Bugsy
(1991)/Cromwell (1970/Sony/Umbrella
Region 4 Import DVDs)/Geronimo
(1962/MGM/UA/Umbrella Region 4 Import DVD)/Gunsmoke:
The Seventh Season, Volume 2 (1962/CBS DVDs)/The Life & Legend Of Wyatt Earp: Season Two (1956 –
1957/Inception DVDs)/Pony Soldier
(1952/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)
Picture: C+/C+/C+/C+/C+/B- Sound: C+/C+/C+/C+/C+/B- Extras: C-/C-/D/C/D/C+ Main Programs: C+/B-/C/C+/C/C+
PLEASE
NOTE: The Pony Soldier
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,
while the PAL Region 4 Import DVDs of Bugsy,
Cromwell and Geronimo are available exclusively from Umbrella Australia and
their link appears just before the Screen Archive link below.
Hollywood likes to play loose with history
as even the latest Oscar nominees show, but always tried to pass the world off
as a world of their own. This gets
complicated when history is involved as the following new releases show…
First we
have Barry Levinson’s more glamorous than it should have been Bugsy (1991) with Warren Beatty as the
title character, ill-fated gangster Benjamin Siegel, who founded Las Vegas as an adult
playground before it became a money machine and would cost him dearly for not
having instant success. This import DVD
from Umbrella is the shorter 131 minutes theatrical cut, though Sony did issue
the longer (by 15 minutes) 149 minutes cut on DVD, which we covered at this
link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5003/Bugsy+%E2%80%93+Unrated+Extend
The extra
footage was more of the same, but I thought the film was to lite (not as much
as Beatty’s Dick Tracy though,
reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) in dealing with its crime aspects
and focused too much on the romance with Virginia Hill (Annette Bening) plus
the old Hollywood style in itself was not updatable, especially after the likes
of GoodFellas, Casino and Scarface
(1983), so the film remains mixed and in some ways, has not aged as well as
even I expected.
Performances
do not always ring true, but anyone interested should see it once and the leads
(married in real life) do have some chemistry, of course. This is the older Sony DVD edition in PAL
format and only has a trailer and text filmographies as extras.
Ken
Hughes’ Cromwell (1970) is a big
screen biopic set in the 17th Century about the title character
(Richard Harris) taking on hypocrisy, The Catholic Church, separation of church
and state, a king (Alec Guinness) he is not a fan of and fights for the future
of a better Great Britain. This includes
wars, arguments, political maneuvering and other fights that could make or
break anyone involved. At 134 minutes,
it is a bit long, but goes the long way to tell its story and I suspect may
have been longer.
An
ambitious film worth revisiting, Charles Gray, Robert Morley, Patrick Magee and
a young Timothy Dalton are among the surprises in the cast of thousands and it
has a solidly written screenplay by Hughes and “script consultant” Ronald
Harwood that always keeps it challenging and makes it the best release on this
list. I hope Sony gets around to
restoring this and putting out a Blu-ray, because it deserves revival and
rediscovery. A trailer is the only
extra.
Arnold
Laven’s ever-controversial Geronimo
(1962) is intended as an action Western more than a biopic or anything
seriously resembling an authentic film with Chuck Connors as the title character
and hundreds of non-Native Americans playing Native Americans. Connors is a good actor, but things were
changing, this was even a bit regressive by Western standards considering some
of the groundbreaking films the genre saw in the 1950s and despite work by Ross
Martin and Adam West, this is more of a howler and Mystery Science Theater
material than the epic intended.
A
moderate hit, the film is at least good looking (save the condition of the
print here) and is a curio at best.
Otherwise, it is a clichéfest and despite being an ambitious production,
just is not that good. There are no
extras.
But
Westerns have always had the most issues with revisionist history, which is why
it is the deadest and most played out of all film genres, going al the way to
TV. They were so popular in their time
that they made all kinds for all audiences, even when they could not break from
their B-movie roots (pre-1939, demarked by John Ford’s original Stagecoach) and sometimes reveled in
it.
Two black
and white TV Westerns happen to be arriving at the same time, so I thought we
should compare the two in the midst of all this. Gunsmoke:
The Seventh Season, Volume 2 (1962) has the huge hit show still in full
swing, at an hour a show and clearly aimed at an adult audience, while the
less-seen but still competent and decent The
Life & Legend Of Wyatt Earp: Season Two (1956 – 1957) was aimed at
while families (serial maker and toy maker General Mills was a co-sponsor) with
its half-hour shows that wrapped up things even quicker than its episodic
counterpart. Earp (played by Hugh O’Brian) even ran an amazing 6 seasons, but
that was only nearly a 4th of Gunsmoke’s
run and yet, they still take place in the same TV safe world.
In both
cases, the makers keep the episodes going, they have good writing (if not
brilliant) and I am surprised Earp (which was a hit for then-fledgling ABC) did
not get syndicated more or talked about more, but I think it might be too adult
on some level to be remembered as a children’s show and also reminds us of how
most black and white TV was purged form syndication and forgotten unless it was
a super hit (I Love Lucy) or lasted
long enough to become a full color show like Gunsmoke.
TV
Western fans will be satisfied with either set, especially the forgotten Earp, which logged 36 episodes for this
season alone! It has no extras, but Gunsmoke has Preview Trailers for some
episodes and Sponsor Material.
Finally
we have Joseph M. Newman’s Pony Soldier
(1952) with Tyrone Power as a Canadian Mountie, but this is still very much a
Western down to the “Hollywood Indians” (including performances by Cameron
Mitchell and Stuart Randall) that makes this as hard to watch as Geronimo, but it is also meant to be an
ambitious adult Western and takes itself seriously even when we cannot. Both films were issued in real Technicolor
(more on that in a minute) and that means they did not intend for any of this
to be on a B-movie level, especially with Power in the lead.
However,
this film is shorter and the kidnap plot reminds one of the later Ford classic The Searchers (reviewed elsewhere on
this site) so it is a curio and also one of the last (or latter) of a line of
block-style Westerns before Hollywood started making all their films widescreen
to compete with television. I actually
thought the film worked visually (outside of the Native Americans issue) and
since the dialogue is not always great, was impressed (especially with its
clarity) to watch the film only with its music and see how much more effective
it was that way! Now die hard fans of
the genre and its star can see it looking fine on Blu-ray, but only while
supplies last.
The only
extras are the illustrated booklet on the film including informative text
inside the Blu-ray case with another Julie Kirgo essay, while the disc offers
the Alex North score isolated.
The
anamorphically enhanced image on the PAL DVDs for Bugsy (1.85 X 1) and Cromwell
and Geronimo (both 2.35 X 1, shot in
real anamorphic Panavision) look good, but not great throughout having detail,
depth and even slight color issues. We
also get aliasing in all cases and Geronimo
has plugged up color despite being originally issued by United Artists in
dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints.
Cromwell was also issued this
way, but the print Sony used here looks more like that kind of a print.
They are
all matched by the 1.33 X 1 black and white images on the various episodes of Gunsmoke and Earp, which are on par with each other for good Video Black, film
prints that look better than expected overall and Earp has in particular never looked so good outside of film
prints. Nice.
But the
visual winner as expected comes form the only Blu-ray on the list, the 1080p
1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Pony Soldier which uses a good film print, though some shots are
not always as good as others. There is
some controversy as to whether this is a good representation of a dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor print as it is not as vibrant as, say, a Hollywood
musical. Director of Photography Harry Jackson
(who shot the Key MGM Musical The Band
Wagon just after this film, plus older black and white Charlie Chan and Mr.
Moto B-movie mysteries at Fox years before) may have intended more darkness in
the frame than expected and for what I have seen of the film in the past, that
is partly a possibility.
Is it
meant to be this dark or somewhat color limited? Hard to say totally, but the print used here
is on the consistent side and I want to give the benefit of the doubt to Fox
and Twilight Time, especially as compared to color images in the booklet and
elsewhere. We hope to hear more about
this down the line, but it looks really good and again, is a limited edition.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo on Bugsy
and Cromwell have lite Pro Logic
surrounds and need 5.1 upgrades (the linked Bugsy DVD has it), while the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Geronimo, Gunsmoke and Earp are
more than a match for their sound. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mix on Pony Soldier is just warmer and fuller throughout to outdo its
younger competitors, t6hough the 2.0 Stereo isolated music score by Alex North
is the most sonically accomplished track on this list and a pleasant surprise.
As noted above, you can order the import DVD versions of Bugsy, Cromwell and Geronimo exclusively from Umbrella at:
http://www.umbrellaent.com.au/
…while
the Limited Edition Blu-ray of Pony
Solider can be ordered while supplies last at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo
