How I Won The War (1967/MGM Limited Edition Collection DVD) + The King’s Speech (2010/Anchor Bay Blu-ray) + Romeo & Juliet (1954/VCI Blu-ray) + Simon & Laura (1955/VCI DVD) + South Riding (2011/BBC DVD)
Picture: C+/B/B-/C+/C+ Sound: C+ (Speech: B) Extras: C-/B/D/D/D Main Programs: C+/B/B-/B-/C+
PLEASE NOTE: Won is an on-line only exclusive from MGM and can be purchased from
Amazon.com, which you can reach through the sidebar of this side.
And now
some interesting examples of British cinema, including some you may have missed
and how a sensibility of that cinema landed up on British TV…
I am not
always a fan of the work of Richard Lester outside of his Beatles films, but I
give him credit for what he tried to do with his comedy How I Won The War (1967), which wants to be an absurd comedy
(British style) of war and its futility that boasts a fine cast including
Michael Crawford, John Lennon, Roy Kinnear, Jack MacGowran and many others in what
was a better film then than it is now.
Other satires since have gone further, the British style of humor has
grown in this respect to Monty Python levels and it has become somewhat of a
time capsule as well as ironic since Lennon’s early passing. Still, it is one of Lester’s more restrained
works and is worth a look. A theatrical
trailer is the only extra.
All the
buzz on Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech
(2010) might dissuade one from seeing the film, but it actually is as good as
you have heard with Colin Firth terrific as the British king to be battling
issues with speaking clearly and stuttering as he has issues with his life,
family and past that do not help.
Supported by his wife (Helena Bonham Carter), he decides to visit speech
therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) who might be able to help him, but has
to get through personal problems just to get the help he needs.
This
could have been Pygmalion/My Fair Lady for snobs, but David
Seidler’s screenplay is terrific (this is the R-rated version; any edited
version takes away from the edge of the problems being faced here) and after a
good set-up, the film just gets better and better. Guy Pierce is the older brother Edward who
gives up the throne for Mrs. Simpson, Timothy Spall is surprisingly good as
Winston Churchill and Michael Gambon is the troubling father figure in the
family who is the root of some of the trouble to begin with.
Best of
all, I always believed it was in period and the detail is smooth
throughout. If you have avoided this
film, don’t. It is that good. Extras include a nice Q&A with the cast,
feature length audio commentary with Director Hooper, real King George VI
speeches, a Making Of featurette and piece on the real Lionel Logue.
So many
direct versions of Romeo & Juliet
have been made that it has been more than we likely needed, but lost in the
shuffle is a decent 1954 version with Laurence Harvey and Susan Shentall (with
Sir John Gielgud, one of the best readers of The Bard ever, covering the chorus
part with ease) in the title roles. Renato
Castellani wrote and directed this stylish version that also stars Marvin Johns
and Sebastian Cabot.
Photographed
by Robert Krasker in three-strip, dye-transfer Technicolor, it can go more than
a few rounds with the Luhrmann and Zefferelli versions (both of which tend to
be overrated) and deserves rediscovery.
Sadly, there are no extras.
Muriel
Box’s Simon & Laura (1955) is
less know and a little more underrated.
I had not seen this very funny big screen comedy in years, but this
send-up of the early days of TV and movie star personalities is as true now as
it ever was. Peter Finch (debonair here,
though best known for his ever-priceless performance in Sidney Lumet’s Network) and Kay Kendall play the title
characters, a married couple of stars on the verge of divorce when the
opportunity to do a TV show comes up.
Realizing
they both need a career boost, they take on the show, despite its early
beginnings and how it is being looked down upon. The result is a hit TV show, but behind the
scenes, things are not good and while the public sees the happy couple playing
happy, things are about to fall apart.
Shot in the large-frame VistaVision format by the amazing Ernest
Stewart, this howler has been out of circulation to long and is long overdue
for DVD. Maurice Denham, Ian Carmichael,
Joan Hickson and Jill Ireland also are in the fine cast. Hopefully, a Blu-ray will follow. Sadly, there are no extras here either.
Finally
we have a British TV mini-series South
Riding (2011) which is the kind of drama that supplanted a certain kind of
British film drama as TV arrived, but British TV did this better than the U.S.
equivalent in the long run. Here, this post-WWI
drama (adapted by Andrew Davies from the Winfred Holtby novel) tells the story
of Sarah Burton (Anna Maxwell Martin) who goes back home to find poverty and
trouble as a teacher who fights to help a gifted young female student find
success against all odds. Not bad if
overly long, well cast, acted and it has nice locales. Some of it we have scene before, but this is
well done and realistic enough to give it a look. There are no extras.
The 1080p
1.78 X 1 digital High Definition image on Speech is easily the best of the five
titles here, with fine picture quality, definition and detail that may not
always be demo quality, but is rich and vivid.
The 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image on Romeo is from a print that could still use some work and has some
fading in places, but you can also see how good the color is often enough to
appreciate how great this film originally looked. Think the recent Blu-rays of Senso or The Red Shoes, both from Criterion.
The anamorphically enhanced DVDs are all softer, with South (1.78 X 1) having motion blur,
while Simon (1.85 X 1) is softer
than I would have liked (especially for a large frame format film, but the
print here is in great shape) and War
(1.66 X 1) has a disclaimer that the source might be limited but I thought the
print was just fine.
Though
dialogue-based, Speech has a nice
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless 5.1 mix that is warm with a solid soundfield
and is well recorded. The rest of the
releases are in Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, though Romeo also has a Dolby 5.1 mix, but the sound is so dated that it
is not a major upgrade.
- Nicholas Sheffo
