Lean Lecture/Discussion Dukes
Fri 28th March
7.00pm Still Life Carnforth & 8.30pm After Dark Theatre
Sat 29th March
5.30pm Summer Madness Dukes
An exhibition of the life and work of David Lean will be on display throughout in the Furness & Midland Hall.
In February David Lean: A Biography was republished by Faber & Faber UK. Written by filmmaker and historian Kevin Brownlow who spent many hours in conversation with David Lean, his family and co-workers, this exhaustive book is universally acknowledged to be the definitive biography and provides the reader with a unique insight into the man, the director, his career and his work. It’s a mammoth tome and fascinating reading, not least in the way Brownlow describes how Lean had the capacity to completely cut out of his life those who were no longer of any use, be they ex-lovers or former colleagues.
A two-day conference gathering together filmmakers, writers, scholars and collaborators of Lean is planned for late July at Queen Mary University of London and will offer a broad range of perspectives examining aspects of the director’s life and career in cinema.
The David Lean Film Restoration Project
Perhaps the most mouth-watering prospect for fans is the aforementioned restoration and theatrical presentation of 10 of Lean’s films, from before his ‘epic’ period, and perhaps all the more satisfying for it. It is these films that explore ‘Englishness’, whether we’re stood on the bridge of a stricken Naval vessel with the stiff-upper lipped Captain ‘D’, struggling vainly to maintain some semblance of middle-class morality in a railway canteen, or finding the cracks in the patriarchal society in a Salford boot shop.
The films with then be released in a 10 DVD box set by ITV DVD, with Hobson’s Choice and The Sound Barrier re-released by Optimum; a bit tough on those Lean fans who already have the 2006 released nine disc David Lean Collection (it’s minus In Which We Serve) from ITV DVD, only to find that obsolescence is just around the corner. Incidentally, the transfers in that set range from excellent to average - it will be interesting to see what transpires in the new set; new extras would be nice. The blurb:
All film restorations require collaboration, but the David Lean Film Restoration Project partnership is a model for how this kind of collaboration can most profoundly affect film heritage. The David Lean Foundation, whose resources come directly from the revenue the films of David Lean still generate, sponsored the restoration of eleven* of the sixteen films that David Lean directed.
The BFI undertook the technical side of the restoration of ten of these titles, working with Granada International and Canal Plus. The BFI National Archive in Berkhamsted is now the permanent home of the preservation elements resulting from the restoration work. The restored films will be the basis of all distributed elements in the future, ensuring that every audience everywhere will see the restored version of each film.
The overall technical approach to the project, led by Andrea Kalas, Senior Preservation Manager of the Archive Film Lab, was to find the best surviving material on each title and restore and preserve each film using the best methods available. For 8 of the films this involved collaboration with Granada International’s Perivale archive and working with the technical team headed by Fiona Maxwell, Director of Operations and Servicing. As quality considerations focus mainly on elements duplicated from an original, each element was inspected for quality and condition. Dirt and scratches can be printed in, and focus and fluctuation issues in the image can also occur. Condition issues can include signs of deterioration, mould, and most often the effects of usage.
Original camera negatives of many of the films were badly damaged: with scratches, frames missing, tears, even one important original negative entirely missing. Elements from both the BFI and Granada International archives were viewed and compared to find the best materials to work from.
The next stage was to decide how and where to complete the restoration which needed specialized equipment and expertise. Archival film is often fragile and in need of printers and scanners that have been optimized for this purpose, and the knowledge of the experts who are restoring the films is crucial. The ability to ensure that Guy Green’s black and white cinematography is brought back to life with utmost care is the ability to understand how to effectively reproduce sharpness, contrast and the greyscale range. To ensure that the Blithe Spirit is a shade of green that looks ghostly and not cartoonish, requires an understanding of the Technicolor process and how to replicate that in modern film stocks.
The ten films were restored by one of three standard film restoration processes:
Photochemical, Digital Sections and Full Digital Intermediate. Each film also had digital audio restoration. Although the Archive Film Lab at the BFI National Archive was the main facility for the restoration work, other film labs such as Cineric in New York were used for additional specialized work. Following the photo-chemical work, Granada International remastered their films to High Definition with full digital picture and sound restoration.THE RESTORED TITLES
IN WHICH WE SERVE
Lean shared the directing credit with Noël Coward, who wrote and starred in this tense and moving account of life on board a wartime destroyer. Although based on the experiences of Louis Mountbatten, this is a state-of-the-nation film with social divisions on shore faithfully mirrored aboard ship. Lean arranged all the camera set-ups and directed Coward in his scenes in front of the camera.
With John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson, Richard Attenborough.
UK / 1942 / bw / 116 mins / Granada International / Park CircusTHIS HAPPY BREED
Noël Coward was again the source for this story of a London lower middle-class suburban family in the inter-war years from 1919 to 1939. The finely and wittily observed family feuds unfold against a panorama of public events ranging from the General Strike of 1926 to the outbreak of war itself. Beautifully acted by an ensemble cast and shot in Technicolor, the film was a huge contemporary hit and has lost little of its appeal.
With Robert Newton, Celia Johnson, John Mills, Kay Walsh, Stanley Holloway.
UK / 1944 / Technicolor / 114 mins / Granada International / Park CircusBLITHE SPIRIT
David Lean’s first comedy, again scripted by Noël Coward from his Broadway hit, stars Rex Harrison as a successful and cheerfully cynical novelist whose marital bliss is interrupted by the mischievous ghost of his first wife, visible to him but invisible to everyone else. The simple but effective special effects, all the more impressive in Technicolor, won an Oscar.
With Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond, Margaret Rutherford.
UK / 1945 / Technicolor / 96 mins / Granada International / Park Circus
BRIEF ENCOUNTER
David Lean’s international reputation was established with this study of unfulfilled passion and guilt – themes that were to recur in his later work. Critically debated, mocked, referenced and remade, this account of an unconsummated affair between a middle-class housewife and a doctor, forced to meet at a railway station, retains a tight emotional grip on any contemporary audience.
With Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard.
UK / 1945 / bw / 86 mins / Granada International / Park CircusGREAT EXPECTATIONS
Undoubtedly one of the finest Dickens adaptations, the film is studded with memorable setpieces, from young Pip’s hair-raising encounter with Magwitch in the graveyard to the eerie Gothic fantasy world of Miss Havisham. The Oscar-winning team of cinematographer Guy Green and production designer John Bryan bring Dickens’ settings to vivid, indelible life.
With John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Alec Guinness.
UK / 1946 / bw / 118 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)OLIVER TWIST
Dickens’ extravagant vision of Victorian London is perfectly balanced by superb performances and Lean’s fierce grip on the sprawling narrative. Guy Green and John Bryan lend an Expressionist look to Fagin’s hellish underworld and Alec Guinness, in his second major role, gives a finely judged theatrical – if controversial – depiction of Fagin himself. Lean was always eager to open a film without dialogue and here he excels himself with a tour de force sequence of Oliver’s pregnant mother battling against a storm.
With Robert Newton, John Howard Davies, Kay Walsh.
UK / 1948 / bw / 116 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS
Re-released by the BFI to mark David Lean’s centenary in 2008, The Passionate Friends has been hailed by critic David Thomson as his work ‘most deserving rediscovery’. Mary (Ann Todd) has chosen a comfortable secure life with her rich banker husband (Claude Rains) over romantic passion with her first love Steven (Trevor Howard). Turmoil ensues when Steven suddenly reappears in her life. With its subtle performances, nuanced direction and beautiful cinematography, Lean’s absorbing romance, adapted from a story by H G Wells, is a fascinating companion piece to Brief Encounter.
With Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains.
UK / 1948 / bw / 91 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)MADELEINE
In this period drama, set in Victorian Glasgow and based on a true story, Lean exploits the ambiguous and enigmatic screen presence of Ann Todd. Here she plays a young woman who, rebelling against her patriarchal father, falls for a penniless but exploitative French aristocrat who later dies of arsenic poisoning. Madeleine is anything but a victim, daring to expose her sexuality. Guy Green’s deep focus photography owes much to CITIZEN KANE.
With Leslie Banks, Elizabeth Sellars, Ivan Desny.
UK / 1949 / 91 mins / Granada International / BFI (licensed by Park Circus)THE SOUND BARRIER
The human cost of scientific progress underlies this story of an aircraft manufacturer whose obsession for perfection leads him into near madness and brings his family suffering – a tendency shared by Lean himself. The script by Terence Rattigan delivers the drama, but the exhilarating aerial footage and the score by Malcolm Arnold are what lodge in the memory.
With Ralph Richardson, Ann Todd, Nigel Patrick.
UK / 1952 / bw / 118 mins / Canal PlusHOBSON’S CHOICE
Charles Laughton delivers a bravura performance as a self-important Lancashire bootmaker who attempts to dictate his daughter’s choice of husband, only to find that she marries his downtrodden and simple-minded employee and starts a rival business. Set in the 1890s, this working class comedy by Harold Brighouse was first staged in 1916 but is here given a fresh breath of cinematic life thanks to luminous cinematography by Jack Hildyard.
With John Mills, Brenda de Banzie, Prunella Scales.
UK / 1953 / bw / 107 mins / Canal Plus
*Mentioned above, the 11th film restored is Summer Madness, one of the last independent films Lean made and the most important in need of restoration.
The work was carried out five years ago by experts at the British Film Institute at a cost approaching £60,000 with support from the American Academy Foundation and the David Lean Foundation, and a screening of the film closed the 2003 The Venice Film Festival.
Kevin Brownlow, David Lean’s biographer, said: “Colour film has a horrible habit of fading and this was in Eastmancolor, which wasn’t a permanent colour.
“But Lean was such a visual artist it is important to get it as close as possible to what it originally looked like. What is strange about Summer Madness is that it was his favourite film. It’s a curious choice for someone who made Lawrence of Arabia.”
More details on Centenary activities at the BFI here and at the Carnforth Railway Visitors Centre here. Meanwhile, it’s worthwhile ending with a précis of the diary of just some of the special event highlights, though it has still to be finalised:
March
Screenings of Lean films in Carnforth, Lancaster and, his birthplace, Croydon.
25 March
Centenary of David Lean’s birth. Academy members’ screening of Ryan’s Daughter in 70mm at 195 Piccadilly, London. Film4 screening of The Bridge on the River Kwai
April
An evening in honour of David Lean as part of Brit Week, presented by BAFTA/LA in Los Angeles.
7 – 11 April
Granada International to launch the David Lean Centenary collection to international broadcasters at MIPTV in Cannes
Summer
Open-air screening events (BFI, Park Circus) TBC
June
Ten newly restored titles released across the UK - The David Lean Foundation has generously funded the restoration of ten of Sir David Lean’s sixteen films by the BFI National Archive, Granada International and Canal Plus, and these will be available in high quality 35mm prints and HD digital format through BFI Distribution and Park Circus.
June – July
Rediscover David Lean: Retrospective at BFI Southbank. In addition to screening all of David Lean’s works as director and a selection of those which he edited, BFI Southbank will also present a number of events ranging from presentations by experts in particular aspects of his work, to introduced screenings by those associated with individual titles and will also include discussions embracing different perspectives on some of these classic titles.
July – December
USA theatrical tour (BFI, Park Circus)
24 / 25 July
David Lean Conference, Queen Mary University of London. Gathering together film-makers, writers, scholars and people who knew Lean, this conference will offer a broad range of perspectives. Papers welcome on individual films, conditions of production, literary adaptation, key collaborations, as well as all other aspects of Lean’s life in the cinema.
August
ITVDVD release The David Lean Centenary Collection. Optimum Releasing issue The Sound Barrier and Hobson’s Choice on DVD
2 – 3 August
Public screenings of a selection of four restored prints of David Lean films at BAFTA’s headquarters on 195 Piccadilly, London
September
An event in honour of David Lean, presented by BAFTA East Coast in New York City. David Lean Season on Film4, including restored prints. Opening of The David Lean Library at the National Film and Television School - Generously supported by the David Lean Foundation, the light and airy David Lean Library is a central feature of the School’s new building, completed in time for the new academic year starting at the end of January 2008. As well as increased space for books and study, the new Library provides improved storage facilities for the School’s collections, including room for many years of growth in audio-visual material.
Date TBC
BAFTA David Lean Centenary Lecture - Since 2001, the David Lean Foundation has generously supported BAFTA’s high profile annual film lecture at 195 Piccadilly designed to educate, inform and inspire practitioners by providing insight into the experiences of some of the world’s most compelling filmmakers. Previous lectures have been given by Sydney Pollack, Robert Altman, Ken Loach, John Boorman, Woody Allen, Oliver Stone and David Lynch. The lecturer for 2008 has yet to be announced.
Trick Or Treat… November 1, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film General, Horror, British Film , 10 commentsThirty years on from the introduction of the Compact Disc as a medium for playing recorded music, the debate over whether digital or that old analogue war horse, the vinyl record, is best still rages. And, as we see more and more films, particularly cinema classics, screened in a digital format, just as surely will a parallel debate divide movie buffs.
The naysayers claim that movies presented in cinemas digitally will never actually look like film. A digital presentation lacks the warmth, the vibrancy, the depth and the black levels of film. Certainly it lacks film’s ‘organic’ attributes; any nicks and marks - or lack of - seen in any given digital transfer are embedded there forever. There’s no going back, year after year to your favourite festival to see that new print take on the patina of age. A digital presentation is locked, caught in time; age shall not wither it. Only advancing technology.
There’s also the issue of the projectionist; watching How The West Was Won at Bradford a while back I was mindful that it takes no little skill or experience to fire up multi-panel ’Cinerama’ screenings, and the projectors themselves are hulking, complex things of some beauty, a glimpse of which brought a strange desire, deeply embedded in the psyche of most male adults, to go tinker with (preferably armed with a small tool kit). I strongly suspect the difference between a film and digital projectionist, equates to the gulf between a Chef de Cuisine and your average burger flipper.
My own reservations about digital were largely swept aside, however, during this year’s Summer of British Film Festival when I took in as many screenings as I could, all of them digitally projected and every one a blissful encounter. It wasn’t just that I viewed several films that I had never seen in a cinema before, but the fact that I was enjoying the communal experience in the company of people who were seeing the films for the first time; a vicarious pleasure.
I’ve read that other screenings had their own problems - out of synch sound seems to be a digital bugbear - but only once did I become fully aware that I was watching a movie, not as a combination of celluloid, emulsion and light, but via binary and laser, a short video glitch marring an otherwise impeccable showing of a stunning transfer of Goldfinger.
People young enough to be Billy Fisher’s grandchildren laughed in all the right places during Billy Liar, those to whom WWII is just a few musty old pages in history books became misty eyed during The Dam Busters as the camera silently panned through the empty quarters of the airmen who would never return. You could have heard a pin drop.
So, a hit, a palpable hit for digital, one which will encourage more showings of classic films on the big screen. Fired up by all this ‘digitation’, the BFI restoration of Hammer’s 1958 classic Dracula, began a limited U.K. theatrical showing last night, fittingly on Hallowe’en.
There has been much controversy over the BFI’s involvement in restoring Dracula since it was showcased at Cannes last May. Back then, the BFI National Archive, Senior Preservation Manager Andrea Kalas was quoted as saying:
“The restoration of what many fans call the best Hammer horror film required extensive research into reported censored scenes. Rumour and fact, not unlike the Dracula story itself, are intermingled.
“Our research into missing scenes led us to every conceivable resource from the vaults of Warner Bros to an archive in Japan. Scenes censored by the BBFC for the release of the UK version, but included in the US version, have been recovered. In addition, the US title, Horror of Dracula, had been attached to most theatrical and video releases. We have restored the original British release title with its distinctive illuminated “D.”
“Ben Thompson of the BFI National Archive film lab oversaw the restoration and it is due to his diligence and perfectionism that the film is restored. We owe special thanks to Richard Dayton and Eric Aijala of YCM Laboratories and Tim Everett, Ned Price and Bill Rush at Warner Bros.”
The BFI went on to add:
The film was restored from the original negative, except for the original British title and the censored scenes, which were from dupe negatives found in Warner Bros’ vaults. The original prints were released on IB-Technicolor prints, and Richard Dayton at YCM Laboratories in Burbank worked with Ben to achieve this particular look.
However the Custodes Lucis Group, who claim to be ‘members of staff of the British Film Institute and people who work with the Institute in a variety of ways’ have a different tale to tell. Back in June their site reported:
Highlight of the BFI’s Cannes presence this year was a presentation of a new version of Dracula (1958) which the BFI claimed had been restored by the Archive. This raised some eyebrows when it was first announced, as the 50th anniversary of the film’s release is not until 2008, and the first Hammer film was produced in 1935. Moreover, because of the vagaries of distribution and donation, the NFTVA had never actually been able to acquire any material on this title in the past, and, of course, colour feature films are extremely costly items to restore. Considering the vast number of NFTVA-held titles in urgent need of preservation, restoration, rediscovery, and so on, to pick a film not in the collection, one which would eat up most, if not all, of the preservation budget for the year, and one not due for any kind of commemorative release, seemed a little peculiar.
However, on May 15th, a press release was posted on the BFI website, headed “Dracula in Cannes” [part of which is reproduced above]…
We all know that Dracula is a fantasy but surely no-one ever expected the British Film Institute to dream up such a fantastical press release. There is not a shred of truth in these assertions. The BFI did not restore the 1958 Hammer Dracula. This was done by Warner Bros. (the copyright owners) about six years ago, and was, by all accounts a very straightforward procedure, requiring no research, as the negative they worked from (of the American release version) was complete and in good condition. All the “BFI National Archive” did, in reality, was to have a laboratory in California add the British main titles to the American release picture, thus producing a hybrid that was never, ever in distribution. So much for the BFI’s policy of enhanced curatorial control. Such a decision – to create, in effect, a new work without clearly documenting the modification – would be anathema to any right-thinking archivist elsewhere in the world. In the BFI’s new fantasy land, though, it seems that anything goes.
In an interview published in The Independent on Sunday…Anthony Minghella, Chair of the BFI’s Board of Governors, talking about the high cost of archival duplication, noted that “… we are restoring the Hammer film starring Christopher Lee as Dracula…” The question is: who lied to whom? Did Mr Minghella genuinely believe that the BFI/NFTVA was carrying out a full restoration of this classic? If so, he must have had the information from Amanda Nevill. Did Ms Nevill genuinely believe that the Archive was carrying out such a restoration? If so, she must have had the information from Andrea Kalas. Where does this extraordinary chain of deception begin and end?
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that such a restoration (had it really taken place) would have run entirely counter to the BFI’s stated policy that the studios should look after their own, and that the Archive should work only on films which have no rights’ owners and are therefore exploitable commercially. And what would the Film Council have said had the BFI spent its money on this restoration?
Pretty strong language, and quite shocking stuff*. However, none of that detracts from what was a superb digital showing of Dracula last night; from the moment the pristine BBFC certification hit the screen, up came the Universal Internationallogo and there it was - virtually unmarked, beautifully framed (unlike the current DVD releases on both sides of the Atlantic), just enough film grain to stop it looking unnatural, and shown in the original 1.66:1 ratio. The colours, particularly the vivid, bloody reds, were strong and vibrant; it whets the appetite for the home video re-release that Warners have promised, and that will no doubt come in the film’s 50th anniversary year, 2008.
Even more pleasing for this viewer was the fact that my 15-years-old son was held spellbound by Terence Fisher’s half century old film, and confessed, without shame later that it scared him, something, I must admit, I didn’t quite expect of a dyed in the wool denizen of the 21st century whose only previous encounter with the Prince of Darkness was a showing of the meeting between Mr Lugosi, Mr Abbott and Mr Costello. Oh, and he didn’t ask once what our corpuscle hungry Count wanted with a librarian (come to think of it, what did he want with a librarian? Are they tastier? Bite a librarian today, and report back to me post haste. On the other hand, best not. I digress…)
I thought I’d overplayed my hand when I described the final encounter between Dracula and Van Helsing as one of the greatest scenes in horror film history. But no, not only does it still raise the hairs on the back of my neck (even thinking about it now, James Bernard’s score literally racing, galloping along…), it also did it for the boy. How very satisfying.
Three showings last night, we plumped for the early screening at 6pm, so I decided to round off Hallowe’en with a midnight showing chez Hodson of Brides of Dracula on DVD, the beautiful R1 transfer from Universal. I doubt my admiration for Peter Cushing could increase further, but while in Dracula, Christopher Lee has the plumb role that dominates while he’s off screen, it’s Cushing’s considerable craft and ability that is the glue that holds both films together and which left a big daft smile on my face.
A consummate professional, Cushing inhabits the character of Van Helsing, making sure that he’s the very embodiment of a 19th century physician by perfecting bits of ‘business’, whether it’s handling antique equipment - needles, swabs, the wonderful Phonograph (listen how he enunciates on the recording) - with an easy familiarity or alighting from a moving carriage with the athletic grace of someone who does so daily. When Universal revived the character recently, they trumpeted that they had reinvented Van Helsing as a ‘kick ass action hero’. Surely some mistake? Mr Cushing got there first. Picture his Professor Van Helsing - a snarling, feral, Dracula closing in for the kill - leaping to the table top, springboarding to rip down the curtains and bathe his foe in deadly sunlight, or jumping to catch the sails of the windmill, thus forming the shadow of an enormous vampire culling crucifix - nobody does it better.
You can find out more on when and where Dracula is being shown here. Go now, my children of the night, and book your tickets…
So, while film in our living rooms have been steadily moving towards a digital future for the past decade, it seems more of us will be watching movies in similar fashion theatrically. Vue will open Europe’s first all-digital cinema in Hull in December - it’s coming whether we like it or not.
Cost must be a factor, as must ease of operation. Yet if digital means that new life is breathed into classic films so that they can be enjoyed, where they belong, on the big screen by new generations, can that ever be seen as a bad thing? Obviously film must come first, but providing preservation of the original elements is paramount, providing that digital technology can give the viewer the most filmlike experience possible, I’m finding it hard to come up with a downside.
Will digital ultimately ‘kill’ traditional film? I don’t think so. Perhaps we should note that while CD signalled the end for the turntable more than three decades ago, vinyl records are still very much with us.
*Nov. 8 update; when these allegations were first made, it appears a poster at the British Film Forums had this to say, which I’ll leave for you to read without comment from me:
As Senior Curator (Fiction) at the BFI National Archive, I’d like [to] answer the points raised over our work on DRACULA. The work undertaken by Warner Bros in the mid-1990s was not a restoration as such but simply the preparation of digital materials for a DVD release. The BFI has prepared new preservation materials on film from the original negative. The new version, incorporating the original UK title sequence, benefits from additional technical work that has been carried out on both picture and sound. Furthermore, we have reinstated a brief sequence which was cut from the UK release version by the BBFC. None of this is a secret and we are pleased to offer the film to UK audiences in as complete a form as is currently possible.
Can I also add a small caveat as regards Dracula, which raises more issues. The BFI has been showing their restored print - not in digital form - at the National Film Theatre in London and there are several reports around the ‘net from very disappointed viewers that all is not as it should be; it’s marked, murky and with poor sound. Why should the digital version be so much better? Good question isn’t it…
Teddington’s Lost & Found, And A Tale Of Two TCMs… September 10, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Television, DVD News & Info, British Film , 3 commentsVisitors to the Filmjournal site will already know that the ever excellent clydefro is making a weekly effort to point you at the best of the output from the Stateside Turner Classic Movies cable station, so I hope he won’t mind me gently treading on his territory.
It’s in a good cause; I want to highlight a season of Warner Bros. First National films made at Teddington Studios. On Mondays September 17 and September 24, film fans in the U.S. will see a variety of very rare ’quota quickies’ from the British studio. And I quote:
The second installment of TCM’s remarkable “Lost and Found” series is comprised of films made at London’s famed Teddington Studios by Warner Bros. First National during the period 1932-1943. The series includes the U.S. premieres of two early works from director Michael Powell of The Red Shoes (1948) fame – the drama Something Always Happens (1934) starring Ian Hunter, and the crime thriller Crown vs. Stevens (1936) starring Beatrix Thompson. The other premieres are Crime Unlimited (1935) starring Lilli Palmer, Man of the Moment (1935) starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., The Peterville Diamond (1942) starring Anne Crawford and The Dark Tower(1943) starring David Farrar…
Known as “quota quickies,” these films were shot at a fast pace on low budgets to meet the demands of the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927, created by the United Kingdom Parliament to require a yearly quota of British-made movies and hopefully counter Hollywood’s dominance of the cinema world. (Never considered a success, the Act was modified over the years and repealed in 1960.) The films made at Teddington during its Warner Bros. era were strictly for the U.K. market, and most were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Of more than 100 such films, only 33 are known to survive.
Many distinguished actors worked at Teddington during its Warner Bros. period; also represented in the TCM series are Michael Redgrave in Sons of the Sea (1941), Richard Greene in Flying Fortress (1942) and John Gielgud in The Prime Minster (1941). Among those films considered permanently lost, one of the most historically significant is 1934’s Murder in Monte Carlo, in which a young actor named Errol Flynn so impressed Warner Bros. executives that they dispatched him to Hollywood.
Teddington Studios has a long and interesting history dating to the 1880s. It became a production center for feature films in 1916 and was leased, then purchased, by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s. In 1944, during the dwindling days of World War II, a German rocket exploded on the property, causing extensive damage. Eventually reconstructed, the studios would become home to Thames Television, and today the facility remains an important media center.
The link above takes you to the TCM website and from there, the programme details, including full synopses of each film, plus video snippets. Good stuff. But the even better news is, apparently, ads being broadcast for the season say that the films will be transferred to DVD and are going to be available ‘before Christmas’. Be nice if it comes to pass.
While I’m here, I’ll use this as an opportunity to vent my spleen, in a very small way, at TCM’s U.K. output - a quick look at the website shows immediately that the Brit station is, by comparison, the American version’s impoverished cousin, both online and on air. Not only that, while there are some real gems to be found over here, they pale by comparison with the rich output of TCM U.S. For a start, it’s highly unlikely we’ll get a version of the Teddington Studios season broadcast in the country from which the films actually emanated. Bonkers.
TCM U.K.’s films are shown usually (but not always) in the correct aspect ratio, but never anamorphically (widescreen TVs being, apparently, the domain of those permanently tuned to Big Brother). We also have to put with showings broken up by ad breaks, something even Murdoch’s Sky Movies channels do not stoop to.
I get the distinct impression that, in close association with Warners savvy classic home entertainment arm, TCM U.S. is a station aimed at legions of film buffs and cineastes of all ages. While TCM U.K. - it’s myriad commercials zeroing in on those nearing the front of the queue in God’s waiting room - is targeted at those wrinkly and technophobic old film fans who think Brad Pitt was at the heart of the mighty conflict between Arthur Scargill and Maggie Thatcher. And who appreciate being prodded every half hour to get ready for the next big adventure in life. Which is death.
Don’t get me wrong, the fact that TCM U.K. exists at all is something of a triumph when you consider television’s overall output. But as you can see, it could be so much better…
Reed All About It… August 6, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : Film & DVD Reviews, British Film, Crime / Noir / Thriller , 3 commentsA Kid For Two Farthings (1955)
Carol Reed’s A Kid For Two Farthings tends to divide opinion. There are those that see it as a frankly soppy piece of contemporary nostalgia, filled with stereotypical characters, who inhabit a mythical, rose-tinted cityscape. And there are others who see a film with a great big heart, an extraordinary evocation, from Wolf Mankowitz’s novel and screenplay, of the post-war East End of London. I’m a cynic by nature, but, gentle reader, I fall unashamedly into the camp of the latter.
As if it wasn’t already obvious from Odd Man Out, The Third Man, Oliver! and The Fallen Idol, A Kid For Two Farthings is further evidence that Reed is a wonderful director of children, and in the lead as ‘Joe’, Jonathan Ashmore gives a stupendous performance - his only film performance - a boy who believes utterly in the magical powers of his pet ‘unicorn’, the eponymous pocket money purchased one-horned animal of the title.
Living above an impoverished tailor’s shop with his careworn mother, Joanna (Celia Johnson), Joe spends his days weaving between market stalls, chatting amiably with the spivs and the hawkers, beguiling kindly shop owners or staring wide-eyed at the wrestlers who bounce off each others bloated muscles in the gym. As in The Fallen Idol, we see the film unfold mostly from this innocent’s perspective, our perceptions tuned to his; the sights and incredible cacophony of the East End markets, the vivid colours that stand out midst the grimy, slum-like, post-war surroundings, the larger than life, almost Runyon-esque, characters. And a life-affirming belief, not only in magic - or the merest possibility that it exists - but that things can only get better.
Joe is told by the benign Jewish tailor Mr Kandinsky (David Kossoff - who else?), that unicorns exist and grant their owners wishes. When Joe buys a sickly goat with a single twisted horn, his childish innocence convinces him that his ‘unicorn’ will change life for the better not only for himself but also for those around him.
Woven into this tale we have body-builder Sam (Joe Robinson) and Sonia (the truly gorgeous Diana Dors), seemingly doomed never to name the day, ‘Ice’ Berg (Sid James), purveyor of dodgy diamond rings, ‘Python’ Macklin (played with impressive relish by former World Heavyweight Champ Primo Carnera), the bad-guy wrestler determind to get Sonia into his patented ‘Python grip’.
Home Vision’s US R1 DVD is open matte (it was most likely projected at 1.66:1), but the Technicolor cinematography of A.S. Bates is, if not perfectly presented, sometimes eye wateringly beautiful. Benjemin Frankel’s score is quite spare, most of the ‘music’ provided by the location, the occasional radio or record playing in the background, but the main theme wafts in and out played on an old gramophone wheeled around the East End on a pram by a wandering tramp (Joseph - father of Frances - Tomelty), another touch of whimsy, one of many in this wholly whimsical film.
It’s just one, I think, of the interesting aspects of a fascinating production that’s packed with familiar faces; as well as the aforementioned, the cast boasts such familiar faces as Brenda De Banzie, Irene Handel, Danny Green and Sid Tafler.
Where there is life, there is hope; it’s not an unwelcome message even in this most determinedly optimistic tale (especially in these determinedly pessimistic times). And while not everyone ends with their wishes fulfilled, A Kid For Two Farthings, tells us, while there is a glimmer of hope, to hang on tight to our dreams.
There are no extras on the R1 disc, but it’s available quite cheaply. A Kid For Two Farthings is also available in the UK, but from public domain specialists Orbit Media so I cannot vouch for the quality. However, it will be part of what looks like to be a super Diana Dors Collection from ITV DVD released this month in the UK, which also includes Good Time Girl (1948), The Calendar (1948), Oliver Twist (1948), It’s Not Cricket (1949), Diamond City (1949), A Boy, A Girl and a Bike (1949), As Long as They’re Happy (1955), and Three for All (1975). The set is completed by a couple of documentaries from the Granada Ventures catalogue: The Blonde Bombshell, and Who Got Diana Dors’ Millions?
The Man Between (1953)
If you’re searching for a theme that connects Carol Reed’s sublime Odd Man Out, The Third Man and The Man Between, then, I suppose, ‘men on the run’ is the most obvious. But while James Mason’s Johnny McQueen is a doomed idealist, crucified by accident and circumstance, and Orson Welles Harry Lime is an utterly charming, yet chilling moral vacuum, in The Man Between Mason’s Ivo Kern is the post-conflict everyman for whom the start of the war brought an abrupt end to everything he held dear. Though Ivo is German, his fate was mirrored by millions of others round the globe - the war brought an end to the former lawyer’s life of easy rationality and social order; it shattered his belief in basic justice and humanity. Ivo is, simply, a hybrid of the first two characters. And all of them are ultimately doomed by love.
Critics saw The Man Between as a somehow failed The Third Man, the two sharing blasted post-war backdrops and a protagonist who ghosts between the West and the netherworld of a Soviet controlled sector. Here it’s Berlin rather than Vienna, but the similarities do the film a disservice; Ivo is no Harry, he’s no serial user of friends and lovers, a criminal from cradle to grave. Ivo is damaged goods, a man who served his country at huge personal cost, who cannot accept that even broken by an overwhelming burden of guilt, he is still capable of an altruistic act. As Kerns Mason is, of course, typically brilliant.
Claire Bloom is also superb as the resourceful Susanne Mallinson, the girl who gets unwittingly caught up in Ivo’s world of gangsters and political thugs when she visits her Army medico brother Martin (Geoffrey Toone) and his wife Bettina (Hidegard Knef). When Susanne suspects Bettina of an affair with the charming Ivo, she can’t imagine that she’ll become the kidnapped pawn in a plan to capture allied spy Olaf Kastner (Ernst Schröder). With the pieces moving swiftly around the board in Soviet East Berlin, can Ivo get Susanne safely back to the West?
Having earlier mentioned Reed and children, it would be remiss of me not to spotlight Dieter Krause as the young look-out, ‘Horst’ (kitted out, deliberately, to resemble the all-American ’kid down the block’), and, ironically, it is this child’s love for Ivo as much as the blossoming relationship between Susanne and the German, that precipitates tragedy.
The Man Between is beautifully scripted by Harry Kurnitz and an uncredited Eric Linklater from Walter Ebert’s story, with Mason given some delightfully spry one-liners - ‘The Germans always had to learn languages - the army never knew where it would be going next’. It might not be quite as sharp as Greene (but then who is?), and it suffers the tricky problem of having a multi-lingual cast of characters. Reed solves the problem of Germans speaking to Germans by first having them speak in their mother tongue then switching abruptly to English, a solution I never find satisfying. I missed Robert Krasker’s signature stark cinematography, but that doesn’t mean to say Desmond Dickinson doesn’t do a fine, if workmanlike, job, and he’s given lots of opportunity as Ivo and Susanne dodge through Berlin’s pock-marked nightime landscape. There’s an atypical John Addison score, a decadent clarinet sounding out the theme for a Berlin, the ‘city between’, that is caught in a tug-of-war - the acceptable face of capitalism pulling harder than granite hearted communism.
The Man Between is part of Optimum’s excellent UK R2 James Mason: Screen Icon Collection. There’s an oddity inasmuch as it’s presented in anamorphic 1.66:1, and I’m almost certain this 1953 film was framed for Academy; the German R2, I am told, is presented full frame. Wide, The Man Between is a little tight and there are too many shots that leave tops of the actors heads out of the top of the frame. It may be that it’s one of those films that was indeed shown wide, as the widescreen boom took hold, but I’m not entirely convinced it was shot that way. In fact, I’m nigh on certain it wasn’t. The good news is that it’s decent transfer with nice contrast and very few marks or blemishes. The only audio track is English mono, which is good, and there are no subtitles or extras of any kind.
The third link, I suppose, between the three Reed films mentioned in this review, is the sense of despair and futility as the end credits roll, a sharp contrast to the reaction to A Kid For Two Farthings, but strangely, somehow, not a million miles from it. It might be something in the English psyche that I can see even that as a positive reaction, and I ache to put myself through it again, and again.
P.S…
Just a quick word on the rest of the titles that make up Optimum’s James Mason: Screen Icon Collection which is in the usual space saving folding digipack arragement typical of this series. I’ve had a quick look at the rest of the titles and it’s interesting to note that three of the discs precisely replicate - transfers, extras, disc art and all - the extant versions; 5 Fingers, currently available from Optimum, plus Network’s The Man in Grey and the sublime, the spectacular (I do like it…) Odd Man Out. Only Network’s rather nicely put together booket, Soldier in The Snow, from that title is missing.
Ealing’s The Bells Go Down is a fair transfer, a little grainy, some flecking here and there, and like The Man Between, no extras whatsoever. There’s a bigger budget at play, and a recognisable cast of star names, but, as a visceral document of London’s Firefighters during the Blitz it can’t hold a candle (no pun intended) to the same year’s I Was A Fireman (aka Fires Were Started) from Humphrey Jennings. More on that some other time, hopefully.
Cry ‘God for Larry, Hammer Films and Network!’ April 29, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , 6 comments“If I wasn’t an actor, I think I’d have gone mad. You have to have extra voltage, some extra temperament to reach certain heights. Art is a little bit larger than life - it’s an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness.”
Laurence Olivier
2007 marks the centenary of the birth of Laurence Olivier (May 22 to be precise), once regarded as the world’s leading stage and screen actor.
Lord Olivier, as he was after being elevated in 1970 (the first actor to receive the accolade; the only other to be honoured by a peerage is Lord Attenborough), is, perhaps, perceived today as an old-fashioned declamatory actor, whose sometimes flamboyant film performances meant that even towards the end of his lifetime, he was being reassessed by those who preferred the minimalist approach of the modern thespian.
However, anyone who thinks Olivier should now simply be considered a rather choice smoked ham should watch, for instance, his spine-tingling performance as Archie Rice in The Entertainer, feel that frisson of disgust as his demonic ’Richard Crookback’ shuffles forward to confide and conspire with the camera in Richard III, genuinely thrill to the Agincourt speech in Henry V, or enjoy his quite intimate screen performance in Bunny Lake is Missing.
As well as bringing, via his screen adaptations, the works of Shakespeare to the masses - and having already mentioned cured meats - it must be said that Olivier relished the opportunity to ham it up with the very best. He couldn’t resist the chance to be lip-smackingly salacious in the adaptation of Harold Robbins The Betsy, and some think his French Canadian trapper ‘Johnnie’ in Powell and Pressburger’s The 49th Parallel maybe needs to be turned down just a notch or two (but not this fan). Towards the end of his career, if Hollywood wanted variations on any number of ‘mittle European ackzents’, Lord Larry was their man. Who can forget Olivier’s ‘weißer engel’, doing for dentistry what Jaws did for recreational swimming? Or his frail (he was actually ill at the time; in fact he was in ill-health for the last two decades of his life) but dogged Nazi hunter ‘Ezra Lieberman’ in The Boys From Brazil?
There’s a great story told by William Goldman about Marathon Man. Dustin Hoffman turned up on set and Olivier was aghast at his appearance. The Great Man asked what on earth was wrong and Hoffman replied that he was playing a character who hadn’t slept all night…so Hoffman hadn’t slept.
Olivier, ever disparaging of ‘the Method’, gave him an exasperated look and said: ‘Why don’t you just ACT it dear boy?’
I always find Olivier, in productions good, bad, or indifferent, to be excellent value for money, in his Shakespearian roles he’s simply hypnotic. As a small boy I was bought an ‘EP’ (remember them?) of Treasure Island, with Donald Wolfit as ‘Long John’. I hadn’t a clue who Wolfit was at the time, but was told he’d been ‘a very great stage actor’, yet he was a man who was little regarded by the time he died in 1968. Maybe Olivier has become a ‘Donald Wolfit’ for another generation? Whatever. I loved that record and thought Wolfit was just fab. Olivier is fab too…
In R2, Network is prepping two box sets for release next month:
Laurence Olivier Presents: Five works by 20th century playwrights, presented by one of the greatest actors of the modern age, with an outstanding range of international talent. Plays include: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams); The Collection (Harold Pinter); Hindle Wakes (Stanley Houghton); Come Back, Little Sheba (William Inge); Saturday, Sunday, Monday (by Eduardo de Filippo).
and…
The Laurence Olivier Centenary Collection: Henry V, Richard III, The Ebony Tower, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Merchant of Venice, The South Bank Show: Laurence Olivier - A Life (originally aired in two parts), plus the six plays in the Laurence Olivier Presents box.
Meanwhile there are number of celebrations planned throughout the UK including special screenings. The BBC reported recently that Henry V gets digital makeover:
…For a screening at the Brighton Festival on the south coast of England this year, composer Dominic Sewell has digitally removed William Walton’s original score so that the film can have its music performed by a live orchestra. The orchestra will play the music in synchronisation with newly-remastered images on the screen - digitally enhanced as part of an ongoing project to celebrate the centenary of Olivier’s birth……Henry V, made to boost morale during World War II, is regarded as a British film classic. Olivier was both its star and director, and as such the film is at the centrepiece of the centenary of his birth in 1907.
Once it has been fully restored, it will be screened in a number of venues later this year - including at the Cannes Film Festival.
The process of digitally restoring it is being overseen by Fiona Maxwell, director of operations and servicing at British media company Granada International, which owns the rights to a number of Olivier classics.
She said that by going back to original 35mm negatives and re-transferring them on modern equipment, “we can get them back to their former glory.”
“We can regrade them, get the colour that is within those negatives,” she said.
While some restoration will also be in real time - by passing the negative through a bath to get rid of dirt, for example - the frame-by-frame restoration made possible by computer has meant that even scratches that occurred within the negatives on which the film was originally shot can now be removed.
“You can literally take a wipe across the screen,” Ms Maxwell said.
“Sometimes it’s like turning on light - because people have got used to dirt and fading, and think this is what an old film looks like.”
You’ll see at this link that Brighton Festival’s Henry V has sold out. And it looks superb too - Walton’s music, particularly the charge of the French towards the English bowmen, is fantastic. The scene - the sun glinting off the armour, the bright, primary colours of the banners and shields, the verdant battlefield, a deep, azure blue sky - should be a Technicolor marvel, but on the current unrestored R2 DVD, it’s sometimes drab and badly marked. A restored Henry V in all it’s Plantagenet splendour would be an eyewatering delight; it’s not been confirmed, but I cannot believe that the restoration will not be included in the ‘Centenary’ box. Here’s hoping.
‘It’s in the trees! It’s coming!’
This news from HammerWeb is being greeted with delight on various internet fora. Click though and you’ll see that DD Home Entertainment has struck a deal with Columbia which means that UK based DDHE - already responsible for a number of excellent Hammer and horror releases including The Quatermass Xperiment - is set to pull the trigger on even more Hammer:
“…A spokesman for DD is keen to stress that the exact titles due to be released are dependent on the results of an ongoing evaluation of archive materials, but we can confirm that the thirteen Hammer titles provisionally scheduled for release are The Camp On Blood Island, Cash on Demand, Creatures the World Forgot, The Damned, Don’t Panic Chaps, The Gorgon, Maniac, Never Take Sweets From a Stranger, The Stranglers of Bombay, Sword of Sherwood Forest, Taste of Fear, The Terror of the Tongs and Watch it Sailor. There may be other titles to follow.”
Tucked in with the Hammer news is this snippet: “In the meantime, DD’s release of Columbia titles will get underway with the British DVD premiere of the 1957 film Night of the Demon. DD are planning a collector’s edition of this classic horror film and work is already underway on exclusive behind-the-scenes extra features.”
Columbia has already done an excellent job in R1 with Night of The Demon / Curse of The Demon, but a release with some substantial extras would be marvellous. It’s one of the great iconic British horror films, deftly directed by Jacques Tourneur, the noirish shadows and suggestion creating far more creeping menace than the rubber monster foisted on Tourneur for the final scenes. I really must get round to buying Tony Earnshaw’s book Beating the Devil: The Making of ‘Night of the Demon’…
DDHE’s presentations vary in quality, sometimes excellent, sometimes awful, and sometimes they make elementary and frustrating mistakes in authoring. They do try hard, however, paying for the inclusion of a commentary here or a featurette there, and I rather like the booklets they often include with their bigger releases. They obviously haven’t the budget of the big studios to carry out major restorations on their own, but providing they are given decent elements in the first place - and you would think Columbia will have access to such - I’m quite hopeful.
With Warners hinting that they are set to revisit their Hammer titles - the crown jewels as far as most fans are concerned - it’s looking to be a great year for afficionados of the films from Bray and Elstree.
Things to Come…
Finally - finally - the specs and art are up for the Things to Come: Special Edition on the Network site:
• Brand new digital restoration of the longest existing version
• Virtual Extended Edition – a viewing option allowing for the inclusion of text and images from long-missing and unfilmed scenes to present a tantalising ‘what if?’
• Brand-new audio commentary with Things to Come expert Nick Cooper
• On Reflection: Brian Aldiss on H.G. Wells – 25 minute documentary from 1971
• Ralph Richardson interview by Russell Harty in 1975
• Extensive booklet written by Nick Cooper
• The Wandering Sickness – an original 78rpm recording
• Comprehensive image gallery, including many rare stills
• Merchandise image gallery
• US re-release trailer
The artwork is beautiful, certainly an improvement over the proposed box art for the aborted 2006 release. One press release from Network adds: ‘This extended version is taken from a high quality 35mm print from the BFI archives’. If I recall correctly, the restored British Film Institute print, first screened a couple of years ago now, is some three minutes longer than the more commonly seen American cut. Nick Cooper confirmed to me that this release is an improvement on the DDHE transfer; just how much of an improvement remains to be seen.
The waiting is quite painful, and any readers of this blog will know it’s become something of a saga - not long to go, thankfully, now. I might actually get through a post without mentioning it!
Having said that, we may have to go though all this again (groan..). Word came out recently that the U.S. rights to a number of Korda films had passed from MGM / UA into the hands of Janus Films. The Private Life of Henry VIII, Things to Come, The Thief of Bagdad (to name but three), all from Criterion?
It’s a tantalising thought…
Comings…and Goings… April 10, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , 1 comment so farEver since it was tentatively announced last year by Network in the UK, there has been much speculation about just what might be ’special’ about their ‘Special Edition’ DVD of Things to Come.
I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times and, it seems, disinformation and rumour has been the order. Up until now hopefully.
As reported previously, William Cameron Menzies seminal sci-fi epic is being screened at Sci-Fi London next month in association with distributors Network, and when details were at last posted on the Festival Website, it looked like we were in for an astonishing treat. Those details have now been amended, but originally they gave the running time as 116 minutes and claimed: “…Released in 1936 at 87 minutes, we screen the original director’s version with 20 minutes of never-before-seen footage. The film has been painstakingly restored and we present it in glorious HD….”
With some incredulity, I reported the above over at the Roobarb’s Forum, and got this reply from Nick Cooper. Note that the UK standard TV format, PAL, means that film runs 4% fast, so that when he talks of ‘uplift’ he’s quoting timings for film at normal speed without PAL conversion:
Sadly, that’s an error. Basically, the various reported or known running times of the film are:
130m - Rough cut (reported)
117m 13s - Version submitted to the BBFC in Feb 1936 (passed as an ‘A’)
108m 40s - London trade screening, premiere, and initial 1936 release
98m 06s - Shorter version in UK circulation by late-1936
96m 24s - American release - The version of the film that had always been released on VHS and shown on TV since 1986 in the UK runs to 92m 42s on film - 89m exactly in PAL format.There are prints floating around in the US with two additional scenes and two segments from existing scenes running to 3m 42, that therefore “uplift” this running time to the 96m 24s of the US release, although they are otherwise missing other footage and therefore as a whole run shorter than 92m 42s.
The Network release re-instates these four scene/segments, as reflected by the BBFC-quoted running time of 92m 45s. The simple fact is that this is all the actual footage that remains from the film, barring a few alternate shots of existing scenes that survive in trailers.
Production paperwork is virtually non-existent, but there is a continuity/editing script containing an additional ten scenes or segments from existing scenes. Because each shot in this script is timed (in feet and frames), it’s possible to work out the extra running time of these ten scene/segments; overall they uplift the running time to 104m 41s.
Obviously this is still a bit short of the initial 1936 UK release and considerably less than the version certified by the BBFC. Wells published what was essentially the shooting script in October 1935, and it’s notable that where footage actually exists - or is documented in the above-mentioned continuity script - the published version is spot-on.
That’s not surprising, since Wells’s contract stipulated that the film had to be shot exactly as he wrote it, pretty much to the word, so the additional material does pretty much “fill in the gaps” that remain. That said, there are at least two scenes (coincidentally, one of which is being reinstated) that do not appear in the published script, so clearly there was at least one further revision before filming finished in late 1935.
More detail on my website: www.thingstocome.org.uk
My sincere thanks to Nick for clearing up the confusion on the running time front. It still looks like a treat - just not the one we might have imagined! All we are waiting for now is for Network to give us the news of any extra features, and for them to deliver a sparkling transfer with crystal clear sound. Here’s hoping, and with the May release of the disc still on track we won’t have to wait too much longer to find out.
Optimum’s yo-yoing schedule looks to have ‘yo’d’ against their proposed release of Abel Gance’s silent epic Napoleon. At first, they looked to be releasing a cut, sonorised, 1934 version of the film, but then, to much amazement, Optimum announced that they had reached a deal with Francis Ford Coppola to release his ‘restoration’ of the film with a score by his father Carmine. The result, in some quarters, was outrage and a call for a boycott of the release until Coppola, who claims to hold the worldwide rights for the film, came to an agreement with Kevin Brownlow to allow his much better restored version to be screened and released via the BFI on DVD.
Well, no need for that boycott now. Optimum has pulled the release from their schedule ‘due to a rights issue’. The deal with Coppola was apparently one he could refuse. Optimum’s release of Gance’s Austerlitz has also been canned.
Finally, in this mini news round-up, fans of vintage British films rejoice - I’m delighted to report that ITV DVD is set to release The Stewart Granger Collection: Adam and Evelyne, Blanche Fury, Caesar And Cleopatra, Captain Boycott, Fanny By Gaslight, The Lamp Still Burns, Love Story, Madonna of The Seven Moons, The Magic Bow and Waterloo Road come June in the UK. Huzzah!
The Empress, The Misanthrope…And ‘Arfur’ January 7, 2007
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, Film & DVD Reviews, British Film , 3 commentsNo, worry not; this is not some kind of ‘Groundhog Day’, and you aren’t trapped in an inverted ‘Narnia’, where it’s forever Christmas.
But after grumbling long and hard about the failure of anyone, in any region, to market a definitive DVD version of Scrooge, the 1951 version of Charles Dickens fable, A Christmas Carol, and lambasting DD Home Entertainment for marketing what was reported to be an obviously flawed Scrooge: 2-disc Collectors Edition, I had to find out the truth myself. Even though the turkey has long gone, and Easter eggs are very probably starting to clog the aisles of supermarkets up and down the land.
However, I have good news I must impart; DDHE’s 2-disc CE of Scrooge contains the best version I have ever seen on home video, with a more than decent transfer, an excellent selection of extras, including, at last, the inclusion of that previously missing commentary by ‘young Scrooge’ himself, George Cole. Ah, bliss.
At the risk of coming across all Mark Kermode like (the quiffed one can find a link between The Exorcist and, well, anything…), those extras also held a surprise for this John Ford fan. Finding something new about your favourite director, long dead though he be, gives one a taste of the excitement that archaeologists must experience when they peel back the layers of history to find that blurred vision of the past, coming ever clearer.
I didn’t know, for instance, of the life-long bond between John Ford, my appetite for whom grows more insatiable, and Brian Desmond Hurst, the director of Scrooge, and the self-styled ‘Empress of Ireland’. As George Cole says to Marcus Hearn in the film’s commentary, struggling and failing to imbue the word with as little innuendo as he can manage, he was, ah, a ‘flamboyant’ character.
In fact, as Christopher Robbins describes in his book The Empress of Ireland, Hurst was indeed the most flamboyant eccentric and bon viveur imaginable. A fascinating raconteur and man of enormous charm, Hurst was a man of many contradictions. He was a Protestant Ulsterman who converted to Catholicism. A republican sympathiser who fought in the first World War and made propaganda films during the second. A devout homosexual who was equally as fervent in worship of his patron saint St Thérése.
After enduring the horrors of Gallipoli, following the ‘war to end all wars’, Belfast born Hurst travelled first to Canada to study art, then to Hollywood, where, in 1925 at the age of 30, he spent the next eight years as an assistant to Ford, studying how the great man worked. A spinner of yarns himself (he talked of being the son of a wealthy doctor, when actually his father was an alcoholic shipyard worker), he must have found himself at home with Ford, who delighted in introducing the Irishman to colleagues as his ‘cousin’. Typical.
Hurst’s version of Scrooge, while not quite in the same league technically as those other great Dickens adaptations Great Expectations or Oliver Twist, is nonetheless an undoubted classic and fully deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. It is raised to that status by an iconic central performance from the incomparable Alastair Sim, a superb supporting cast and a production design and attention to detail that is as faithful as it could be both to the period and to illustrations that accompanied the contemporary publication of A Christmas Carol.
And if Hurst did learn anything at the feet of the master, it may be detected possibly not only in the delightful staging of Fezziwig’s party, and the repeated musical motif of the beautiful lilting ballad ‘Barbara Allen’. He may not have been Ford, or even Lean, but Hurst is more than competent, especially when, as he himself generously pointed out, he was in possession of a first class script. From first class source material.
Kathleen Harrison, Ernest Thesiger, Jack Walker, Michael Horden, Mervyn Johns - Scrooge boasts a superb list of players. Nonetheless, it’s Sim’s bravado portrayal of Dickens’ eponymous greedy, grasping, vindictive misanthrope, who is transformed into a giddy, repentant, giggling embodiment of Christmas itself, that impresses on the memory.
Funny thing this ‘Scroogery’; I’ve read so much around the ‘net the last couple of years - one IMDB commentator says: ‘a truly excellent quality print of this 1951 film apparently does not exist due to irresponsible storage & treatment of the original negative’, others state authoritatively that there are several mint 35mm prints owned by collectors, even that American rights holders VCI last, frankly disappointing, release was ‘fully restored and re-mastered from the original 35mm negative discovered in England’ (hasn’t stopped VCI saying that they’re going to have another go and dropping hints that they’ll get it right next time.)
DDHE announced this Collectors Edition of Scrooge around Easter last year. It was only available from them direct at that time and then only went on sale at other etailers on-line in recent months. However, it has been confirmed by at least one purchaser that early pressings did not contain the George Cole commentary that was promised by the packaging. DDHE said it was a mistake…and that appeared to be that. But now the commentary is there, and it is the inclusion of Cole speaking, in 2005, so fondly of the film, and colleagues he appeared with, that makes this set so worthy of Collectors Edition status.
Okay - what of DDHE’s latest transfer? I’ve compared it with their ‘50th Anniversary Edition’, and while it’s evident that the same elements have been used for both, this Collectors Edition, with both discs inside a clear case with quite attractive artwork (the whole in a sturdy embossed slipcase), is clearly superior. DDHE has given the transfer another digital wash and brush-up, thus there are many fewer distracting nicks and marks on display leaving the CE remarkably clean.
It also looks a tad sharper and maybe a little more detailed than the AE, though not hugely so. Yes, it’s still high contrast, something that Hurst was aiming at, but maybe not this much, and in some scenes very black blacks lack any detail at all, and the whites are blown, particularly at the start, the ‘Renown Films’ logo and the opening scene not boding well. But in others, it shows terrific detail and greys right across the scale; so clear that in one scene, as Scrooge peers into a mirror, you can quite plainly see one of the technicians peeping from behind a curtain.
The mono sound is quite decent, there’s some background hiss, but nothing too distracting.
So the transfer is, happily, better than expected, what of the extras? Do they really make this a true ‘Collectors Edition’? Most certainly. Let me get the least wanted extra out of the way; the ’colourised’ version, which dates from the days of VHS. Introduced in sickly fashion by Patrick McNee (’I love Christmas…’), who plays young Marley in the film, it’s another of those genuine paint by numbers atrocities. I’ve seen proponents of this practice excuse themselves by claiming that ‘they wanted to film it in colour anyway’ (honest, guv!). Apparently, in the US, Legend Films, are preparing to crayon in Scrooge again. Groan…
If there’s any doubt, on the commentary track, George Cole makes it clear that Scrooge was always going to be in black and white, and was conceived and designed for such. Hurst himself preferred to film in black and white, loved the contrast and deep shadows it produced and ‘couldn’t really handle colour’ - you’ve been warned; watch the colour version and Hurst will come back from the grave and haunt you Jacob Marley style.
I’ll add that in any case, the colour version is less detailed, and quite heavily marked compared to it’s better black and white iteration. It is, in short, a humbug. Bah!
On disc one, the black and white film comes with the aforementioned commentary by George Cole, moderated by Marcus Hearn. I much prefer moderated commentaries, especially when the commentator needs to be sometimes teased out of a reverie as Cole does. Much is discussed, not least Cole’s relationship with Alastair and Naomi Sim, George as the perfect choice to play a young Scrooge (except in the school scene, where the 27-year-old is clearly a little too long in the tooth), the production and Cole’s career. Cole sometimes frustrates Hearn - when the moderator asks for the third time ‘What was he like?’ about some member of the cast, Cole hits straight back, for the third time, with a slightly terse ‘He was a very nice man’ instead of the gossip that may have been expected.
It’s the moderators lot, when, in a bid to fill dead air, to also ask the occasional daft question and Cole is clearly a little miffed when asked did he fear being typecast, the decades of work between ‘Flash’ Harry and ‘Arfur’ Daley apparently dismissed. Overall, it’s an interesting commentary track, Cole’s affection for the Sims more than obvious, with lots of anecdotes on both his and Alastair’s career, heaps of genial nostlgia. And in between that, Hearn has done his research and has trivia a plenty to keep the whole thing moving nicely.
Also on disc one, The Spirit of Christmas Past, a 15 minute interview with Cole, in which Marcus Hearn covers most of the points already handled in the commentary, albeit with less spontaneity. There’s a 28 minute 1950 BBC radio play of A Christmas Carol with Alec Guinness in the lead, a 14 minute silent version of the piece, with Charles Rock (that looks as if it’s about to jump off its sprockets at any moment), and a short photo gallery.
Alongside the colour version on disc two you’ll find another BBC radio version (both plays were apparently destined for the aborted BBC/Warner R1 release), this time from 1964 and with Ralph Richardson as both narrator and old Ebenezer that runs nearly an hour - Richardson is a much better Scrooge than Guinness by the way - another silent version from 1922 with a suprisingly decent transfer, a throwaway five minute Traditions of Christmas feature that looks at why we stuff ourselves with pudding, send cards (but not why we need so many bizarrely wrapped pairs of socks), and all things ‘Christmassy’, plus another short image gallery with pages from a book of A Christmas Carol that was published to promote the film.
Finally, there’s also a 16 minutes plus interview with Christopher Robbins who recalls his friend in The Legendary Brian Desmond Hurst. It’s an affectionate look back at the time Robbins, then a young hack, received a call out of the blue from an aging Hurst to help write a screenplay (though he had never done so before) on the life of Jesus Christ. It was never filmed, but the ever-colourful Hurst and Robbins had one hell of a time…
Accompanying the set is a very nicely researched 24-page full colour booklet of ‘viewing notes’, in which Marcus Hearn points out that the film was not particularly well received by some critics, who were somewhat sniffy (’too grim for kiddies, too dull for adults’). But, nevertheless, others did hail it as a shot in the arm for the ailing British film industry, and it put plenty of bums on cinema seats both sides of the Atlantic. Over the years, with repeated seasonal TV showings and theatrical revivals, Scrooge’s reputation has grown and grown. Rightly so.
Place your order now for the Scrooge 2-disc Collectors Edition; just in time for Christmas 2007…
Oh, What A Glorious Thing To Be… December 6, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , add a commentFor fans of vintage British entertainment - and surely there must be one or two of us still around - the news in my last post of the upcoming DVD release of George Formby’s first film proper, 1934’s Boots! Boots!, by DD Home Entertainment, should cultivate the hope that this must herald further DVD announcements featuring the man who was - in a country that now seems far, far away gentle reader - a veritable film superstar, a huge money making machine for the British film industry.
Boots! Boots! is now up for pre-order at Play.com where it says:
George Formby stars together with his wife Beryl in his very first feature film, a musical comedy that helped to launch him to stardom! George plays John Willie, the shoeshine boy at the posh Crestonian Hotel. He’s a cheeky little man with no time for authority, a head full of dreams, a pocketful of songs and a heart full of love for the hotel’s scullery maid (Beryl Formby). After causing more than his fair share of chaos at the hotel, he finally gets the chance to redeem himself - and show off his hidden musical talents - when he finds himself topping the bill at the hotel’s Gala Cabaret Night!
For Formby fans, this early performance features a host of moments to treasure including rare song performances - Why Don’t Women Like Me?, Sitting on the Ice in the Ice Rink and I Could Make a Good Living at That - George accompanying wife Beryl’s tap routines on mouth organ and ukulele and a duet with Beryl on Baby.
This special DVD edition has been extensively restored to include a number of ‘lost’ scenes originally cut from the film on its re-release in 1938. Among these is the musical number performed by a young Betty Driver (Coronation Street’s Betty Turpin).
Ah, the formidable Beryl - and Betty Driver, by the way; another big, big star in her day, now more famous for her ‘otpots, humongous floral print dresses, and being largely ignored by ‘our Gordon’ (the ungrateful whelp!). I digress.
IMDB says that Boots! Boots! was: “Re-released in an edited 52-minute version. For many years this was thought to be the only available print. However, in 2000, a nitrate version of the original full-length film was found, and is in the process of being restored.”
It looks like this is the fruit of that restoration. Exciting news n’est pas?
Meanwhile, ITV DVD seems determined to sneak DVD releases out without anyone noticing. Largely unheralded, they’ve recently released the previously mentioned David Lean Collection and an 11-disc Powell and Pressburger Collection superceding their 9-disc set with the addition of Black Narcissus and The Tales of Hoffman. From what I can gather, extras seem largely as before, and I’m not even sure they’ve been able to port across the extras currently on the version of Black Narcissus Network licensed out from Granada Ventures. Interestingly a shot of the rear of the box I managed to locate on the web reveals the logos not only of ITV DVD, but also of Studio Canal and Optimum (does that mean, with Optimum prepping an SE of Peeping Tom, we’ll see a 12 disc set at some point?).
The $64,000 question is; does the box contain spiffy new transfers? The recent French releases of many of these P&P films were highly lauded, and I rather fancy - well, indeed I hope - they the standard of the transfers be replicated in this new box; any information one way or the other will be gratefully received!
Back to marketing by stealth; it looks like ITV DVD is also behind the six disc Arthur Askey Collection: Miss London Ltd., King Arthur Was A Gentleman, I Thank You, Bees In Paradise, Band Wagon, Backroom Boy due in January.
That’s a very attractive price for the set don’t you think? Even though it’s almost certain to be extras free. Also at HMV, you’ll find each of those titles in the collection available individually for £3.99 each. Again, that set, featuring a veteran of stage, screen, radio and TV, a giant of the British entertainment world - I kid you not - has just popped up without fanfare at several etailers, which, when ITV DVD obviously wants to sell as many shiny little discs as it can, is all very strange…
Lastly, I promised to keep you up to speed on that new 16-disc Will Hay Collection; as feared, it didn’t appear as scheduled, but Amazon has a new date - September 17, 2007. Fingers crossed. If you can’t wait that long, and are currently ‘Hay-less’, the 9-disc set can be found at several etailers under £18.
Scrooged November 6, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , add a commentIt’s like a nightmare; an ‘undigested piece of beef.’
Since the dawn of DVD, I’ve been waiting for a definitve release of Alastair Sim’s magnificent 1951 tour de force as Scrooge in what, for me, remains the definitive film interpretation. Both sides of the Atlantic, we’ve had to endure nasty, worn out, tram-lined prints slapped on to DVD, reflecting all the care and attention Bob Cratchit enjoyed at the hands of his employer.
What appeared to be the best version, from DD Home Entertainment in the UK, was, as is usual, ‘digitally restored from a pristine print’ but in reality it’s from a faded, sometimes dirty, marked source, with blown whites and boasting an extra feature that terrifies more than Jacob Marley - scenes from the horrendous computer coloured version. Ghoulish stuff. I borrowed it from a friend before parting with my own hard earned, and needless to say, crossed it off my ‘wanted’ list.
Sadly, with the original elements apparently in poor condition, it’s only to be expected. Unless there is something beautiful lying in a vault, or something near beautiful that DD, or someone, anyone, is willing to spend a few bob - more than a few bob - on.
Bah humbug!
Last year, help seemed to be on the way, when BBC Worldwide announced that they were producing a Region 1 special edition, packed with some super extras, and possibly - just possibly - the gorgeous restored version that fans had been hoping for. But the Beeb had forgotten one teeny-weeny detail.
They didn’t hold the USA home video rights.
Incredible though it may sound, the discs were prepared, even down to the box art, but then R1 rights holders VCI broke the the news that, no chaps, the film did not actually lie in the public domain. The release was scrapped, literally.
Bah humbug!
Morningstar Entertainment, one of the numerous PD specialists over The Pond spotted a chance, and marketed an Emerald Edition; was this it? The Holy Grail of Scrooge releases? Only available in Canada (rights again), it’s about as welcome as a moose at a Mountie’s ball. Produced from ’seven different prints’? That explains the huge variations in quality throughout (from bad to worse and all stops in between).
Bah humbug!
Up popped DDHE again late last year, with the tidings that they were launching their own Collectors Edition, complete with - ta da! - a George Cole commentary, but for some strange reason it wasn’t put on general sale until now. This is it, right? The definitive edition?
Bah humbug!
Over at the Britmovie forums, they’ve been reporting on this flim-flam for a while now. Moderator JamesM, in fact, hunted down George Cole, who played young Ebenezer Scrooge for his mentor Sim, but he wasn’t interested in recording a commentary for VCI…because, it was thought, he’d already recorded one for DDHE.
So, Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat…and it’s time to get those yuletide DVDs out into the marketplace. DDHE’s latest ‘CE’ is a two discer and boasts, pretty much from what I can gather, the transfer they’ve been sticking to us for years, two (?) short versions of the film mastered for that doomed BBC Worldwide release (no word on quality yet, but as they’re shorter versions, it’s a little moot), the full crayoned in version, a Beeb ‘Traditions of Christmas’ feature, an interview (with George Cole)…but no commentary.
It’s there on the back of the box apparently, and in the MovieMail catalogue ‘George Cole Commentary’. But not on the disc. Astonishingly DDHE put it about that a commentary was, in fact, recorded but not used, and there was a subsequent ‘mix-up’ with the box art.*
Bah humbug!
VCI are still looking to produce a better R1 release, JamesM has tracked down ‘an assistant director’ to do a proposed commentary, but that definitive release of the definitive portrayal of Scrooge still eludes us, it seems. After all these years, I may have to settle for what’s out there and buy DD’s Collectors Edition (in the best spirit of Charles Dickens’ creation, when the price has gone down, of course - say Easter?)
Bah (well, you know the rest..)
*January 7, 2007, edit: good news, good news indeed here.
Cause for (even) More Celebration October 19, 2006
Posted by John Hodson in : DVD News & Info, British Film , add a commentFurther to my pleas (see Cause for More Celebration) for more British made classics to be made available on DVD, I’m delighted to see DD Home Entertainment is set to release a number of great value box sets containing some real British made gems early next month:
Classic Gregory Peck Box Set - The Boys From Brazil, The Million Pound Note and The Purple Plain.
Classic Ralph Richardson Box Set - Silver Fleet, School for Secrets and The Day will Dawn.
Classic Alec Guinness Box Set - The Card, The Quiller Memorandum and The Malta Story.
Big Screen Sitcoms Box Set - The Army Game, Nearest And Dearest and The Larkins.
All At Sea Box Set - Carry on Admiral, Up The Creek and Further Up The Creek.
Boys Own Adventures Box Set - The Four Feathers, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Riddle Of The Sands.
Classic David Niven Box Set - Carrington VC, A Matter of Life and Death and The Way Ahead.
Classic H.G. Wells Box Set - Things to Come, The Man Who Could Work Miracles and The History of Mr Polly.
Classic Richard Attenborough Box Set - The Gift Horse, School for Secrets and Sea Of Sand.
Wings Of Victory Box Set - Appointment In London, The Lion Has Wings and Reach For The Sky.
Warriors Beneath The Waves Box Set - Above Us The Waves, Morning Departure and We Dive At Dawn.
DDHE is a mail order home entertainment operation whose catalogue doesn’t seem to be available at every etailer online, though, as you can see, they can be bought direct and are carried by the likes of Moviemail and to a lesser degree Play.com. Through a convoluted deal with Granada Ventures, they have access to Granada’s vast library of films, at times putting out titles that have also been licensed to Network, though not always to the same spec (their The Quiller Memorandum has no extras for instance). I’d also be wary of their The Boys from Brazil which is more than likely the same non-anamorphic version that has been around for some time. I’m eager to see Network bring this out as a special edition sometime soon.
DD’s releases aren’t always barebones however; their Hammer titles - including the The Quatermass Xperiment - come with some nice extras and Things to Come has a comprehensive booklet. The quality of transfers varies from the really very good to the downright awful, depending on the source material.