Alexander’s Ragtime Band
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: C+
I have always had mixed feelings about mixing World Wars
and Musicals, so a Backstage Musical like Henry King’s Alexander’s Ragtime
Band, with its Broadway roots and solid star cast holds up well in this new
DVD featuring Fox’s restored copy of the film.
The Irving Berlin songs are occurrently classics, but not always great,
while the narrative is too choppy in the face of the formula scripting. The cast, including Alice Faye, Tyrone
Power, Don Ameche, Jack Haley, and cameo by then lesser-known John Carradine
add up to a solid cast, but all are blown away by an early stunner of a
performance by Ethel Merman as a big band singer in remarkable form. She would not fare quite as well a few
decades later in There’s No Business Like Show Business, but her role
allows her to show off her talents at her best here and the rest of the film
seems dull or awkward by comparison.
Now this is a Musical classic to many and deservedly so,
but despite the fact that the production values and craftsmanship endure, it
otherwise adds up to more of a time capsule than a feature film. If the sillier parts of the plot had been
made better, the War segments would not seem as trivial. It is a major part of Musical and Fox
history as well, so many will disagree with me, but I can live with that.
The 1.33 X 1 full frame black & white is good, crisp
and for the most part, clear for a film its age, but the vertical scratch that
goes through much of the film on the left hand side is annoying. In the future, there has to be a way to fix
that, but the restoration is decent despite that, doing enough justice to the
cinematography of Peverell Marley, A.S.C. and the crisp monochrome look
intended. This includes the sound,
which is here is Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo and Mono. It turns out the songs were recorded on three separate 35mm
magnetic mono tracks, then mixed down.
This is not to say those tracks existed, but are the way they balanced
problems with the sound going out of control and becoming distorted, a very
easy thing in the early days. If they
did exist, Fox could have potentially done at least a Dolby 3.0 mix, if not 4.0
or 5.1, but this is 2.0 Stereo and we are lucky we get that. It is better than the Mono, but purists will
probably prefer the latter. Alfred
Newman pulled all the music together.
Extras include two trailers for other Fox Classics DVDs,
the original theatrical trailer for this film, a stills gallery, a Fox
Movietone reel on the film’s London premiere, the A&E Network Biography
installment on Alice Faye, three deleted scenes that are all musical numbers
NOT reinserted into the original film, and an audio commentary track. The audio commentary is by restorationist
and film historian Ray Faiola, but is not all the way though the film, nor does
it discuss the fixing of the film itself enough. Stopping for songs is most unnecessary, as we could play the
actual film score if we wanted to hear that, and it is no de facto isolated
music track my any means. His talk is
mostly about the history, not the technology and restoration of the film, which
is too bad. That could have fit in the
music segments. All in all, a fine
single special edition for an early key Fox “soundie”.
- Nicholas Sheffo
