Warner Brothers Archive Collection (DVDs only)

[HarryLong]

I first read about THE LAST FLIGHT in an AFI book I picked up on the cheap somewhere & when I finally ha dthe chance to see it years later I was not disappointed. It certainly changed my opinion of Dieterle who, up until then, I primarily knew from his late 30s & early 40s work. But on DVDR!? What a disserice.
Dieterle's early 30s work deserves a box set (or two, possibly - without checking I think he may have been ensconced at Paramount before moving to WB).

[myrnaloyisdope]

The Last Flight is his first American film. I've found his pre-code work to be pretty inconsistent, and nothing really comes close to The Last Flight, although Jewel Robbery is some bizarre pre-code fun. If any Warners' director needs another pre-code box set it's Wellman who still has about 15 Warners pre-codes that need to see the light of day.

[HerrSchreck]

Beyond the amazing The Last Flight I'd recommend--if 1934 is our cutoff-- The Devil's In Love, Fog Over Frisco, Madame Dubarry... Six Hours To Live I haven't watched yet, but is supposed to be a pretty wild precursor to something like DOA by Mate'.

[domino harvey]

The hits just keep on coming

The Bride Goes Wild (1948)
Weary River (1929)
Son of the Gods (1930)
Central Airport (1933)

[Perkins Cobb]

WB may have fucked up or lied about everything else, but they weren't kidding about the volume of releases.

[domino harvey]

Tiger Shark has the worst transfer I've seen yet from a Warner Archives release. Video artifacts, muddled audio, interlacing, mutt prints spliced together to make an uneven whole and there are points when the film source(s) jump up and down and look like they're about to break. This is Public Domain quality without the price break

[reno dakota]

That's interesting, domino. I saw Tiger Shark when TCM aired it a few months ago, and I thought the print looked fine (a little soft, but nothing like what you describe). Odd that the Warner materials would be in worse shape.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Terrible news on Tiger Shark, especially considering I coughed up twenty bucks and just ordered it yesterday. It's almost drawing from a hat for the print qualities in these titles. If they're not going to restore the films, couldn't Warner Bros. have the courtesy to explain what quality the transfers are in on their own site?

[perkizitore]

Why can't the titles be dual layered and factory burned at least? That Feltenstein guy must be greedier than Gordon Gekko!

[domino harvey]

I really find myself feaking out completely at the casting, like the Professor in the exposition played by the lummox who plays the phony "Wizard" in "Oz".

That'd be Frank Morgan, who has a bizarre "skit" during another Warner Archives title, Thousands Cheer, which involves him posing as a doctor and examining various MGM stable starlets-- wholesome entertainment for the boys! I believe he had some history with the vaudeville circuit? He pops up in a lot of absent minded musicals (Minnelli's Yolanda and the Thief or the Great Ziegfeld being a couple that spring to mind) but the thought of him attempting drama is a real laugh

[Peacock]

Come on your forgetting his turn in The Shop Around the Corner as Mr Matuschek, a perfect performance.

[domino harvey]

Nothing against Morgan but give me Monty Woolley any day

[domino harvey]

Like the sucker I am, the siren song of more movies I want to see is outweighing my concerns over the unreliable quality of these releases. I need a fourth title from this sale, can anyone make a recommendation? I already have the Moon is Blue and I Love Melvin and I'm picking up Interrupted Melody, Small Town Girl, and the Story of Three Loves (I only just now realized that this is the portmanteau film with the Vincente Minnelli-directed Leslie Caron segment-- doesn't help that Warners left his name off the site's credits)

[reno dakota]

How about Once Upon a Honeymoon? I haven't seen it, but with Cary Grant, Leo McCarey, and high praise from Matt, it sounds like a safe bet.

[jaredsap]

I need a fourth title from this sale, can anyone make a recommendation?

I adore the underrated FIFTH AVENUE GIRL. In some respects -- how equitable its class warfare is -- I think it even tops MY MAN GODFREY. People seem to expect an effervescent screwball as funny as GODFREY but I don't think that's what La Cava was after here. If you dig GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE, give it a shot.

[lubitsch]

I have been dreading the time when I revisited some of these Metro Borzages.

If you didn't like Mortal Storm, you're in serious trouble in regard to the other MGM's. Mortal Storm suffers from MGM gloss and it suffers from it schematic aspects. However it offers an interesting picture of the decline of a family under pressure implying that the (temporary) winners may be equally losers. At least the final camera track through the empty halls of the house seems to me a major achievement. It's not a great Borzage, but none of the MGM films really is. Three Comrades is hilariously sanitized from all political references, so you wouldn't guess, it's action takes place in germany anymore. Especially one of the final lines "There's fighting in the city" cracks me up. Fighting? Between whom? It's really about Sullavan doing what she does best, dying in grand style from one of these movie illnesses where you cough a bit and look pale, but have enough time and power to talk a lot of rubbish and do foolish things.
Mannequin is completely for the dogs, Crawford formula on auto pilot. Strange Cargo is one of Borzage's misguided attempts to get more explicit about religion though it has a certain perverse fascination for wedding the sacred and the profane in such an inappropriate matter together.

[domino harvey]

Boy, Juke Girl is something else. A sort of noir-ish take on migrant farm workers, it plays like a marriage between Grapes of Wrath and the later Thieves' Highway, with fast paced dialog born from hardboiled fiction and a steady clip to the finish. The transfer is the best I've seen from the Archives yet, and I suspect this was prepped for the Reagan Signature Collection before they realized that its socialist message wouldn't go over so well with his modern fanbase!

[Jeff]

migrant film workers

I guess someone has to harvest the celluloid.

[domino harvey]

They love you a bushel and a Gregory Peck

[lubitsch]

I think one of the overriding problems with Mortal Storm and Three Comrades is the influence of Herman Mancwiewicz as producer. The late 30s/early 40s seems to represent the peak era of MGM blandness and Herman Mank is right there behind it. With a really dynamic, adventurous producer like Wanger you get Borzo and the miracle of History is Made at Night. Indeed take a look at the rest of Wanger's filmography - one of most distinguished imagineable.
I also have to confess I have gone totally cold on Margaret Sullivan.

You mean Joseph Mankiewicz, but I think you are doing him a disservice and overestimate his influence by far. The MGM machinery essentially ploughed down every creative talent submerging it in its gloss, shallow taste, overlegth and puritanism. It also encouraged Borzage to start making some religious themes stand out more directly which were more implied up until now in his output and this includes Warner's Green Light as well as Paramount's Undisputed Passage from these years. Finally his private life began to fall apart and he started to drink heavily which led to his dark years 1940-1943 where he directed his most impersonal works.

[domino harvey]

Thanks for the suggestions, I ended up going with Donen's Love is Better Than Ever as my fourth, then added Bhowani Junction and the Last Flight (you guys better be right about this one!) as the cherries on top. The Ginger Rogers comedies sound good, but I'm holding out for Warners to package 'em together in a future Archives star lot like they have with Gary Cooper et al. I'll as always weigh in on the transfers as I go through the titles.

[domino harvey]

The Ronald Reagan-Virginia Mayo musical She's Working Her Way Through College has been added to the Archive

[Matt]

With the Archive now concentrating almost exclusively on extreme obscurities and Warners' rare pressed DVDs being reserved for marquee titles only, there is a massive gap for the kinds of films that they used to release in themed boxes and the Signature collections. Something like Yolanda and the Thief, for example: a Minnelli musical with Fred Astaire, or Ginger Rogers comedies like Vivacious Lady (directed by George Stevens and co-starring James Stewart) and Bachelor Mother. And don't even get me started on the continued absence of Panama Hattie, an Arthur Freed production with a couple of amazing numbers by Lena Horne and the Berry brothers.

[planetjake]

Seems to me that they're also sitting on two Jerry Lewis films that I'd love to see good copies of: Which Way to the Front? and Cracking Up. They buried Which Way to the Front? theatrically and dumped Cracking Up on TV. Seems silly not to release these given the recent (albeit modest) critical resurgence of Lewis' work.

[domino harvey]

Yolanda and the Thief is a decidedly minor musical but lord help us if it shows up in the Archives, because based on their other musical releases it'll turn up a dupe of the VHS source and the video for this one is terrible. I do hope we see Dobie Gillis pretty soon though, I'm surprised they dumped I Love Melvin before this one since every print I've seen of it looks terrific