Two of the most-desired titles by film fanatics everywhere finally become available on DVD this week, but you'd be forgiven for not realizing it.
Anthony Mann's essential end-of-an-era Western Man Of The West and Vincente Minnelli's lurid, candy-colored noir Some Came Running are among the finest work of their respective directors, and two of the best films of the 1950s. Man receives the kind of bare-bones issue MGM's home entertainment division seems to specialize in these days, a token release likely only available frpm specialty shops and online retailers. Running's treatment is a little better, being part of a heavily-hyped Frank Sinatra box set released by Warner Home Video.
But that set, including as it does mediocrities like Marriage On The Rocks and None But The Brave, hardly showcases Running to its best advantage. Ever since the splendid double-disc issues of Meet Me In St. Louis and The Band Wagon a few years ago, Minnelli's films, when they finally see the digital light of day, have been folded into similar box sets, The Pirate and Kismet forced to share space with lesser musicals, The Long, Long Trailer issued only as part of a Lucille Ball set.
Minnelli spent almost his entire career at MGM; why not a box dedicated solely to his work, giving it the context these releases lack? Sure, that seems like it would be a rather specialized release--does the general public even know from Minnelli?--but other labels have devoted specialized releases dedicated to John Ford, Mario Bava, Sergio Leone, hell, even Lucio Fulci. Doesn't Minnelli deserve the same respect?
A similar retrospective of Anthony Mann's best work would be difficult, since he worked for so many different studios. Still, surely a film as highly regarded as Man Of The West deserved some kind of annotation for its DVD debut. A commentary track, at least (I'd have given the job to Jim Kitses, whose chapter on Mann in his book Horizons West is pretty much definitive), to put the film in perspective, to note how it prefigures the style and themes of Sam Peckinpah, to explain its profound influence on the Italian Westerns of the next decade. But no, nothing, not even a lousy trailer.
Yeah, I should be grateful to even have these titles available, and believe me, I am. Yet there was a time, just two or three years ago, when the owners of these titles may have actually been willing to spring for the extra effort these films deserve. Now, they're just burning off their catalogs on what they believe is a dying format. If the studios truly intend to put their faith on hi-def formats in the future, they're unlikely to waste their time with older titles that won't look much better when upgraded, and a glorious cinematic past will be forgotten.
