As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been a little behind on keeping up to date with this website. The next Blu-ray release isn’t new, but it warrants your attention nonetheless.
If you want to know why Louise Brooks has such an ardent following, make it a point to see GW Pabst’s. Pandora’s box again Diary of a Lost Girl. Focus on Louise Brooks from Flicker Alley is directed to mortals who want to see all of his paintings, including the first silent films he made under contract with Paramount. He already had the “look” that still makes us happy, but the small and/or supporting roles he’s played are not important at all. The San Francisco Film Preserve has brought together the world’s archives to present clips of others that have not succumbed to nitrate degradation. None of them are completely perfect, but Brooks completists won’t mind. The Road of Forgotten Men (1925) is a thriller directed by Herbert Brenon (who made peacePeter Pan againBeau Geste. The recreation of the missing second reel is the best I have ever seen, using still images and the text of the original title cards. Just another blonde a simple story of teenage love starring Dorothy Mackaill, Jack Mulhall, and William Collier Jr. Now We are in the air a World War I slapstick comedy featuring the sordid but then popular team of Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. But the remaining videos give us plenty of time to watch Louise at her best. Brooks expert Thomas Gladysz talks about all this in the audio track and the booklet reveals all the hard work that went into the restoration.
Fast forward a few decades, I’m impressed with Arrow’s 4K video launch of a film I haven’t seen since it was new, Michael Crichton’s Westworld. Larry Karaszewski chats with his star, Richard Benjamin, and there are excellent interviews with costar James Brolin and executive producer Paul N. Lazarus III, who have a lot to share about making this bold futuristic film. Daniel Kremer conducted those interviews off-camera and provides a full-length analysis track. If you have fond or distant memories of the picture it’s worth revisiting, especially in this lavish presentation.
Comic fans were frustrated that very few silent Laurel and Hardy shorts were readily available. Now we can show friends and family Stan and Ollie at their best, in the release of Flicker Alley Laurel and Hardy: The First Year (1927), Year Two (1928) and, recently,The Third Year (1929). 1929 saw the end of silent film production in Hollywood and the birth of talkies. Stan and Ollie made some of their most memorable comedy shorts that year, such as Big Businesswhen they’re trying to sell a Christmas tree to a wide-eyed James Finlayson, tooDouble Whoopeefeaturing a scantily clad young Jean Harlow. There’s even a different, experimental version of that movie where the late Chuck McCann and friends tried to turn a silent comedy into a dialogue by copying all the dialogue! I was honored to be asked to contribute an article about L&H that appears in the fact-filled booklet accompanying the two-disc release. And when you’re ready to get deep into the weeds, listen to the amazing sequence of information on the commentary tracks by Richard W. Bann and Randy Skretvedt. Other bonus features include promotional shorts and foreign language releases that I’ve never seen before!
At first I noticed it was quiet Beau Geste when I was young and loved it. But because it was so inaccessible no one would believe me when I told them it was superior to the 1939 remake, despite the best efforts of director William Wellman and a cast led by Gary Cooper. A stellar evening screening of the first silent picture at last year’s TCM Classic Film Festival—held at the Egyptian Theater—proved the doubters wrong. The 1926 adaptation of PC Wren’s famous novel about brotherly love, honor and the French Foreign Legion creates an absent mystique in every plot and character. In addition, the beautiful Film Preserve disc includes an informative lecture by Rodney Sauer, a silent film accompaniment, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra on the soundtrack, an eye-opening before-and-after exhibition of the film’s restoration, and best of all, a commentary feature by my best friend in the world Thomp Thomp. Beau Geste. Robert A. Harris is overseeing the rebirth of this film, with the participation of Paramount Pictures and a number of archives. Bravo, more and more.
