New on DVD today. Hopefully, you can actually find these...
The Literary Classics Collection: Ordinarily, when a studio clears out its vaults and releases a bunch of movies together under a vague umbrella title, the results are frustrating. (A prime example would be last year's Great Musicals from The Dream Factory collection, which ran from the sublime It's Always Fair Weather to the dreadful Till The Clouds Roll By) In this case, Warner Home Video has released a treasure trove of movies from the vaults that are all worthwhile, from a dual disc of the '37 and '52 versions of The Prisoner Of Zenda to the underrated swashbuckler Captain Horatio Hornblower (Gregory Peck as an Englishman fights Christopher Lee as a Spaniard!) to Peter Usinov's devastating take on Herman Mellville's Billy Budd.
For me, the highlights--and they're both available individually--would be MGM's gorgeous Technicolor adaptation of The Three Musketeers, which makes it clear Gene Kelly could have been a great action hero if he hadn't had so many other things to do, and, because even I am aware that I tend to go on at great lengths about the greatness of Vincente Minnelli, let me just point out his peerless version of Madame Bovary is now available on DVD, and this simple fact answers the prayers of cultists everywhere.
Shifting gears completely, also available today is 1978's The Manitou, the final film from low-rent auteur William Girdler. This is a movie that starts out as a sort of vague Exorcist rip-off, then gets weirder and weirder. Not good--God, no--but entertaining if you're drunk, and it proves that even while playing a blowsy broad, Stella Stevens was still hot.
Finally, the Disney Empire gives us the umpteenth reissue of their 1953 classic Peter Pan. This is minor Disney, perhaps, compared to their groundbreaking classics of the thirties and early forties, but it's well-suited to the studio's house style (unlike, say, Alice In Wonderland), is well paced and effortlessly entertaining.
The main delight in the film these days, of course, is the simple pleasure of watching clear, uncluttered staging, and most importantly, hand drawn visuals. Character animation--that is, the distillation of a character's essence by their movements and mannerisms--is largely a lost art these days, and Peter Pan is a feast, particularly Captain Hook, largely animated by Frank Thomas, who can go from buffoon to terrifying villain without us questioning it. Thomas, along with the directors and storymen, conceived of Hook as a character, not simply as a device upon which to hang cheap laughs or stock thrills.
In other words, the makers of Peter Pan cared about what they were doing, and never felt like they were cranking out product for profit. This is largely unheard of today, when most American kiddie pics are full of loathing for their intended audience, and it makes it well worth seeing, no matter your age. It may not be Great Art, but it is a good story well told, and that's always a good thing.
