Motion Picture Masterpieces (Warner Bros./literary adaptations)

 

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

 

 

Wanting to be respectable, the studios in the Classical Hollywood era wanted their films to be book-like.  Credits would look like the finer printed pages, the scripts would be readerly with the beginning, middle and end in that order and adapting classic books was the most explicit expression of that desire.  Big productions would follow with Academy Award expectations, as well as hoped-for hits, but the problem was that they would often chop up the classics to make them more commercial, creating the ugly myth that books were always better than books, which you needed to read to appreciate the films made.

 

Now we know better, but that ignorance continues.  No such evaluation or hard look at such films are included in any of the five DVDs in the new Warner Bros. box set dubbed Motion Picture Masterpieces, but the five films are from famous books and histories.

 

David Copperfield offers a massive cast that includes W.C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O’Sullivan, Edna May Oliver, Freddie Bartholomew, Basil Rathbone and Elsa Lanchester among the big names, but it is also especially distinguished by being produced by David O. Selznick and directed by the great George Cukor.  This is actually one of the better adaptations of the book, though we have already looked at some British TV versions with mixed results.  Adding stars often was a way of coating over the rawness of Dickens’ work, but this still works better than you’d think for a film from 1935 and MGM backed it fully.

 

Marie Antoinette will have new interest thanks to the Sofia Coppola film that has the naturalism of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon or Milos Forman’s Amadeus, but W.S. Van Dyke II’s direction is not bad here as Norma Shearer takes on the title role.  Sure, this looks hokey at times, but this was a big 1938 production for MGM and with a cast that included Tyrone Power, John Barrymore and Robert Morley, it is the kind of film that has its moments, though it is not perfect and based partly on a book on Marie by Stefan Zweig.  Shearer was at her peak and it is better than expected.  Some even like it more than the Coppola film.

 

Pride & Prejudice is a Jane Austen adaptation before the recent cycle of particularly sickening ones, though Emma Thompson did the recent version with some degree of artistic success, with Greer Garson at her peak and Laurence Olivier at her side.  Edna May Oliver, Maureen O’Sullivan and Ann Rutherford co-star in the MGM production handled by their journeyman Director Robert Z. Leonard.  It may show its age for a film from 1940, but at least it is not pretentious and annoying like the many recent Austen films.

 

Treasure Island has Victor Fleming juggling Wallace Berry, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Otto Kruger and Nigel Bruce in the MGM adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic.  Immediately, there is new interest thanks to the Pirates Of The Caribbean films, but is much better despite being all the way from 1934.  This is well-acted, takes the book seriously and helped build these kinds of stories as films to begin with.  Later adaptations have not been as successful and it was an early sound triumph for the studio.

 

A Tale Of Two Cities is the other Dickens film here, with Ronald Colman, Basil Rathbone, Reginald Owen and (yes, again!) Edna May Oliver as produced by David O. Selznick again.  Made also in 1935 at MGM, it proved early on the Selznick would be one of Classical Hollywood’s super-producers and is again more faithful to the book than expected.

 

The result is a fine set of films that may not have been the deepest explorations of their material, but certainly impressive productions that honored their material more faithfully than many “art film” and TV attempts that fell on their faces.  There is something to be said about getting to the point, especially when younger audiences have enough trouble understanding and appreciating literature as is.

 

The 1.33 X 1 black and white image for each of the films look good for their age, proving once again that Ted Turner’s early restoration/preservation efforts are reaping benefits for fans.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on all films show their age, but none are badly over-compressed as some 1.0 Mono tracks have been known to be.  I am so glad Warner is beginning to abandon 1.0 and we should all hope Criterion gets the hint and does the same soon.  Extras trailers for each film on their respective disc and random live action and animated shots form the Turner/Warner catalog on each.  Cities has a radio adaptation promotion the film, while Copperfield has an MGM promo for radio audiences and that film.  Overall, an interesting set.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo