Flying
Tigers
(1942/Olive Blu-ray)/Hit
The Deck
(1955/MGM/Warner Archive DVD)/Home
Of The Brave
(1949/Olive
Blu-ray)/Memphis
Belle
(1990/Warner Blu-ray)/Overlord
(1975/Criterion Blu-ray)
Picture:
C+/B-/C+/B-/B Sound: C+/B-/C+/C+/B- Extras: D/C-/D/C+/B
Films: C+/C/C+/C+/B
For
Memorial Day, a few more War genre films than usual are being issued.
Here are some of them...
David
Miller's Flying
Tigers
(1942) is a favorite of John Wayne fans as he goes after every
Japanese WWII fighter plane he can get after with his fellow officers
for revenge over the Pearl Harbor attacks, but it was always a mixed
film to me and I always felt any film on the subject (up to the
recent Michael Bay hit) might be a little too jingoistic for its own
good, but this one was made in the midst of WWII. That is why it is
as much time capsule as anything.
At
102 minutes, it does not wear out its welcome too much, but it is
really for fans only
There
are no extras.
In
the early 1950s when widescreen moviemaking caught on, the major
studios saw it as the biggest reason to do remakes to have tried and
true material since the transition to color film. MGM drew from
several sources for their 1955 Navy comedy, Roy Rowland's Hit
The Deck.
On
The Town
had been a huge smash for them only a few years before, the 1925
First National soundie Shore
Leave,
1930 Hit
The Deck
was good enough for RKO that they used two-strip Technicolor for some
scenes and the RKO Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers hit Follow
The Fleet
(1936) was still a favorite, so they mixed ideas from the three to
come up with this film.
It
would juggle three potential relationships between three female (Jane
Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Ann Miller) with three male leads (Vic
Damone, Tony Martin, Russ Tamblyn) as the guys take a break on shore
before going back out for more duty. Now in the post-WWII era, the
film has its victorious, patriotic side, money is on the screen, the
singers and dancers are synced up well and the leads (especially
Miller in strong form) can also sing and dance, but the songs are not
that memorable and no new ground is broken here for a musical. It
did not help that the genre was in decline and the mixed success of
this film is one of the reasons MGM finally had to start moving away
from the genre.
On
the dramatic side, Walter Pidgeon, Gene Raymond, J. Carrol Nash, Jane
Darwell and the up and coming Richard Anderson and Alan King also
star and try to bring the non-musical side to life. It just never
meshes despite the best efforts of all around. No cult has built up
for this one, but Hermes Pan's choreography helps and it is a big
production more than worthy of a Blu-ray. Nice to see it get one.
The
only extra is a rough, analog, letterboxed 2.35 X 1 trailer inside a
1.33 X 1 frame.
Mark
Robson's Home
Of The Brave
(1949) is the other WWII fan classic Olive Films has issued with
Lloyd Bridges among the cast of James Edwards as a young African
American soldier who puts all in a dilemma with his fear of war.
Often criticized for being a bit racist, it is not a bad film, but
has been criticized and often for not having (like most films of the
time) strong African American soldiers along side the rest.
However,
this Stanley Kramer production from High
Noon
writer Carl Foreman (based on the Arthur (Hitchcock's Rope)
Laurents book) was always choppy and awkward and remains so to this
day despite the good work of cast and director.
There
are no extras.
Michael
Caton-Jones' Memphis
Belle
(1990) tells the story of the famed B-17 and the men who rode her.
Despite a nice cast that includes young Billy Zane, D.B. Sweeney,
Tate Donovan, Matthew Modine, Eric Stoltz, Sean Astin, Harry Connick
Jr., plus John Lithgow among its decent cast, the script and energy
are too laid back and if the idea is to be in a style of older War
films, it did not work. The film always plays like a big missed
opportunity despite a few good moments and it has not aged well save
the good analog effects and use of real vintage planes.
Extras
include a trailer and William Wyler's 1944 film about the title
aircraft from the U.S. Government film archive, here in a 1.33 X 1
analog presentation.
Stuart
Cooper's Overlord
(1975) is the true gem on the list and highly underrated. We
reviewed the film when Criterion first issued it a few years ago at
this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5344/Overlord+(1975/The+Criterion+Collection
Extras
remain the same strong set as last time and this look at D-Day is as
powerful, raw and realistic as ever. Kubrick's Director of
Photography John Alcott lensed this one and now on Blu-ray, it looks
better than ever.
The
1080p 1.66 X 1 black and white digital High Definition image transfer
on Overlord
hardly shows the age of the transfer which looked hood on the older
DVD, but Criterion outdoes that one easily with stunning depth and
detail, especially in some key shots.
The
1080p 2.55 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Deck
can show the age of the materials used including its share of detail
issues, but the Eastman Color (which tries hard to imitate
dye-transfer,
three-strip Technicolor) has its moments and helps to overcome the
flaws of the print, including some distortion from being shot in the
original, wider CinemaScope frame. Director of Photography George J.
Folsey, A.S.C., (Meet
Me In St. Louis,
Seven
Brides For Seven Brothers,
Forbidden
Planet,
The
Great Ziegfeld,
Glass
Houses,
Cash
McCall)
totally knew what to do with the very widescreen frame and his eye
helps this film hold up as well as it does.
The
1080p 1.85 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Belle
was shot on Agfa XT-320 35mm color negative film and looked good in
theaters, but this Blu-ray is too grainy and dark, lacking depth and
detail to really deliver the film as shot.
That
leaves the 1080p 1.33 X 1 digital black and white High Definition
image transfer on Tigers
and Brave
can show the age of the prints used and the resulting transfers are
flatter than I have seen from Olive before. Video Black is one of
the only things that stops both from looking as weak as a DVD.
As
for sound, the
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Deck
is derived from the original 4-track magnetic stereo on better 35mm
film prints and this upgrade is at its best during the musical score
or musical numbers, but the traveling sound effects and dialogue are
lost in all the other scenes because someone stuck that audio too
much into the center channel. Otherwise, this is not bad for its
age. Therefore, the PCM 2.0 Mono on Overlord,
which is very well recorded and has aged well, ties it for first
place sonically on this list and surpasses the lossy Dolby Digital
Mono on the older Criterion DVD version.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on Belle
is a big disappointment, weak and sounding like a second-generation,
poor upgrade of the older Dolby System analog A-type noise reduction
35mm theatrical stereo with mono surrounds release sound the film was
issued with. Dialogue is way too much in the front speaker and the
soundfield sounds like it is from a lossy soundmaster. Some sources
have tried to say the film had a 4.1 70mm Dolby blow-up soundmaster
for such a print, but if so, the sound here is not it!
This
is why the DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 1.0 lossless mix on Tigers
and Brave can more than compete despite being the oldest and
simplest presentations here.
-
Nicholas Sheffo
