Demetrius & The Gladiators (1954/Fox/Twilight Time Blu-ray)/I, Claudius: 35th Anniversary
Edition (1976/Acorn DVD Set)/The
Song Of Lunch (2010/BBC DVD)/The
Tempest (2011/Disney Blu-ray)
Picture: B-/C/C/B- Sound: B-/C+/C+/B- Extras: C+/B/D/C+ Main Programs: C+/B/C+/C+
PLEASE
NOTE: The Demetrius & The Gladiators Blu-ray is limited to 3,000 copies and is available
exclusively at the Screen Archives website which can be reached at the link at
the end of this review.
One of
the great ironies of telling great stories of the past is that you can get all
“literatured out” and still come up with an upscale drama, Biblical tale,
action story and/or sexploitation film.
This struck me as I watched the latest set of upscale productions.
A sequel
to the massively successful The Robe
(1953, reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site with the 1951 Quo Vadis also on Blu-ray), Delmer
Davies’ Demetrius & The Gladiators
(1954) has been issued as a limited edition Blu-ray by Fox to Twilight Time who
recently issued another Fox Biblical epic, The
Egyptian, also as a limited edition Blu-ray. This one repeats the final minutes of the
previous film as Caligula (Jay Robinson, later TV’s Dr. Shrinker and a great all around actor) is banishing the leads
form the previous film and then has the title character (Victor Mature) to take
on for this film.
Not a fan
of the first film, I think this is a better motion picture overall and Robinson
steals every scene effectively playing the role with even more zeal than previously. I am not a fan of any of the Fox Biblical
films, save the 1966 John Huston Bible
(also reviewed on Blu-ray on this site) but this has its moments and is as good
as the original cycle got. Caligula
wants Christ’s robe and the Christians who know better must stop him.
As is
usually the case, the casting is more interesting than the screenplay, this
time including Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Debra Paget, a young Anne
Bancroft, Richard Egan, Charles Evans, an uncredited Julie Newmar as a dancer,
Barry Jones as Claudius and Ernest Borgnine.
However, with the influx of action films set in the time or around it,
plus Ridley Scott’s Gladiator being
a huge success, this new cycle (as bad (very bad) as moist of its has been),
looks that much older and dated, though not phonier as most of the new cycle
has awful dated-on-arrival (and usually sloppy) digital visual effects that are
beyond lame.
Still,
that cannot save this film, but the money and effort can still be seen on the
screen and like other early CinemaScope films, it has the wider 2.55 vs. later
2.35 widescreen image making it more unique and more meant for a big
screen. It also shows how when Hollywood really wants to
make something work, they will. This is
one of the hits that helped make scope filmmaking permanent and not just a
gimmick.
Extras
include a color booklet with illustrations and text, while the actual disc adds
the Original Theatrical Trailer and an isolated music track of the score by
Franz Waxman that helped save this film.
A more
serious film about Claudius, Caligula and company was first attempted in 1937
in England by Josef von Sternberg with Charles Laughton based on a major book
by Robert Graves which translates a surviving autobiography of the real man of
the title. Fortunately in 1976, the BBC
took on the book in the new form known as the TV mini-series and the resulting I, Claudius was a huge, tremendous
commercial and critical success on both sides of the Atlantic.
Celebrating
its 35th Anniversary, Acorn has issued the series on DVD with a nice
set of extras and what seem to be the best transfers we are going to get for a
show shot on color PAL video in its early years. Sir Derek Jacobi is Claudius in a
career-defining role, playing him in later decades and reflecting in flashback
in his final days. We see his past of
not being taken seriously, his sudden, shocking rise to power to hold the
republic together when Caligula (John Hurt) has gone so mad that he has to be
eliminated and the new plots against him and others against each other.
Acting is
top rate, though this was somewhat graphic for its time, even more so for PBS
in the U.S.
than even the BBC, but it holds up spectacularly well and is as engrossing as I
remembered it. Also helping is its great
cast including Brian Blessed, George Baker, a young Patrick Stewart, Sian
Phillips, James Faulkner, Patricia Quinn, Fiona Walker, John Cater, Moira
Redmond, John Rhys-Davies, Peter Bowles as Caractacus, Christopher Biggins as a
goofy Nero, Barbara Young as Agrippinilla and Ian Ogilvy among a truly great
cast.
Somehow,
many of the sets look more authentic than some in Fox’s early Biblical films
and this shows how powerful British TV could be in its last golden age. If you have never seen this mini-series, it
is a must-see and you must get this set ASAP.
If that is not enough, this has a great set of extras including a 1967
film about the 1937 film noted above that was never finished, extended versions
of the first two episodes (so no cheating here), I Claudius: A Television Epic featurette (74 minutes) from about 10
years ago, 36 minutes of favorite scenes by the cast and underrated Director
Herbert Wise, a new 12 minutes interview with Jacobi and an 8-page booklet
inside the DVD case.
Alan
Richman and Emma Thompson have more than their share of solid dramatic work
under their belts, including costume epics and Shakespeare. Niall MacCormick’s The Song Of Lunch (2010) is a much newer BBC production, trying to
do a dramatized realization of a poem by Christopher Reid. Each actor tells their story in mostly
voiceover, even though there is some dialogue.
An interesting experiment of sorts, but I thought it was to limited and
coincidentally similar to a recent independent film I saw about two isolated
people (Sidewalls from 2011) and
that did not work either. Ambitious it
may be, but it simply did not stay with me, though it is the only one of the
releases here set in modern time. There
are no extras.
Finally
we have Shakespeare in the form of a new version of The Tempest (2011) directed by a troubled Julie Taymor, surviving
her ordeals with her horrible Beatles film (Across The Universe) being a dud and her Broadway Spider-Man musical fiasco still a wreck
that is only making money now that she left and it has become such a
curio. We have dealt with the material
before in two previous adaptations (excluding Sci-Fi classic Forbidden Planet), including Peter
Greenaway’s Prospero’s Books (1991,
from an import DVD box of Greenaway’s films) that is more successfully alternative
than this version and an underrated Paul Mazursky version set in 1982, the year
of that film’s release with the same title we covered at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5122/The+Tempest+(1982/Paul+Mazursky)
The twist
here is that the great Helen Mirren is a female Prospero (Prospera) and that is
not a problem, nor is a fine cast that includes Djimon Hounsou, Felicity Jones,
David Strathairn, Tom Conti, Alan Cumming, Chris Cooper, Ben Whishaw or Alfred
Molina. The three problems are too many
visual effects, Russell Brand not meshing with the rest of the cast or project
and Taymor not in her usual Shakespearean top form. The result is not always memorable and I was
not too impressed. At least it is
ambitious and not made to pander to being commercial. It is also one of the last Miramax/Disney
films. See it for yourself and see what
I mean.
Brands
Rehearsals, a Music Video, an animated Shakespeare segment, Los Angeles rehearsals, Raising The Tempest featurette and intelligent feature length audio
commentary by Taymor are the extras.
The 1080p
2.55 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Demetrius and 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer
on Tempest both have issues, but are
the best looking of the releases her as expected. Demetrius
was shot in CinemaScope as noted but is
one of the only early such productions by Fox to be produced and issued in 35mm
dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints.
Optical printing notwithstanding, this is a grainier presentation than
expected, though you can still see some color range. The film needs some restoration work and I thought
hard on what to rate it, but the color range of Technicolor can be seen often
enough in the work of Director of Photography Milton R. Krasner (Scarlet Street, All About Eve, The Seven
Year Itch, Bus Stop, Beneath The Planet Of The Apes) uses
the very widescreen frame in ways that started to break up the static sense of
said wide frame so the film flowed better and he became a groundbreaker in the
use of the format.
On Tempest, Director of Photography Stuart
Dryburgh, A.S.C., (Once Were Warriors,
The Piano) does deliver a good set
of visuals, even with all the digital going on and this was shot on 35mm
film. However, it can be softer than you
might expect.
The 1.33
X 1 image on Claudius is soft and
there is a disclaimer by Acorn that it might be, but I was abler to adjust to
it, yet there is no excuse for Lunch
in its anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 frame and as a new shoot to be as soft
with more motion blur and detail issues than expected.
Both
Blu-rays offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless mixes, but Demetrius is a 4.0 mix based on the
original 4-track magnetic stereo sound design with traveling dialogue and sound
effects, so it is going to show its age but I liked how the original sound mix
was heeded. Though it is listed as
having only lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, Tempest
has a DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix, yet it lacks surrounds and a consistent soundfield
more often than it should. That leaves Lunch with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Stereo that is simple at best and Claudius
with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono that sounds better for its age than you
might expect.
Read more
about The Robe at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/8413/Quo+Vadis+(1951/Warner+Blu-ray)
As noted
above, Demetrius & The Gladiators
can be ordered while supplies last at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo