From
The Terrace
(1960/Fox)/The Happy
Ending (1969/United
Artists/MGM)/Hawaii
(1966/United Artists/MGM/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-rays)/Walk
Softly, Stranger (1950)/A
Woman's Secret
(1949/RKO/Warner Archive DVDs)
Picture:
B/B-/B-/C/C Sound: B-/B-/B-/C/C Extras: C/C/C+/D/D Films:
C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The From
The Terrace,
Happy
Ending
and Hawaii
Blu-rays are now only available from our friends at Twilight Time,
are limited to only 3,000 copies each and can be ordered while
supplies last, while the Walk
Softly, Stranger
and A
Woman's Secret
DVDs are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series. All can be ordered from the links below.
Melodrama
comes in all forms and one of the most popular was in soap operas aka
'women's films' or 'weepies' and we have five such films that
represent two different eras thereof.
We
start with Mark Robson's From
The Terrace
(1960), a star vehicle for Paul Newman and a very large cast as Fox
pushed the book angle and author John O'Hara in their publicity to
say the film had a substantial story. It does and we discussed it
when reviewing the limited edition CD of the Elmer Bernstein
soundtrack at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1020/From+The+Terrace+(Limited+CD
Only
having seen it once eons ago, I forgot how long this one was that
goes on and on and on and on, but does have that great supporting
cast that includes Joanne Woodward (she outacts just about everyone,
all before marrying Newman), Myrna Loy, Leon Ames, Ina Balin, George
Grizzard, Patrick O'Neal, Elizabeth Allen, Barbara Eden and Ted de
Corsia. Newman's David Alfred Eaton comes back from military service
to a multi-layered soap opera world and one of money, high profits
and the upper class, but where does he fit. You can find out if you
can handle 144 minutes of the film, but it has its moments. Just be
patient and awake when you take it on.
Richard
Brooks' The Happy Ending
(1969) also deals with romance, people of means, money and the
inability to find happiness. By this time, TV soap operas (which
keep showing up here, first in black and white, then on new color
TVs) were supplanting this film genre, so it had to be more brutal
(think Valley Of The Dolls
or The April Fools)
to get people into theaters. John Forsythe is a rich man in Denver,
Colorado (foreshadowing his TV megahit Dynasty
over a decade later) in love with and marrying Jean Simmons, but all
his love cannot stop her from becoming a lonely alcoholic, even with
great maid (Nanette Fabray) and the film tries to figure out what
went wrong.
The
results are mixed, but not from a lack of trying from the producers,
the director and the fine cast that overcomes the flaws and datedness
of some of this including Tina Louise (in her big screen movie
stretch), Shirley Jones, Dick Shawn, Robert (Bobby) Darin, Lloyd
Bridges, Teresa Wright, Kathy Fields, Karen Steele, Barry Cahill and
an uncredited Erin Moran. It is worth a look and like several of
these films, tried to launch a major song. In this case, composer
Michel Legrand teamed up with Alan & Marilyn Bergman to create
''What Are You Doing The
Rest Of Your Life?'' that
arguably became more successful than the film and a standard,
recorded here by Michael Dees, dozens of major vocalists remade it.
Best version to recommend? Live and studio recordings by Shirley
Bassey!
This
is worth a look and runs at a much more manageable 112 minutes.
We
previous reviewed the DVD of George Roy Hill's Hawaii
(1966) years ago at this link...
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2067/Hawaii+(1966
Well,
the film has not improved since then, though the DVD was the shorter
version, as is the HD version here, but the longer version in a weak
copy is included in low definition. Issued as the Dalton Trumbo
biopic arrives for awards season, his longer works were never as good
as his shorter ones and this is a film that has not aged well...
even from the last DVD screening. Still, I'm glad MGM let Twilight
Time issue this on Blu-ray because this does look good often and that
gives those the most interested to see for themselves more clearly
than before. Still, this is a very long 161 minutes and the Roadshow
version is longer, so prepare for a long sit.
Extras
for all three Blu-rays include a nicely illustrated booklet on the
film including informative text and essays
for each respective film by Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-rays add
Isolated Music Scores and Original Theatrical Trailer, with Terrace
adding a Fox Movietone Newsreel and Hawaii
adding an old low-def transfer (used on the old letterboxed LaserDisc
and VHS editions) longer version of the film in its Roadshow release
with Entrance, Intermission and brief clip of a young, unknown Bette
Midler. Hope MGM finds the missing footage at some point.
Robert
Stevenson's Walk Softly,
Stranger (1950) has
Joseph Cotten reuniting with Alida Valli from their work in the
classic The Third Man
(1941) as he plays a stranger going to a Ohio town with a secret
agenda, while romancing a wheelchair-bound woman (Valli) with money.
He takes a plain job as a cover while he plots for what he is really
up to. This has some good moments, but the melodrama lands up
competing with the crime angle, though that does not make this a Film
Noir. However, it is a tight 81 minutes with more hits than misses
and is enough of a curio to check it out once.
There
are no extras.
Finally
we have Nicholas Ray's A
Woman's Secret (1949)
with Maureen O'Hara in trouble for killing a woman she has taken in
so that woman (Gloria Grahame) could become a major singer. Is she
guilty or is something more bizarre going on? This could have also
been a Noir or Mystery film, but it is so melodramatic and soapy that
those aspects take center stage. At 84 minutes, it is also tight and
to the point, but also with mixed results and an ending you may or
may not buy. Still, like Walk above, RKO made such films like no
other and in the grittier mode than we would see later when the
surviving major studios (RKO folded when TV really arrived) had to
take on television. Melvin Douglas, Bill Williams, Victor Jory and
Mary Phillips also star.
There
are no extras.
The
1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition images transfers on the three
Blu-rays are a little different in their production origins, as
Terrace
is shot with older CinemaScope lenses, while the later films use
improved Panavision scope lenses. All were issued in DeLuxe Color,
save Happy,
which was originally
issued in 35mm
dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor prints, but the print used here
does not always look like that at all with more than a few
grainier-than-expected shots lensed by the legendary
Director of Photography Conrad Hall, A.S.C., but Hawaii also has some
color-shifting and detail issues despite being an improvement over
its older DVD edition. The longer, analog version of the film comes
off of a problematic analog
videotape master with flaws that include video noise, video banding,
telecine flicker, tape scratching, PAL cross color, faded color,
staircasing and tape damage. Terrace
is the best performer here, a new HD master, using the very
widescreen frame to its fullest extent, remaining an impressive use
of the later CinemaScope
format (reduced from 2.55 X 1) with some shots a little darker than
maybe they should be. Otherwise, the work of DP Leo Tover (The
Snake Pit,
The
Sun Also Rises,
Love
Me Tender)
works well.
Hawaii
was shot by Russell
Harlan, A.S.C., for 70mm blow-up intent as noted in the previous
review.
The
1.33 X 1 black
& white image on both DVDs are a little soft and weak,
though you can still see how well these were shot and meant to be
quality RKO releases. Only released a year apart, they have the same
look being from the same studio, but that is a good thing, possibly
on Ansco Panchromatic stocks.
As
for sound, all three Blu-rays offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) lossless
sound, but 2.0 Stereo on Terrace
is a passable substitute for whatever happened to the original
4-track magnetic soundmaster with traveling dialogue and sound
effects, Happy
is 1.0 Mono that sounds fine for its age and despite some reports to
the contrary, Hawaii
did have 6-track magnetic sound on its 70mm blow-up prints, also with
traveling dialogue and sound effects, so the 1.0 Mono here duplicates
the DVD's lossy Dolby Mono. Hope MGM finds the multi-channel
soundmaster at some point, which you can get an idea of by listening
to the 2.0 DTS-MA Stereo isolated score track of Elmer Bernstein's
score.
The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono ion both DVDs are down a generation and
a little compressed, so like their picture presentations and the
prints used for transfer, the sound needs some restoration.
Fortunately, Warner has been spending some serious time and money
working on the long-neglected RKO catalog, so maybe there will be
Blu-rays of each in a few years.
To
order From
The Terrace, Happy Ending
and Hawaii
limited edition Blu-rays, buy them while supplies last at these
links:
www.screenarchives.com
and
http://www.twilighttimemovies.com/
… and
to order either of the Warner Archive DVDs, go to this link for them
and many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo