Executive Suite (1953/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Into
The White (2012/Magnolia Blu-ray)/Phantom
(2011/Fox Blu-ray)/The Power & The
Prize (1956/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/White
Frog (2012/Wolfe DVD)/Zandy’s Bride
(1974/Warner Archive DVD)
Picture:
C+/B-/B-/C+/C/C+ Sound: C+/B-/B-/C+/C+/C+ Extras: B/C-/C/C-/C/C- Films: B/C+/C/C+/C+/C+
PLEASE NOTE: Executive Suite, Power &
The Prize and Zandy’s Bride are only
available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be
ordered from the link below.
Now for a
set of drams on some more serious subjects…
I am not
a big fan of the work of Robert Wise, but even I have to admit that his 1953
MGM drama Executive Suite is one of
his bets films. Originally issued as
part of the Barbara Stanwyck Signature
Collection on DVD, which we covered at this link, it deserves this special
reissue:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6231/Barbara+Stanwyck+Signature+Collecti
A major
executive at a respected manufacturer unexpectedly dies and the fallout deals
with corporate responsibility, in a battle between a inventor (William Holden)
with the company, a bean-counting goof (Fredric March) who wants to sell the company
out for cheap, quick profits no matter how it permanently damages its name and
reputation and caught in between are the many employees of the company, a
corporate board that is not very united, a widow (Barbara Stanwyck) too upset
to do anything who has also been an absent board member and Shelley Winters
shows up as the secretary who has become a confidant to a board member without
most knowing.
Written
very well by Ernest Lehman (North By
Northwest), the film holds up very well for its age and is as relevant as
ever. Additional turns by a first rate
cast that includes Walter Pidgeon, Paul Douglas, a young Dean Jagger, Louis
Calhern, Tim Considine and an unusually effective Nina Foch make this a
must-see film not enough have seen.
Extras
include the live action Pete Smith short Out
For Fun, animated short Billy Boy
and a feature length audio commentary track on the film, by Oliver Stone that
is pretty thorough about its politics, the time the film was made and more.
Petter
Naess’ Into The White (2012) is a
stuck-in-a drama based on a true WWII story of how during an aerial dogfight
between the British and Germans, two groups of pilots (two from England, three
from Germany) land up in the same isolated house further isolated by tons of
snow in the wilderness of Norway. At
first, the German Commander thinks he is taking the two Brits prisoner, but
things change and other considerations start to surface.
I liked
the actors and though they and the script had some good moments, but there are
too many predictable moments, predictable turns, flatness that holds the story
back and anytime it gets interesting, it soon hits a narrative wall. Still, it is relatively short at 104 minutes
and it might have worked better if it had been shortened a bit more.
Extras
include a trailer and AXS-TV look at the film.
I cannot
say the same about Todd Robinson’s Phantom
(2011), which is a submarine drama/thriller about a nuclear weapon that becomes
loose in 1968, starting what could have been the conclusion of the Cuban
Missile Crisis in that a nuclear war might have broken out. It is an interesting idea, but the screenplay
by Robinson gets too caught up in trivial drama and even actors like Ed Harris,
David Duchovny and William Fichtner cannot make up for the many shortcomings.
Many have
already noted it is no match for the likes of Das Boot, Crimson Tide
and Hunt For Red October, but it
misses the basics so much that I would add Run Silent, Run Deep and the
underrated K-19: The Widowmaker. It does not help that the Russian crew has
multiple accents and even speaking in English or not, this is just not that
convincing all around and it never totally feels Soviet. Bound to be a curio, it had a very limited
theatrical release a while back and took a while to hit home video. Here it is.
Extras
include UltraViolet Copy for PC, PC portable and iTunes-able devices, a Music
Video (!?!), three making of featurettes and a feature length audio commentary
track.
Trying to
achieve some of the same points, Henry Koster’s The Power & The Prize (1956) introduced a new MGM logo that did
not work out, was the first black and white CinemaScope film ever made and
includes a romance between Robert Taylor and MGM’s hope for a new star,
Elisabeth Mueller, coming across as more than a little bit like a new Ingrid
Bergman. He is an executive on the rise,
she an immigrant and musician who survived awful things to make it to America,
but when they are getting along so well, someone starts rumors about her.
He had
been engaged to the niece of his boss (Burl Ives), but changes his mind and
that is when things start to get ugly.
Add Mary Astor, Charles Coburn, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Ben Wright and
Richard Deacon and this has possibilities.
However, the screenplay by Robert Ardrey from the Howard Swiggett novel
is too much of a soap opera melodrama and any critiques of corporate business
and backstabbing in the boardroom that might be here or in the novel is
incidental to all the muddy drama.
The film
is not bad looking despite the extensive use of sets and some nice outdoor
shots helps too, but it has some of the sluggishness you get from early
CinemaScope dramas and that is why you likely have not heard of it before. Worth a look if you are interested, but skip
it otherwise.
A trailer
is the only extra.
Quentin
Lee’s White Frog (2012) is the
challenging story of Nick (Booboo Stewart), a young man with a nice family,
solid older brother in Chaz (Harry Shum, Jr.) and major issues with Asperger’s
Syndrome. Things are moving along well
when something happens that makes Nick loose his brother, but this leads to a
well-hidden secret being slowly revealed and the fallout that results.
It is not
bad at 93 minutes and despite some plot issues and moments that do not work as
well as others, the performances are decent, casting pretty believable and
though there are plenty of missed opportunities, turns by Kelly Hu, Joan Chen
and BD Wong are a plus.
Extras
include a Theatrical Trailer and Behind The Scenes featurette.
And
finally we have Jan Troell’s Zandy’s
Bride (1974), a mixed drama set in the old West that had become more
naturalistic after the Spaghetti Westerns rose and fell, bringing us the likes
of a period that included Altman’s McCabe
& Mrs. Miller and ran all the way to Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate. Gene Hackman
plays a loner looking for a wife and woman to share his wife with and turns to
personal ads in the newspaper. Expecting
a 25-year-old, a slightly older woman (Liv Ullmann of the legendary Ingmar
Bergman films) shows up instead and to say he is not happy is an
understatement.
She goes
back with him, but it is very rough going.
They do not get along well, he has major social issues, she is not used
to someone so crass & sloppy and early on, there is a sexual incident
between them that is very ugly. She
still stays and other things start to happen, including an old flame of his
resurfacing and they tend to stay (to say the very least) dysfunctional all the
way.
Because
they are always at it to extremes, I never bought the film and felt the
directing and Marc Norman screenplay was not just showing misogyny, but
wallowing in it a bit too much for its own good. Still, the performances are good, including
turns by Eileen Heckart as Zandy’s mother, Frank Cady, Harry Dean Stanton,
Susan Tyrell and hardly speaking Sam Bottoms round out a fine cast, though most
moments are between the leads. Not a
great film, but if you can suffer through its shortcomings, it is worth a look.
A trailer
is the only extras.
The 1.33
X 1 black & white image on Suite
and anamorphically enhanced 2.35 X 1 image on Power (black and white CinemaScope as noted above) and Bride (Panavision in real dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor, one of the last in the U.S. until the 1997 revival)
all are a little soft, but have some nice shots and are more than
watchable. Bride has Jordan Cronenweth, A.S.C., as its Director of Photography
and fans know he later lensed great films like Blade Runner and State Of Grace before his
early passing. He makes the West look
good and I like the look of this film throughout. An uncredited Frank M. Holgate also lensed
some shots.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image on Into
and 1080p 2.35 X 1 AVC @ 19 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Phantom may be the visual champs here
on the list as expected for being the only Blu-rays and being newer shoots, but
they both have softness issues, styling choices that hold their transfers back
and limited detail and depth issues that do not help. Framing in both cases does not always take
advantage of the widescreen format as it should, especially for the war genre.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on Frog
is sadly the softest presentation here despite being one of the most recent
shoots for whatever reason, though maybe a Blu-ray would bring out more.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Suite, Power and Bride also sounds good for their age, though I bet there is a
little more sound in each film than we get.
Prize was originally a
4-track magnetic stereo release, but we guess the tracks have been lost or
Warner simply did not dig them out and restore them for this release. Maybe for Blu-ray they will if they can.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on Into and Phantom are the
sonic champs here as well being the only lossless presentations and newly
recorded, but both can be dialogue-based often and despite surrounds kicking in
during action sequences, sound tends to be towards the front speakers in both
cases and is only so spectacular, but recording quality is at least decent in
both cases.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 5.1 on Frog is weaker
and also dialogue-based, plus add the often quiet nature and it is
underwhelming despite not being badly recorded.
To order Executive Suite, Power & The Prize and Zandy’s
Bride, go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
