IN SEARCH OF MOVIE CLASSICS ON VIDEO

Imagine going to a library and not being able to find one of Charles Dickens’ novels.  Or discovering that your favorite bookstore is missing

William Powell, Myrna Loy and Asta in The Thin Man

the one Stephen King title you were dying to read. 

A film doesn’t have to be old to suffer this fate.  One of my favorite films of the 1990s, Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill, a stunning evocation of growing up in Depression America, is no longer available on vhs and has never been released on DVD. (There was a laserdisc version, but that medium has sadly been abandoned by the video industry.)  It was made in 1993. 

The larger problem is that most of the major studios have little interest in the past.  They would rather release the worst bomb of the past year than a classic made forty or fifty years ago.

Even some of the smaller companies have the same attitude.  Artisan Entertainment prefers releasing direct-to-video titles like Restraining Order with Eric Roberts or Lured Innocence with Dennis Hopper to mining the Republic Pictures library, which they now control.

William Wyler, on the set of Counsellor at Law, his first "A" picture, with his star, John Barrymore

(In fairness, Artisan is releasing four classic Republic titles this month, including It’s a Wonderful Life and The Quiet Man, but they’ve all been issued before, even on DVD.) 

Warner Home Video is finally coming up to speed with films from its vast library (which includes the pre-1980s MGM and RKO inventory as well as Warners titles), including such new DVD releases as The Thin Man, Singin’ in the Rain, Auntie Mame, and Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner.  For this we can only say “thank you” and hope there are many more to come.

Universal has taken a different, but equally effective, approach to its library:  it has been willing to sublicense many of its vintage titles to smaller distributors.  Thus, the Criterion Collection has brought its tender loving care to such classic films as The Scarlet Empress, The Bank Dick, Sullivan’s Travels, The Lady Eve, and even some of the Douglas Sirk films of the 1950s.  Later this fall we’ll see the long-awaited release of Lubitsch’s peerless Trouble in Paradise.  Bravo!

Now Kino Video, one of the finest independent distributors, has managed to license three early William Wyler titles from Universal for release on vhs and DVD on November 5:   a late-silent comedy, The Love Trap, with Laura La Plante (which is paired on disc with Catherine Wyler’s documentary about her father, Directed by William Wyler), the delightful 1935 comedy The Good Fairy, starring Margaret Sullavan and scripted by Preston Sturges, and my favorite,

Gene Autry and Champion, back in the saddle on video

Counsellor at Law, a brilliant 1934 adaptation of Elmer Rice’s Broadway play starring John Barrymore, Bebe Daniels, and Thelma Todd.  These are wonderful films that haven’t had much exposure outside of archival screenings in recent years, and they deserve the audience that video release can give them.

Universal has released some of its own vintage films, notably the horror and science-fiction classics, some Abbott and Costello comedies, and from the Paramount library, a nice helping of Bob Hope pictures, but its greatest coup wasn’t widely noticed:  included in the double-disc release of Meet Joe Black is the film on which it’s based, Death Takes a Holiday (1934), in a stunning, pristine copy. 

MGM, which owns the Samuel Goldwyn library, has recently released The Pride of the Yankees, adding to its own William Wyler collection (The Best Years of Our Lives, The Little Foxes, Wuthering Heights, and the exceptional Dodsworth).  And the studio is issuing widescreen versions of the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies on double-feature DVDs.

But for the most part, film buffs are dependent on the hard-working independent companies to satisfy our hunger for older movies on video.  And they do. 

VCI has just released a two-disc set of Max Fleischer’s Color Classics cartoons titled Somewhere in Dreamland, along with a selection of Cisco Kid westerns and rare Universal serials. David Shepard’s Film Preservation Associates (which releases through Image Entertainment) has recently released D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery, featuring seminal Biograph shorts from the director’s career and commentary by noted Griffith scholar Russell Merritt.

Anchor Bay, one of the most eclectic video companies, has just released a welcome selection of the Alec Guinness classics on DVD:  The Captain’s Paradise, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit, and The Ladykillers.

Milestone Film and Video always finds hidden gems and worthy films for its release schedule on vhs and DVD, most recently adding F.W. Murnau’s Tabu to its DVD collection with previously unseen outtake footage, the original 1931 trailer, and a commentary by UCLA film professor Janet Bergstrom. And the Criterion Collection of Home Vision Entertainment continues to set the standard for treatment of classic films on video, with its recent releases of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, with an impressive array of extras, Rene Clair’s A Nous La Liberte, a boxed set of Akira Kurosawa Samurai classics, and due within the month, Powell and Pressburger’s The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.

 

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Meanwhile, the family of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans has released its own set of videos and DVDs through Hollywood’s Attic, including a UCLA-restored print of The Cowboy and the Senorita.  And the Gene Autry Company has just issued six more fully restored titles for the first time on vhs:  Sierra Sue, Mexicali Rose, Home in Wyomin’, Western Jamboree, The Big Show, and Ridin’ on a Rainbow.  These are available exclusively through the Autry Museum of Western Heritage at www. autry-museum.org.  Finally, I’m proud to be involved with the Disney company in the release of three more Walt Disney Treasures DVDs this December:  Mickey Mouse in Black and White, Volume 1; The Complete Goofy, and Behind the Scenes at the Walt Disney Studios, which includes the complete 1941 feature The Reluctant Dragon, three early Disneyland TV shows about the art and history of animation, and much, much more.

So, is the glass half-empty or half-full?  There are clearly mainly dedicated people making older films available on video. They just don’t happen to include several of the most important Hollywood studios, which still hold the copyrights on thousands of desirable films.  If they don’t want to be bothered, let’s hope they license the rights to someone who does.