Flicker Alley

[lzx]

The Duvivier set is now 42% off on importcds. Nine films for $34.80 seems like a no-brainer. Could anyone here who already has the set confirm it's region free?

[Matt]

Yes, it is.

[lzx]

Great, thanks!

[tenia]

Did anybody here get the Duvivier set from Flicker Alley ?
I was wondering if the Flicker Alley discs are a 1:1 port of the French Lobster discs (or at least their main features' encodes), since they seem to mirror quite heavily Lobster's content.
The French set is a DVD-sized Dual Format kinda cheaply packaged set (despite being priced at 85€) and since Lobster have a history of abysmal BD encodes, the FA set could be a technical alternative for me, except that the few caps I saw from the FA discs look like they could very well be using Lobster's encodes, looking at how laughably bad the encodes seem to be.

[Matt]

I did. I think they’re the exact same discs as they all start with the option to view the menus in French or English. I guess I just didn’t notice any deficiencies in the encoding.

[tenia]

Thanks for the info Matt. Could you also let me know what the packaging is ?

[Finch]

I just checked the package for you. It's a cardboard box that is not as sturdy as Arrow's and Indicator's and it houses two transparent keepcases, first with three Blu-Rays, second with two. The 45 page booklet credits the authoring to David McKenzie/Fidelity in Motion.

[tenia]

Thanks for your answer, I see what you mean and would be a better option than the Lobster set, which has 5 DVD-cases (4 hold 1BD+2DVDs, 1 holds 1BD+1DVD) in a thin cardboard case, with a 40something-pages booklet seemingly in the case outside of any DVD case.

Based on the caps I saw and if David really encoded those, I wonder what happened here.

[EddieLarkin]

Where were the caps posted? A few sites offer full rez caps but compress them massively, making them almost entirely useless (Mondo-Digital, I'm looking at you).

[tenia]

On a private torrent tracker whose caps have been quite trustworthy to me so far.

[David M.]

The 45 page booklet credits the authoring to David McKenzie/Fidelity in Motion.

We were not involved with this set. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

[Drucker]

Yikes.

[domino harvey]

Those booklets are about to become actual collectors items now

[Finch]

never mind

[Finch]

2021 must be a record for QC fuck ups.

[tenia]

In the meantime, I had a quick look at Le mystère de la tour Eiffel and yup, it indeed looks like nothing Fidelity in Motion (god forgives they ever output anything close to that !) ever did, but pretty much every Lobster encode I know of. Pretty much any area relatively dark goes into Youtube-480p type blockiness, just like their Max Linder, Charley Bowers, J'accuse or Buster Keaton encodes (it's quite likely L'inhumaine, L'argent and King of Kings have the same issue).

[EddieLarkin]

just like their Max Linder, Charley Bowers, J'accuse or Buster Keaton encodes (it's quite likely L'inhumaine, L'argent and King of Kings have the same issue).

Do we know if any of these were handled by David M for Flicker Alley later on, or does it seem like Lobster/FA always share encodes?

[tenia]

Some at least are different encodes but I'll have to check which ones exactly.

[swo17]

I'm sure this was an honest mistake--they'd heard great things about this David Mackenzie character so they reached out to the director of Hell or High Water and Starred Up and gave him free rein with the encodes

[Finch]

Yeah, the Lobster collaborations seem to be iffy. The Argentine noirs you can all safely buy though! Still, who knows whether anyone will port this over to the UK, and when, and on top of that go to the effort of doing a new encode (Arrow and the BFI might, to be fair..).

[yoloswegmaster]

Preorder link for The Whistle at Eaton Falls

[tenia]

I'm sure this was an honest mistake--they'd heard great things about this David Mackenzie character so they reached out to the director of Hell or High Water and Starred Up and gave him free rein with the encodes

Looks like he's a much better director than encoder !

[swo17]

The Duvivier set was unavailable from Amazon for a while, which I thought might be so they could remove the Fidelity in Motion credit from the booklet, but nope, it's still there!

[Finch]

Glenn Erickson on Repeat Performance

The years of delay in bringing the show to home video had nothing to do with image quality — the film elements appear to have been preserved in excellent shape. The lighting of camerman Lew O’Connell (Scarface, Decoy) is as rich as any big-studio noir. Composer George Antheil’s music underscores the drama with a slightly eerie flavor. Antheil’s film score career began with the avant-garde Ballet mécanique and proceeded through two dozen memorable films. (...)

Three video featurettes attack the show’s main points of interest with welcome efficiency — I’m getting a little weary of discs with big content overlaps in multiple ‘visual essays.’

Eddie Muller provides a fine introduction, expressing his keen interest in saving at-risk orphaned noirs. Muller diplomatically offers that Repeat Performance’s status as noir / not noir is an argument for purists. We at CineSavant are satisfied that it meets the standard: if it walks like a noir and quacks like a noir . . . you know. I recommend watching the intro after the movie, not before. A ‘first time cold’ policy works best: when an unseen title like The Turning Point appears on Muller’s TCM show, DVR the intro and watch it afterward.

In her authoritative video essay Farran Smith Nehme conveys the truth about Joan Leslie’s interesting career. Nehme’s remarks are clean and accurate. She doesn’t gush over Leslie’s accomplishments — the sixteen year-old stole scenes from WB’s biggest stars. She gives a fair assessment of the career risks Leslie faced when she took Jack Warner’s unfair contract to court. Nehme’s image of Ms. Leslie squares with what I know personally of the actress through a close relative. The star was indeed devoutly Catholic and very strong-minded.

[Finch]

The Guilty & High Tide double bill on May 24

THE GUILTY (1947)

The Guilty, released by Monogram Pictures, is a triumph of resourcefulness for its nomadic Viennese director, John Reinhardt. Based on a short story by legendary suspense writer Cornell Woolrich, this little-seen B movie centers on war veterans Mike Carr (Don Castle) and Johnny Dixon (Wally Cassell), roommates in a low-rent tenement. They are romantically entangled with twin sisters Estelle and Linda Mitchell (Bonita Granville, in a dual role). When one sister turns up dead, the boys are hounded by a suspicious police inspector (Regis Toomey)—although there’s no shortage of suspects. Working on only three sets, with a shoestring budget, Reinhardt and director of photography Henry Sharp evoke the dreadful, dead-of-night ambiance that was the domain of the era’s most prolific noir scribe, Cornell Woolrich.

Thanks to the dedication of the Film Noir Foundation, The Guilty has been restored from a 35mm nitrate composite fine-grain master by UCLA Film & Television Archive, and is now presented in this world-premiere edition.

HIGH TIDE (1947)

This forgotten noir, set in a spectacularly corrupt Los Angeles, is a crackling crime thriller rescued thanks to the combined efforts of the Film Noir Foundation, UCLA Film & Television Archive, and the British Film Institute. Restoration funding was provided by the Film Noir Foundation in conjunction with the Packard Humanities Institute. The action gets rolling with one of the greatest framing gimmicks in noir: a speeding car crashes onto a rocky shoreline and its occupants, newspaper editor Hugh Fresney (Lee Tracy) and private eye Tim Slade (Don Castle) recount the plot as the rising tide threatens to drown them. In flashback, we learn that Slade was brought in by muckraking editor Fresney as protection against a mobster (Anthony Warde) his paper is investigating. Things quickly get complicated as Fresney’s boss has a wife (Julia Bishop) eager to resume a smoldering romance with Slade. When a main character gets iced early, everybody becomes a suspect, and the double-crosses start multiplying at a breakneck pace.

High Tide was the second of two crime thrillers independently produced in 1947 by Texas oil tycoon Jack Wrather. It carries over from The Guilty the same screenwriter and cameraman, the same protagonist in actor Don Castle, and the same director, John Reinhardt, whose playful inventiveness enlivened several post-WW II films noir.

BONUS MATERIALS INCLUDE:

A Special Kind of Partnership: Jack Wrather, Bonita Granville, and Don Castle – An illuminating look at the personal and professional relationships of Jack Wrather, Bonita Granville, and Don Castle, featuring interviews with Chris Wrather, Gretchen (Castle) Bernfeld, and others
“Welcome to My Nightmare” – a short documentary exploring the life and work of Cornell Woolrich, featuring publishing legend Otto Penzler, Charles (“Hard Case Crime”) Ardai, and Woolrich’s biographer Francis M. Nevins
John Reinhardt: The Viennese Auteur of Poverty Row – A documentary featuring interviews with critic Dave Kehr, film historian and lecturer Maria Elena de las Carreras, former child actor Gordon Gebert, and writer and cinema historian Alan K. Rode
Audio Commentary for The Guilty – by prize-winning noir author and film studies instructor Jake Hinkson
Audio Commentary for High Tide – by film historian and biographer Alan K. Rode
Souvenir Booklet – containing an essay by Eddie Muller and a wealth of fabulous ephemera, including posters, lobby cards, and stills from both films