Back To 1942 (2012/Well Go USA
Blu-ray)/Dawn Patrol (1930 aka Flight Commander/First National/Warner
Archive DVD)/The Great Escape
(1963/MGM Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/C/B Sound: B/C+/B Extras: C-/D/B Film: B-/B-/B
PLEASE NOTE: Dawn Patrol is only available from Warner Bros. through their
Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Here are
three war genre releases worth catching and if you have seen the older
releases, seeing again.
Our new
entry is Feng Xiaogang’s Back To 1942
(2012), yet another entry in a cycle of Chinese epics showing how Imperialist
Japan wrecked havoc on China and much more in a really ambitious attempt to go
into more detail about how the Chinese Government of the time allowed large
groups of its people suffer a famine (a combination of weather and locusts, if
you can imagine that) and total vulnerability to Axis attack (especially
Japanese flyers) and how a village of people left their home to escape. Unfortunately, it was a horrific ordeal.
With China
still a closed society, Time Magazine photojournalist Theodore Harold White
(the underrated Adrien Brody) is there recording the events, not knowing how
the government there is holding up doing anything about it due to other
interests. He becomes a target in all
kinds of ways, even when a priest (Tim Robbins) tries to help him out. The film has one of the most complex takes on
the WWII situation for the country I have seen out of several epic entries in
this cycle and even when it overlaps other such films or covers familiar
events, I was impressed by the subtle energy that kept the film going.
It may
run 151 minutes, but it never feels that long, has some great performances all
around and is more thorough than most WWII films since Thin Red Line and Saving
Private Ryan have been on the subject, even if it is not quite able to
overtake those films. It also shows that
the new big budget Chinese cinema is more able-bodied on its own than it might
get credit for and goes beyond the capacity to merely co-produce the likes of
an Iron Man 3. This is a film worth seeing once, especially
uninterrupted and worth going out of your way for, especially if you liked the
other such WWII films.
An
Original Theatrical Trailer is the only extra.
Our
oldest entry is a still-effective WWI (yes, World War One) drama, Howard Hawks’
Dawn Patrol (1930), a very effective
airplane drama about the British Air Force that was his first sound film (his
1932 Scarface was soon to follow!)
as The Great War (as it was ironically known) required men to risk their lives
in aerial dog fights and this meant death was imminent for many on both
sides. As other WWI films remind us,
this has moments where the enemy fliers even associate with each other as if
there was a gentleman’s code, but that “grand illusion” was soon to be
shattered.
A very
young Hamilton Camp, known 35 years later as Commissioner Gordon on the Adam
West Batman, plays the leader of the
group, Major Brand. A good guy, he is
also tough and no nonsense (much as Camp is supposed to have been in real life)
and faces the tough choices of who to send, then has to deal with the guilt and
pain of who does not make it back. He is
not the only one and there is a good share of alcohol used in the film, so AA
members should skip this one.
Richard
Barthelmess and a young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. are the leads and this was
actually a big commercial and critically major production for First National
Pictures before (or as) Warner Bros. bought them out. They were actually the bigger studio before
that happened and that is why they are able to mount such a wide-scaling
production for the time. The aerial
sequences may have some fake-looking moments by today’s visual effects
standards, but many other things about them including the use of real planes,
also gives them a weight that impresses more than just about all cases of CGI
today.
Best of
all, the editing, form and impact of the various flying sequences have a
distinction that anyone who is an action film fan alone will be surprised by,
looking less dated than just about any such pre-WWII film with the same
sequences and up there with the better WWII films with the same. Add the fine acting and screenplay that is
always haunted by the mortality of war and Dawn
Patrol turns out to be an enduring, more than competent filmmaking gem that
deserves serious rediscovery 83 years later and counting. It sure does not play as that old, thanks in
part to its heavy energy that keeps moving.
There are
no extras, though a flashier remake happened in 1938 with Errol Flynn that
we’ll have to see sometime down the line.
Finally
we have the new Blu-ray upgrade of John Sturges’ classic WWII thriller The Great Escape (1963) and the film
has aged well, including when we last looked at it. A big epic action film like the ones
Hollywood used to make when they cared all the time and actually had people at
the studios who loved movies and knew how to make them, there are profound
aspects of the film that still go over viewer’s heads and keeps people talking
about the film.
Extras
repeat the Special Edition DVD set
MGM issued (save stills and text trivia track) we covered years ago at this
link, where you can read all about the film save the technical aspects later in
this text below:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1148/Great+Escape+-+Special+Edition+(MG
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on 1942 has some nice shots, but it also has all kinds of digital
work. Fortunately, it was shot in the
Super 35mm film format on Kodak Vision 3 stocks, so it has some nice visual
moments despite the styling down and some obvious digital work (plus decolorizing
the shots slightly) holding the performance back.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 AVC @ 18 MBPS digital High Definition image transfer on Great Escape is superior to the
previous upgraded DVD edition in most ways, but for some reason, it has two
qualities that are holding the image back.
First, there is a slight overcast throughout the film so when it is
daylight, it is never totally so and though the difference in not huge, it is a
shade darker than it should be as if the earth’s sun was dying a little
bit. That leads to issue two, the color
range. In part because of the overcast
issue, the color is not the full range you would get from a DeLuxe color film
print and I have seen the film enough over the years opt know what it looks
like. There are also issues with the age
of the print itself, so some more work needs to be done on this film down the
line.
Maybe it
is a slight issue with the downtrade from the new HD master to this Blu-ray,
but it is an issue. We have heard that
Sturges actually shot this in 2.55 X 1 (or so) so he could crop it to 2.35 X 1
any way he wanted to. That could be
true, but even with these transfer issues, it is meant to be seen on the
biggest screen possible and now more than ever.
However, the older DVD set thus has some color and light that is more
accurate.
The 1.33
X 1 black and white image on Dawn Patrol
can show the age of the film materials used, but some of it is shot a bit soft
and other parts are just from a film that needs some restoration work. This is the best it has looked in a long time
just the same.
The DTS-HD
MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes on the Blu-rays are fine in their won ways
with 1942 being the slight sonic
champ with a consistent soundfield, warm mix and only slight issues with
dialogue mixing and recording. LFE .1 bass
is not overdone and recording otherwise is pretty good. Great
Escape was originally a 4-track magnetic stereo release, upgraded to 5.1
for the DVD years ago, this new mix still has some of the sound towards the
front speakers, but this was a film originally designed with traveling dialogue
and sound effects in mind and as part of its mix, so that is to be
expected. It is the Elmer Bernstein
score that puts this one past its original mix limits, using the sounds like
the original stereo music masters and the result is a nice soundfield that
makes the film sound newer than it is without betraying the original mix
intent.
The lossy
Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on Dawn Patrol
has background noise that shows the film needs its audio cleaned up, though
some of the sound issues are inherent to the original recording and
mixing. Be careful of volume switching
and you’ll be fine playing it back.
To order Dawn Patrol, go to this link for it and
many more great web-exclusive releases at:
http://www.warnerarchive.com/
-
Nicholas Sheffo
