The Disappearance (1977)/Leave Her To Heaven (1945/Fox/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-rays)/The Mask Of Dimitrios (1944/Warner Archive DVD)/Two Men In Manhattan (1959/Cohen Media Blu-ray)

Picture: B-/B/C+/B Sound: B-/B-/C/C+ Extras: C+/B/C-/B- Films: C+/B/B-/B-

PLEASE NOTE: The Mask Of Dimitrios DVD is only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series, while Twilight Time Blu-rays of The Disappearance and Leave Her To Heaven are limited to only 3,000 copies and are available from the Screen Archives website. All can be ordered from the links below.

Now for some recent releases that truly qualify under the abused, misused and even mispronounced name of Film Noir....

Stuart Cooper's The Disappearance (1977) starts Donald Sutherland as a married assassin who comes home after a job to find his wife missing, so he spend the rest of the film trying to find her and who might be behind her sudden absence. They are deeply in love and he cannot imagine she would ever leave him, especially with recent events. We see all of this in various flashbacks and depending on the version watched, complexly so.

As he starts to unravel the happenings surrounding his situation, we get more twists, turns and guest star turns throughout that makes this at least ambitious and interesting, but even in its Director's Cut, Copper is not able to get the most out of the Paul Mayersberg screenplay (from the Derek Marlowe novel) and simply cannot juggle all the elements to make this really move and add up. This is a complex attempt to do a thriller like Nicolas Roeg would have done and Mayersberg wrote some of his best films. Even with Stanley Kubrick Director of Photography John Alcott on board, some cliches and other minor issues get in the way, but it is a curio worth seeing and with a film so butchered and badly released, at least this thriller gets its chance to be seen.

One thing I can say is that it is mature, intelligent and the kind of ambitious film we hardly ever see attempted, including some great in jokes. In one scene, Sutherland's character visits a mysterious man in the know played by Peter Bowles, whose name is Jeffries. For decades, thanks in part to the 1960s British TV spy classic The Avengers, Peter Bowles and Peter Jeffries have been actors who have constantly been confused for each other and they don't exactly look alike, but by playing heavies, villains or suspects, they have been criss-crossed all too often by even the biggest fans by accident or otherwise. A nice joke and reference all around and an idea of how ambitious the film is by adding all kins of nuances.

An isolated music score track, 10-minutes Stuart Cooper interview, a 15:27 sample of the awful U.S. Version that even re-scores the film and a standard definition of the full 101 minutes Director's Cut are all extras on the disc, while the case adds another illustrated booklet on the film with another solid essay by Julie Kirgo.

John M. Stahl's Leave Her To Heaven (1945) is one of the few total Film Noir films of the original period (1941 – 1958) to be shot in color and in this case, real Technicolor, as Gene Tierney plays a Femme Fatale who will do anything to get what she wants. As Ellen, she plays possum, innocent, manipulative, but as we soon find out, she'll do anything... anything to get what she wants and where she wants to go.

A classic that holds up as well now as it ever did and seems as relevant as ever, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain and Vincent Price in one of his best non Horror-genre turns (showing once again what an underrated actor he was) makes this as creepy as the best Noirs get and the color (not including minor print issues) has a certain subtle darkness to it you just don't see in Technicolor films, so the film (scripted so well by Jo Swerling) starts off well immediately and just slowly builds and builds to what was then a shocking climax and still delivers today. Any serious film fan needs to consider this critical and commercial smash a must-see.

Extras include another illustrated booklet on the film with another solid essay by Julie Kirgo, while the disc adds an isolated music score track of Alfred Newman's classic music, Original Theatrical Trailer, Movietone News Footage on the film and a feature length audio commentary track (to be heard after watching the film) by Darryl Hickman and critic/writer/film scholar Richard Schickel.

Jean Negulesco's The Mask Of Dimitrios (1944) was only made a year before and is a Noir that holds its own, yet it seems older, but in this case, that is not so bad as Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet reunite in this tale of the deadly title character and master criminal in a cat & mouse game in which Lorre is a writer who wants to novelize the tale and make a mint, while Greenstreet is a man up to no good. Dimitrios (Zachary Scott) has turned up dead, yet it eventually does not seem that way and with the web he left of murder, exploitation, corruption and terror, there is something about him that lives and might not die or be dead yet.

The result (scripted by Frank Gruber from the Eric Ambler novel) is an intelligent mystery with some twists that work and though the film is more talky than it might have needed to be, the performances, atmosphere and ambition of it all pay off much more often than not and that is why it is worth your time to give this one a thorough look. A nice gem from Warner Bros., I had not seen it in eons and was happy to see how well it held up.

A trailer is the only extra.

Last but not least is Jean-Pierre Melville's Two Men In Manhattan (1959), a tribute to Noir at the end of its classical era where he plays a man (yes, he directs and co-stars in this one) hired by the UN to find a UN man who is likely dead and brings an ambitious reporter (Pierre Grasset) trying to find out what happened, the truth about what is going on and not get killed, though for the reporter, a good story might include changing some details just to get a good payoff.

Shot with plenty of New York City footage, it is a stunning-looking film, takes place mostly at night, has some great performances, some darkly humorous moments, is more sexually explicit than any Hollywood film would have been at the time, creates a world at night that seems like the next logical step after Noir (and whose look definitely influenced Jean-Luc Godard, especially on his masterwork Alphaville (1965) and informs Arthur Penn's Mickey One (1963) to some extent) all while asking some serious questions and showing us a new side of the city (not just NYC either) that makes this mystery film a small gem and key piece of French cinema everyone should see and most will be stunned by its look and feel, how effective it all is.

Extras include an illustrated booklet on the film with a fine essay by Ginette Vincendeau, while the disc adds a re-release trailer, original French trailer and discussion featurette with Johnathan Rosenbaum and Ignatly Vishnevetsky called 'Keeping Up Appearances' where they sit in some part of the hall of a fine single-screen movie palace and talk about the film and its director for about 36 minutes.

All these films are must-sees for anyone who thinks they know what Film Noir is!

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 full color digital High Definition image transfer on Heaven and 1080p 1.33 X 1 full black and white digital High Definition image transfer on Manhattan (restored amazingly for this release) are the best performers here, delivering often stunning images despite some minor flaws. Heaven has a print with some minor color issues and apparently, Fox did not have a complete a dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor version of the film (lensed brilliantly by Director of Photography Leon Shamroy, A.S.C.), yet this is pretty good until further restoration (and finding another real Technicolor print) can be done. Manhattan simply has some shots that are a generation down and the print can sometimes show its age, but it is impressive and even stunning otherwise throughout.

The 1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Disappearance may be the newest film on the list, but the print used here shows its age more than expected and can be a bit softer than expected at times. Otherwise, the presentation is decent and as good as it has ever looked.

That leaves the 1.33 X 1 full black and white standard definition DVD image on Dimitrios still looking good for its age, but the poor performer on the list, though it looks good for the format and its age. The print is in decent shape.

The DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 Mono lossless mixes on Disappearance and Heaven are actually the sonic champs here by default, sounding warm and decent for their age, but having their sonic limits and showing their age. The PCM 2.0 Mono on Manhattan sounds a little weaker and shows its age, though I doubt this could sound much better, but the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Dimitrios sounds a generation down and could use some work.

To order The Mask Of Dimitrios on Warner Archive DVD, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:

http://www.warnerarchive.com/

…and to order The Disappearance and Leave Her To Heaven limited edition Blu-rays, buy them while supplies last at this link:

www.screenarchives.com

- Nicholas Sheffo