Merry-Go-Round
(1923/Flicker Alley Blu-ray)/Springfield
Rifle
(1952/Warner Archive Blu-ray)/Tom
Tyler Silent Film Collection: Law Of The Plains
+ Man
From Nevada
(both 1929/Undercrank Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B/B/B Sound: B-/C+/C+/C+ Extras: B/C/C- Films:
B-/C+/B- & C+
PLEASE
NOTE:
The Springfield
Rifle
Blu-ray is now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner
Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.
Now
for three remarkable silent gems and the kind of sound film that
continued and finished what such films started...
Merry-Go-Round
(1923) is an impressive, ambitious reconstruction of yet another lost
film of one of the greatest directors of all time, Erich
von Stroheim, except he was fired by Universal after several weeks of
production, so their great journeyman filmmaker Rupert Julian (the
original Phantom
Of The Opera)
took over and
the result was still a huge hit.
In
it, a man of some means (Norman Kelly as a Count yet!) pretends to be
a necktie salesman (of all things) and unexpectedly falls in love
with the daughter (Mary Philbin) of a puppeteer (Cesare Gravina) at
the traveling circus. Too bad he going to marry a Countess (Dorothy
Wallace)!
Now
why he would do this is the part that needs to be most convincing for
the audience to suspend disbelief and buy the film and the screenplay
just gets by that one, but it is also how well it is shot and edited,
the casting is a plus, the energy and flow work and when it ended, I
could see why it was such a hit. The tale never becomes a love
triangle, though it could have and though it is not a totally
Stroheim film, his mark is on here
and Julian could still hold his own as a very professional filmmaker
and one of the best on the Universal lot at the time. Maude George
lead the rest of the cast and now saved, this is a must-see for all
serious movie fans and has some fine moments you'll love.
Extras
include:
Old
Heidelberg
(1915): A new restoration of a feature from director John Emerson
and producer D.W. Griffith, which served as an influence on
Merry-Go-Round
and also boasts Erich von Stroheim's very first acting role.
Vienna
Actualities:
Explore Vienna in the years before World War I with 17 minutes of
historical footage, courtesy of Filmarchiv Austria
Restoring
Merry-Go-Round:
Go behind the scenes of the brand-new restoration with film restorer
Serge Bromberg
Feature
Length Audio Commentary by Richard Kosarski: Go behind the scenes of
the troubled production and explore Merry-Go-Round's
incredible filmic legacy with an in-depth commentary track from
cinematic historian Richard Kosarski
and
a Souvenir Booklet featuring a new essay on the production by
Richard Kosarski and notes on the restoration by Serge Bromberg and
Lucie Fourmont.
Movie
fans have been waiting for all kinds of Warner catalog classics
(which also includes RKO and most MGM titles) to get reissued after
years (or longer) of only being available on DVD and Springfield
Rifle
(1952) has finally arrived. As I said when I covered it in the Gary
Cooper Signature Collection DVD set, it ''...is an even more explicit
Revenge Western as has the gutsy Andre de Toth directing a script
co-written by the creator of the radio hit Gunsmoke
except that The Civil War is not over yet. Cooper plays an Army man
infiltrating the Confederacy so he can find out who is stealing
horses. This slowly builds into a battle that might even alter the
course of the war... it is a smaller scale A-Western that holds up in
mixed ways.''
So
to some, the title may sound simple or like a B-movie, but when
considered for the time period it takes place, it is about how a
single weapon can change the course of history (with echoes of atomic
weapons in any post-WWII film) and in an era where a new gadget or
drug can be a hit and change lives, it is easy to miss how the film
was trying to make its point back in the day. It does enough and
though I think the film is uneven, it is ambitious and is one of
those dramas that picks up the somber tone of similar silent films
before it. Stoic? Maybe too, but this was an ambitious production
and now restored so well, you can enjoy that aspect more than ever.
Extras
include an Original Theatrical Trailer, the great classic warner
animated cartoon shorts Feed
The Kitty
and Rabbit's
Kin
(both in HD, but with lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono sound) and Joe
McDoakes
Short (in standard definition) So
You Want To Enjoy Life.
Tom
Tyler was a major action actor who broke ground in the genre work he
did without even totally knowing it, a star who easily made the
transition to sound films and appeared as the leads in two of the
most important of all serials, The
Phantom
(1943, the first superhero to appear in a comic strip, decades before
the well-liked Billy Zane remake) and The
Adventures Of Captain Marvel
(1941, the original name of Shazam! and considered the greatest
action serial and superhero serial ever made; both reviewed elsewhere
on this site.) He also appeared in some classics (the original
silent 1925 Ben-Hur,
original Stagecoach,
Gone
With The Wind,
the Gene Kelly Three
Musketeers,)
some interesting westerns.
Tom
Tyler Silent Film Collection
features two early western silent films directed by J.P. McGowan: Law
Of The Plains
and Man
From Nevada
(both 1929,) miraculously saved and preserved after a century. In
Plains
(45 strong minutes) he plays a man who has to save a family from
having their property/home taken by criminals, while in Nevada
(36 minutes) has our hero avenging his father's death against his
killers who also are trying to steal home and land, plus the director
plays one of the villains!
The
camera liked Tyler and he was one of the best actors you could cast
for these films, an athlete and weightlifter when it was not as
common and he always played well for the camera. A big star in his
time, she should have been even bigger, but it is now about him being
rediscovered and having his early nearly-lost films and other works
being restored and reissued (like those superhero serials, et al) and
I think fans will really enjoy it all. Even if you don't like
westerns, these films are definitely worth a look, small gems of
silent cinema alone being enough of a reason to see them. All
serious film fans should!
The
only extra is a 4-minute Life
In Pictures
gallery on Tyler, a major leading man too forgotten, despite some
very key work for the career he had.
Now
for playback performance. The 1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white
digital High Definition image transfer on Merry-Go-Round
can show the age of the materials used because the sources are rare,
very, varied and in all kinds of conditions and film formats (35mm,
16mm), so much work had to be done to save the film and get a
complete version (finally) after many decades of not being available
in a complete version. With some tinting and toning here and there,
some damage was not fixable, but it can look anywhere from a little
off to amazing. The featurette explains more, but the work is
amazing and the new PCM 2.0 Stereo score is not bad and has the best
sound of all the discs, though it could be a little forward and very
slightly bright. Otherwise, the film speaks for itself and is a its
at least a minor classic.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Springfield
Rifle
can sometimes show the age of the materials used, but this new 4K
scan of the original 35mm camera negative is a huge jump over the
older DVD release with some fine, solid 'WarnerColor' (Warner's own
lab handling Eastman Kodak 35mm color negative) and the color here
overall is better than even I expected. They did their job well here
and we're lucky the negative held up so well. The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 2.0 Mono lossless mix odes improve over the
lossy DVD sound from years ago, but it also shows some sonic limits
from the original optical monophonic theatrical sound. This is as
good as this film will ever sound and melds with the solid image well
enough.
The
1080p 1.33 X 1 black & white digital High Definition image
transfers on the Tom
Tyler
films look remarkable well for their age, the restorations impressive
and original elements hold up better than expected. Plains
is monochrome, while Nevada
is tinted for the most part, but they are both a pleasure to watch
and only occasionally showing their age. The
lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo mixes for the new Ben Model music
scores are fine as usual, but I wish they were lossless like his
impressive score for The
Bat
(1926, reviewed elsewhere on this site and highly recommended) but
they are still clear enough.
To
order the Warner Archive Springfield
Rifle
Blu-ray,
go to this link for it and many more great web-exclusive
releases at:
https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/ED270804-095F-449B-9B69-6CEE46A0B2BF?ingress=0&visitId=6171710b-08c8-4829-803d-d8b922581c55&tag=blurayforum-20
-
Nicholas Sheffo
