All About Eve (1950) + An Affair To Remember
(1957/Fox Blu-rays) + Heartbreaker
(2010/IFC/MPI DVD) + Life As We Know It
(2010/Warner Blu-ray w/DVD) + Only Love
(1998/Vivendi DVD)
Picture: B-/B/C+/B-
& C/C+ Sound: C+/B-/C+/B- &
C+/B- Extras: B/C+/C/D/D Films: B/C+/C/D/C-
Romance
and bitterness go hand in hand often in films, too often and they are usually
linked to melodrama. Five new titles
have such common denominators and they include some older favorites now on
Blu-ray.
Easily
the best film here is Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, the 1950 hit about an older actress (Bette Davis)
seeing a seemingly kind younger actress (Anne Baxter) backfire in the world of
stage acting. Though we have never
covered the actual film before, we did cover the Limited Edition CD soundtrack
that is still in print and also has tracks from the Film Noir classic Leave Her To Heaven at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1870/All+About+Eve/Leave+Her+To+Heaven
You can
also directly order if interested here:
http://www.screenarchives.com/title_detail.cfm/ID/172/ALL-ABOUT-EVE-LEAVE-HER
The film
is one of the most quoted and in recent years, has come dangerously close to
pop trivialization by a record number of poseurs who have tried to use it to
look like they know something about filmmaking and even art! A great film, even I think it has some
moments where it can be a bit campy and hit some odd spots, but its brutal
honesty (when not turned into a joke) about how people who try to succeed and
enjoy their success (or pretend to) is as relevant as ever and it is one of
those films where everyone is just so good, you cannot stop watching. All the voiceovers even work.
It was a
comeback for Davis, rising from her troubles with Warner after leaving that
studio, Baxter is dead on as Eve, George Saunders is as suave as ever, Celeste
Holm is at her peak in a long great career, Thelma Ritter is great, Marilyn
Monroe (her first Blu-ray appearance!) became a star after this film, Gary
Merrill and Gregory Ratoff also make fine showings in all this and the world
created is totally believable thanks to them and Mankiewicz pulled this off at
a time when there were many less writer/directors out there. It is worth revisiting now and then, but if
you have never seen it, consider it required viewing.
Leo
McCarey survived personal turmoil to come back and make An Affair To Remember, an often imitated 1957 romance that has a
limited script, but McCarey’s directing talents and the chemistry between Cary
Grant and Deborah Kerr has made this a favorite film no matter its sappiness or
issues as the characters fall for each other, but they are engaged to other
people. At a time of the tail end of the
Hollywood Production Code, the suggestion of any infidelity or premarital sex
was daring (especially after the Witchhunts people like McCarey had to endure)
so this was considered a film of sophisticated romance and it is a mature
work. Having them on a boat likely is
one of the reasons for its appeal too.
For me, it is just a work that is a little overrated despite the fact
that I am a fan of the leads and admit McCarey was very talented. Now you can see for yourself.
There was
a time when French comedies knew what farce was, but that period seems to be
over and such films rare. Add a bad
desire to compete with bad Hollywood comedies and you get a mess like Pascal
Chaumeil’s Heartbreaker (2010), a
surprisingly silly, inept, unfunny comedy about a professional romancer (Romain
Duris, who looks like a cousin of Patrick Dempsey) hired to break up
established romances for whatever reasons, as long as they involve money.
However,
he starts to have problems keeping to his professional vocation when his next
assignment is to seduce one particular target (Vanessa Paradis) who he starts
to fall for. Unfortunately, though not a
smug work, this is done as badly as a silly TV sitcom and every time early on
you expect it to pick up, something very stupid happens. The placement of hit songs are as sloppy as
the plot and it just gets worse and worse, wasting our time and those of the
actors.
But that
all looks like An Affair To Remember
as compared to the dreadful, inept Greg Berlanti disaster Life As We Know It (2010) with Josh Duhamel and the once seamlessly
talented and appealing Katherine Heigl in a sickening, stupid waste of time
about a couple whose friends get them to meet on a blind date and it does not
work out (surprise?), then they are brought back together when they have to
raise a friend’s toddler due to unforeseen circumstances. The message of the film is that we all
deserve to live in a domestic hell and die in it, which says something about
the positive attitude this self-hating hack job of a release offers. Moist shocking is how unfunny Heigl was, who
apparently could care less anymore about what she does, as long as it is a
paycheck.
Finally
we have the TV Mini-Series event Only
Love (1998) that is by Love Story
author Erich Segal, trying to recapture some of the magic and success of the
blockbuster film as an ambitious TV event that never takes off. Marisa Tomei and Rob Morrow are the potential
lovers, but as likable as they can be (as they have both done good work over
the years), he is married and she is sick, but he wants to get back with her
for a while before she is gone. Wow,
what a dumb idea and it makes the mistakes An
Affair To Remember dodges often. The
result is a run-on high concept project and the kind that killed TV
Mini-Series. Now on DVD, you can see
how.
The 1080p
1.33 X 1 black and white AVC @ 26 MBPS digital High Definition image on Eve looks better than any previous
video version, but is a little disappointing in the detail department and does
not look as good as similar Blu-rays like The
Maltese Falcon, It’s A Wonderful
Life (unreviewed), A Christmas Carol
or Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. Is this an older HD master? We get some lack of detail, some black crush
and some noise that is distracting that may not be grain. Still, this was nominated for best black and
white cinematography and Director of Photography Milton R. Krasner sued the
block style narrow vision frame so effectively here that the film has a
one-of-a-kind classy look that is like Fox monochrome films of the time, yet
offers something more.
The sound
has been boosted to a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix and there is
only so much you can do with an older monophonic soundtrack as this, but it is
better than the Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono (for purists) and the music benefits
this way and in a DTS 2.0 isolated music track also here as an option.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 38 MBPS digital High Definition image on Affair was shot in the older CinemaScope format and that comes with
some distortions throughout, but this is the best-looking video version the
film ever had, though some color (it is Deluxe and not dye-transfer
Technicolor) can be faded, but is made to be a big screen film and the Director
of Photography is once again Krasner (Two Weeks In Another Town) using color
and the scope frame with expert ease.
The
4-track magnetic sound has been boosted to a DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless
5.1 mix that is too much towards the front speakers, but so were the original
tracks offering traveling dialogue and sound effects in some scenes. Most ironically, it sounds as good as any of
the releases here and part of that is because the makers were serious about
delivering a top-rate soundtrack for the time and this was state-of-the-art for
such a film.
The anamorphically
enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Heartbreaker
has its issues, including being on the soft side, while the Dolby Digital 5.1
mix really pushes the dialogue-based films which are rarely more than simple
stereo at best.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Life
was shot in HD and looks poor as a result with weak detail, limited color and the
anamorphically enhanced DVD is weaker still, so this is as hard to watch
visually as anything else. The DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix is shockingly limited to the front speakers and
often the center channel, making this more difficult still to sit through and
the Dolby Digital 5.1 on the DVD is weaker still, making this one of the worst
releases in 2010.
The 1.33
X 1 on Only is not perfect and has
some detail issues, yet it looks as good as Heartbreaker and actually better than the Life DVD! Color can also be
an issue, as this looks like an older transfer and the filmed episodes were
finished on analog NTSC videotape. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mix has surprisingly good and healthy Pro Logic
surrounds that embarrass the 5.1 mixes on the newer features. Sad.
Extras on
all three Blu-rays include making of featurettes, with Eve offering six of them, two are vintage promos with Davis and
Baxter respectively, while newer offerings include The Real Eve, Directed By
Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Joseph L.
Mankiewicz: A Personal Journey and The
Secret Of Sarah Siddons. There is
also the AMC Backstory episode on
the film, Theatrical Trailer, four Fox Movietone News-related reels, two
feature length audio commentary tracks (Holm, Christopher Mankiewicz and
scholar Ken Geist + Author Sam Staggs) and a 24 page-booklet that holds the
disc.
Affair also comes in a 24 page-booklet,
while the disc adds a Trailer, feature length audio commentary with Marni Nixon
and historian Jim McBride, two related Fox Movietone News-related reels, AMC Backstory episode on the film and
five featurettes: Affairs To Remember:
Cary Grant, Affairs To Remember:
Deborah Kerr, Directed By Leo McCarey,
A Producer To Remember: Jerry Wald
and The Look Of An Affair To Remember.
Life
offers Additional Scenes (oh, the irony) and three bad featurettes, extras on Heartbreaker only include a TV Spot and
Trailer, leaving Only with no extras
at all.
- Nicholas Sheffo
