Children Of Divorce (1927/Paramount/Blackhawk Films/Flicker Alley Blu-ray w/DVD)/Sentimental Journey (1946/Fox Cinema Archive DVD)/Something Wild (1961/United Artists/MGM/Criterion Blu-ray)/Western Union (1941/Fox Cinema Archive DVD)

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

PLEASE NOTE: The Sentimental Journey and Western Union DVDs are now only available online from Fox and are both limited editions, so order from Amazon via our sidebar while supplies last.

Here are four classic dramas with plenty of melodrama to offer from four fine filmmakers to be in the know about.

Frank Lloyd (and an uncredited Josef von Sternberg)'s Children Of Divorce (1927) starts during WWI when parents would leave their children in Paris for long stretches due to the awful conflict, then fast-forwards to the period of release where a young man (a young Gary Cooper on his way to superstardom) is about to marry his childhood sweetheart (Esther Ralston), but Kitty (Clara Bow) won't have it and does what she needs to do to break them up and steal him.

The idea of the scenario is to push Bow as the sex symbol and huge sensation she became, resulting in an icon of the free flapper era and new ways human sexuality was being thought of and addressed, but no doubt Bow was amazing the camera loved her, people loved her and this film shows us why even nine decades later and counting why she was such a big deal. From the #2 studio of the time, Paramount Pictures, it only runs 71 minutes, but that was considered long for the silent days and it delivers a surprising amount of impact. Keep in mind the Hollywood Code had not kicked in yet either and the film will definitely surprise you.

Extras in Flicker Alley's usual, sturdy, clear, hard plastic packaging include another thick, high quality Souvenir Booklet with rare photographs; an essay by film preservationist and Clara Bow biographer David Stenn; notes on the production of the documentary by producer-director Hugh Munro Neely; and a brief write-up about the music by Rodney Sauer, score compiler and director of the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, plus the DVD version and both discs add the hour-long film "Clara Bow: Discovering the 'It' Girl" narrated by Courtney Love, that documents the life of the woman who would become the icon of the flapper era, from her tragic childhood to her tumultuous personal life as Hollywood's first sex symbol. Be sure to watch it after seeing the film.

Walter Lang's Sentimental Journey (1946) is an efficient, successful melodrama about sacrifice with the always great Maureen O'Hara as an married actress who is secretly sick, so she adopts a daughter so her husband (John Payne) is not totally alone when she is gone. Is this moral, ethical or personally wrong, or is it something else? The film is not always interested in answering that as it goes for the weepiness of the matter, a commercial move that worked, but at the expense of skipping deeper concerns.

Despite the leads and supporting turns by William Bendix, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Mischa Auer, Glenn Langan, Kurt Krueger, Trudy Marshall and Ruth Nelson among others, it is amazing how stale and flat the film is. Fox later remade it as Gift Of Love with Lauren Bacall and Robert Stack (reviewed elsewhere on this site), but the results were no better. Thus, both versions have been issued as Fox Cinema Archive DVDs in limited runs.

There are no extras.

Jack Garfein's Something Wild (1961, not connected with the Jonathan Demme film in any way that Criterion actually issued on Blu-ray a few years ago) has been restored and Criterion has issued a remarkable special edition on the tale of a young woman (Carroll Baker) who is going to school and has much to live for, but is sexually assaulted one night and is never the same again.

Instead of going to the doctor, a hospital or getting help, she keeps the horrific event a secret as it slowly chips away at her inner peace, psyche and more. This includes leaving home unannounced, moving into a new place, leaving school and taking a job at a retail store. Needless to say it does not end there as she is still in pain the film unexploitively examines how she deals with the unspeakable in event after event that offers a new twist and turn in her life that is disturbing, confusing, offers no comfortably simple answers and gives us a vital train of thought about how such hurt leaves permanent scars and how complex that really is.

Jean Stapleton and Doris Roberts have great turns as busy bodies that just get better with age, though they're work only lasts so long. Clifton James is the detective who does not know what happened to her and is not sure why or how she is missing. Mildred Dunnock and Charles Watts play her good-if-unconnected parents and Ralph Meeker appears later as a mysterious new figure in her life who also has issues.

Far from politically correct in unexpected ways, it asks question and poses adult situations you hardly ever see in feature films or uncensored TV, even if it has its own issues I cannot get into without revealing spoilers. It has been a while since I have seen the film and am glad its back. A very ambitious film and important pre-American New Wave piece of pure cinema, it certainly deserves serious rediscovery and I believe it could and would find a larger audience now as a result.

Extras include a DigiPak with a nicely illustrated booklet on the film including informative text and an essay by critic Sheila O'Malley, while the Blu-ray disc adds a new conversation between Garfein and critic Kim Morgan, new interview with actor Carroll Baker, new interview with scholar Foster Hirsch on the Actors Studio's cinematic legacy, and Master Class with Jack Garfein, a 2015 recording of one of the director's world-famous lectures on acting technique.

Finally we have Fritz Lang's Western Union (1941), tells the tale of the split of two criminal brothers who split because one wants to get clean and contribute to the title enterprise, but in this revenge western drama, this will not be as peaceful a split as it could be... or we wouldn't have a movie. Based on the Zane Grey book, Robert Young and Randolph Scott are the brothers, but the film is a mixed affair with fake 'Hollywood Indians' and melodrama more than you usually get from Lang, though his trademark angered conflict between characters typical of his studio films are here.

Despite being shot in Technicolor and with Dean Jagger, Robert Carradine, Chill Wills and a decent supporting cast with money on the screen, this has aged oddly and I can see why it has been issued as a limited run Fox Cinema Archive DVD release. Lang alone is more than significant enough that this should be in print, but it didn't stick with me when I first saw it eons ago despite some good scenes and that hasn't changed much since. However, seeing nice guy and future TV star Young, still a big movie star here, is an amusing change from Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, M.D., et al.

There are no extras.

The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Divorce can obviously show the age of the materials used, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film, especially as this has so many sequences that look amazing for their age. Of course, Bow looks great throughout and any time I see a silent classic saved, there is always a special pleasure in that since so many have been lost for reasons too sad and numerous to go into here. Thus, expect some remarkable playback at times.

The 1080p 1.66 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image transfer on Wild is even better (not just because it is shot 34 years later) and I had not seen this one for a very long time. Monochrome film had come a long way in about 35 years and there were more companies making such stocks then (DuPont, Kodak, Agfa, Ansco/GAF, 3M Ferrania, etc.) so the competition furthered the progress of making them more light-sensitive. Sadly, color was starting to take over, but at the time of this release, such films were very commonplace and expected. This new 2K scan from the original 35mm negative offers detail and depth like nothing seen of the film in decades (save those with fine film prints) and Video Black, shadow detail and gray scale are very impressive all the way through.

The 1.33 X 1 image on the DVDs follow with the black & white Journey transfer a bit softer than expected all around, while Union is not what I had hoped for in a film that was originally issued in 35mm dye-transfer, three-strip Technicolor. It is simply that Fox wanted to have these in print until they could get to restoring them, which is often the case for such limited editions, but they are still both watchable.

The Blu-rays also have the best sound, if limited, both in PCM lossless sound. Divorce is a new stereo recording for the silent film that is good, but the PCM 2.0 Stereo can have a little of an edge to it, though still sounds better than the lossy PCM 2.0 Stereo on the DVD. Wild offers a remarkable PCM 1.0 Mono from its original optical soundmaster and is as clean as possible to the point that I doubt it could sound much better.

That leaves the lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on the Fox DVDs. Union sounds good for its age and ties the Divorce DVD sonics, but Journey is too far down a generation or two and is a disappointment as last place sonically among these releases.

- Nicholas Sheffo