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Category:    Home > Reviews > Musical > Alexander's Ragtime Band

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


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