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Griping the Light Fantastic

by Nick Zegarac

Once a year V.P in charge of DVD production Ned Price, and his colleagues at

Warner Home Video get together with to launch a ‘DVD

Decision’ contest that anyone who has access to the internet can participate in. But prior to that, and in conjunction with Home Theatre Review, they yearly generate an open dialogue for several hours on the net with anyone who loves films as they do. This sort of shopping their consumer base for suggestions is, to say the least, admirable. Not only does it allow Warner to better tailor its roster of pending projects to increase their overall profit, but it gives the average consumer a sense that he/she is in the driver’s seat. At least, that’s how it appears on the surface.

And although Warner Home Video continues, arguably to have its finger on the pulse of market research, what they have been giving the average consumer on DVD of late hasn’t exactly been as diverse an investment from their illustrious film catalogue as one would perhaps hope for. But to understand Warner Home Video’s DVD output today, it is perhaps prudent and ironic to first take a look at the MGM Studios of yesterday.

PAST IMPERFECT: Part One The Trouble with Movies as a Business…

Back in the early 1980s cable media mogul Ted Turner did a very blessed thing; he

briefly acquired the rights to MGM’s beleaguered studio that, for at least two decades

prior, had been the subject of a slow decline into entertainment oblivion. That slow fade

to black was made complete when Las Vegas financier, Kirk Kerkorian bought MGM in

totem in the late 1970s and then proceeded to dismember its illustrious history with all

the tact, concern and preservation savvy of a buzz saw cutting into a snow pea.

Kerkorian sold the back lot, populated by sets recapturing the essence of roughly

every conceivable architectural standpoint of the 20th century (including those from ‘The

Andy Hardy’ series, ‘Meet Me In St. Louis’) to housing developers. He bartered away

MGM’s prop and costume department to the highest bidder at a Sotherby’s auction.

Garbage bins were left brimming with discarded animation cells from classic Tom &

Jerry cartoons, conceivably because Kerkorian could see not immediate resale value in

them. Original sheet music with penciled notations by , Max Steiner,

Gershwin and others, scripts with annotations and hand written direction from Victor

Fleming, , , interoffice communications in the form of letters

and memos between Irving G. Thalberg and Louis B. Mayer and so on – gone forever.

All this ruthless pillaging was done in service to Kerkorian’s lavish Vegas casino

empire and his pending project of a hotel bearing the MGM logo and name. His issued

statement in 1976 that “MGM is a hotel company and a relatively insignificant producer

of motion pictures” was a bitter and tragic death knell to what had once been the most

profitable and vital film studio in all of Hollywood – responsible for at least half of our

cultural collective memories and with a roster of talent once boastfully declared as ‘more stars than there are in the heavens.’ Charlton Heston once said in an interview, “I know

Kirk. He’s a great guy. But making movies isn’t what he does. It’s not what he’s interested in.” This reviewer’s rebuttal to that quote is, “then why buy a movie studio and turn it into one’s personal garage sale?” Kerkorian’s pillaging effectively wiped MGM off the face of the map.

There is no MGM anymore. Although the lion periodically roars on the screen, it no longer has a production company behind it. It is merely a ‘Leo for rent’ – a catchy and resilient logo, easily one of the most identifiable trademarks in the history of film, that gets slapped for prestige sake onto many a contemporary and independent production.

The studio facility currently belongs to Sony Pictures and, thanks to a recent merger, so does the MGM library of post 60s films.

But back to Ted Turner; it is primarily because of his love for great movies that we and Warner Bros. today have the MGM library of classics in tact. Although Turner was much maligned for his insanity to colorize black and white movies (a move that rightly outraged film purists and the Hollywood community at large, so much that they filed a federal injunction to stop colorization from ruining cinema art), in Turner’s misguided zeal he did manage to nevertheless save approximately 2000 vintage movies from becoming part of Kerkorian’s pick n’ save. When Turner’s broadcasting empire was acquired by Time/AOL, and hence Warner Bros. Warner Home Video became the recipient of a rich cultural heritage dating all the way back to the dawning of motion pictures. This grand collection, coupled with Warner Bros. own body of filmic entertainment, and the acquisition of the old RKO/Selznick Studio libraries, has today made Warner Home Video the greatest archive of vintage American cinema in the world.

They are, to put it bluntly, the top.

PAST IMPERFECT: Part Two The Trouble With Movies As An Art…

Although the art of motion pictures is more than one hundred years old

Hollywood’s concerted effort to preserve its own heritage is less than twenty. Not until the late 1980s, when VCRs and movie channels began proliferating cable stations did studios realize their celluloid assets might have lives beyond a limited theatrical release. The lucrative binge of the late 1950s to rent, or in some cases sell off, whole chunks of film libraries had cooled by 1979, leaving the future of

Hollywood’s past in a state of utter and total deterioration. For executives, classic movies held little interest as anything more than teaching tools for universities or infrequent loan outs for late night television – neither particularly profitable. But by 1990 the cable, videocassette and Laser Disc revolutions, with their economic demands and rewards, had convinced studios of the prudence in preserving their own films.

Independent archives, once struggling for cash, simply to maintain their private – and often bootlegged - collections, now found studios eager to invest money and time in the preservation and reissue of its own art form…imagine that.

Depending on one’s viewpoint, this renewed interest can be described as either

“better late than never” or “too little, too late.” All early B&W movies were shot on nitrate film stock. Nitrate produces a gorgeous image, largely because it contains actual silver content. Unfortunately, that silver also makes nitrate highly unstable and flammable. After a rash of nitrate fires in film vaults in the late 1940s, studios began copying their stock onto acetate-based safety film or, in some cases, simply began pitching their collections into the trash. Nearly eighty percent of film history has thus gone the way of the Dodo. This is one reason why many films like ’s masterwork, Lost Horizon (1937) have no original camera negative from which future prints of the movie might be struck today. Worse still, the studio’s half hearted attempts in the 50s and 60s to maintain collections of their old Technicolor films by transferring them to acetate was discovered by the late 1980s to have developed a pronounced color fading known as vinegar syndrome decay. Color Reversal

Intermediate (CRI) stock that had earned Kodak Inc. an Academy Award for

Scientific and Technical Achievement in 1968 and had been touted as the protection element of the future was now widely being panned as the most unstable film ever developed.

There also has been considerable debate over how to restore older films, particularly when the filmmaker’s participation is no longer available. The vast majority of film preservation and restoration today is achieved with photochemical techniques. When such techniques fall short, digital processes are utilized. But it’s costly to say the least, $30,000-$35,000 just to start, and that’s to say nothing of the man hours it takes to digitally remove tears, rips and scratches that time has added as its own artifacts against the art form. One of the universal dangers in overseeing a film restoration is, as expert, Robert A. Harris has suggested is “foist(ing) your own aesthetic sensibilities onto the work of art. Films are works of art, but they're not our works of art, and we need to guard against the impulse to make something better than it was. Restoration shouldn't be about making an older film more modern and it

definitely shouldn't pander to the less demanding tastes of contemporary audiences

just for the sake of making it more accessible to them.” This opinion is shared by Fox

film archivist and preservation expert, Shawn Belston who adds, “You can never

really bring a film back to what it was originally. We don't have nitrate print stock

any longer, black-and-white film has changed many times over the years, color

intermediates have changed, and print stocks have changed. All you can do is use the

gauge of today and do the best you possibly can.”

WARNER HOME VIDEO: Gatekeepers of the World of Entertainment

This may be an arguable point, but I will venture a guess that few stand in greater

admiration of the restoration and preservation work done by Warner Home Video since

1997 than yours truly. Under Ned Price, Chris Cookson and Rob Hummel, among others,

the studio has really gone to town on its vintage films – releasing box sets and singles

that, at least for the most part, stand head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. But,

in this same breath of conciliatory praise I will step out onto a creative ledge and state

that Warner has slipped in this reviewer’s once sterling assessment and appraisal of their

commitments to DVD.

Restoration is costly – yes. But there’s simply no good reason to release movies which,

for the most part, look terrible, on DVD. In this latter category there have been quite a

few misfires from Warner ever since the studio decided to step up its release roster.

Perhaps the worst among these most recent examples are the Lassie and Tarzan films. There have been other awful looking color and black and white transfers as well:

Gaslight (with its easily removable edge enhancement), (with an

extremely scratchy, and somewhat grainy looking print), Grand Hotel (an excessively grainy transfer), The of Elizabeth & Essex, and, Dodge City (with their mis-registered Technicolor negatives delivering very blurry and distracting image quality), and, The Barkley’s of Broadway, and, (with their contrast levels bumped up either too high or dropped too low). In all cases, film grain has been present in varying degrees. And while many film purists will suggest that film is an organic substance, ergo grain is inevitable and, more to the point, acceptable, this reviewer would remind said purist that what is desirable on the big screen shows rather poorly when presented on the small screen in one’s living room. Coupled with television’s general inability to handle grain as anything but a very shimmering and wobbly mess, today’s home theater buff would probably prefer a smooth looking transfer more closely rendered to video than to film.

In the past, Warner has proven it can do smooth when it wants to. Their DVD transfers of The Shop Around The Corner, , Mildred Pierce, The Thin Man,

Casablanca, – among others - are visions of loveliness that the

studio can be proud of. My point is that these pristine efforts are more and more falling

by the waste side in favor of some quickie releases with minimal restoration applied.

It may seem as though I’m picking on Warner Home Video particularly and

needlessly. If that’s the general opinion, I reserve the right to state that Warner has

proven that its commitment to DVD afficianados can be better than what it currently is. They, themselves, are responsible for raising that bar high, and I believe this standard

now obligates them to maintain their initial level of consistency.

Some films need more work than others – I’ll buy that. So, instead of releasing 70

classics a year, release 50, but make them all sparkle like vintage champagne. Aside:

there may be some discrepancy in the level of quality between discs that were originally

manufactured for Warner by the independent company – WAMO – and the current discs

that are done in-house at the studio and stamped out by DVE, though I have no proof to

back up this speculation. I also have no proof that Warner is currently involved in a sort

of bate and switch policy on their classic film output, whereby they release box sets in which only half of the films included in them have been the recipients of a general clean up while others are simply slapped out in whatever quality they currently exist in to act as filler for the asking price of $59-$79 a box. Though I have no definitive proof – I believe, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the box.

Take, for example, the Collection. Though Love Me Or Leave Me, Billy

Rose’s Jumbo and Young Man With A Horn exhibit exemplary image quality, and

Lullaby of Broadway isn’t too far behind (with the exception of some minor

Technicolor mis-registration) Please Don’t Eat The Daisies, and, The Glass Bottom

Boat are rather inconsistently rendered, with muddy colors, a barrage of age related

artifacts and seemingly little restoration work done to merit their inclusion in what is

supposed to be a definitive box of Ms. Day’s work. There is also a minor bone of

contention on this reviewer’s part in featuring a box set without Ms. Day’s very first film,

Romance on the High Seas conspicuously absent and in which Doris warbles the Oscar winning ‘It’s Magic.’ Remember that Warner’s Classic Comedy Collection gave us very handsome prints of

Dinner At Eight, The Philadelphia Story and Stage Door. Yet, Bringing Up Baby

was uncharacteristically soft looking and was a complete mess. Although

the contrast was lower than one would have liked, the image quality on To Be Or Not To

Be was also below par.

In the case of Warner’s Controversial Classics box set, passable transfers on

Blackboard Jungle, Bad Day At Black Rock and A Face in the Crowd were married

to grainy and scratchy prints of Fury and I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Their

Errol Flynn box had fairly impressive offerings in The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood and

They Died With Their Boots On, but gave us miserably mis-registered prints of The

Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and Dodge City. And, while The box

set reported to offer consumers a completely restored and remastered disc of Dark

Victory – the overall improvement in image quality was marginal at best, with scratches,

grain and other age related artifacts still present and coupled with an overall soft looking

image that occasionally wobbled or jittered from side to side. That same box set also gave

us one of Davis’ least memorable programmers, The Star in a truly disappointing B&W

transfer that was weak on all points of image quality.

In its latest offering, Astaire & Rogers Collection: Volume 1, the consumer gets

very nice transfers of Top Hat and Swing Time, but rather disappointing image quality

on (too grainy), Shall We Dance (poorly contrasted) and The

Barkley’s of Broadway (low contrast levels and pasty colors). This latter title illustrates

the limited foresight of Warner’s current commitment to classics on DVD of late. In the

earlier released That’s Entertainment! Box Set, the third installment in that series featured a completely cleaned up image of the main title sequence to Barkley’s that could have been easily lifted and reinserted into the Astaire/Rogers transfer. Instead, the

Barkley’s main title is so near a black background and full of muddy colors that it does not capture the essence of true Technicolor or the terpsichorean talents of its artists.

Similarly, Warner’s second volume of Film Noir delivers the RKO classic, Crossfire in an absolutely dismal image quality that exhibits dirt, grain, scratches, and in one gross case, a gigantic tear running down the middle of the screen. That box also brings me to my second bone of contention with Warner’s most recent roster of releases; their seemingly growing inconsistency in putting the right films in the right box set. For example: Film Noir Vol. Two contains Dillinger, a crime/gangster/detective thriller that is not part of the film noir canon. The Collection box contains two previously issued single discs; Mildred Pierce and The Women, but the latter has had its original back cover art altered in favor of an image lifted off of a completely different movie. In general too, The Women is much more a film vehicle or ensemble piece than a Crawford classic.

The danger herein is that an unassuming consumer will naturally think that some of the films debated in this review will have simply faired better than others and accept the lack of quality as par for the age of the elements. This acceptance of ‘oh well, it’s an old movie, its going to look bad’ is, at least in general, false. In the final analysis I suspect that what happens most of the time in the backrooms of executive studio logic behind these shoddy transfers is reasoned away by a film’s overall popularity; ergo, the studio already knows that certain classic films will sell on the merit of title alone. Ergo Astaire and Rogers will fly off the shelves because they’ve been absent for quite some time on home video and never released to DVD.

But I remain at a loss to explain Warner’s about face, up and down philosophy on quality in general. Grand Hotel looks awful – excessively grainy, poorly contrasted and decidedly unstable in its tonality and black levels; hardly up to the level of expectation for an all-star Oscar-winning Best Picture. If we were speaking of unfamiliar or obscure titles in film history then perhaps this oversight would not be so egregious. But even today Grand Hotel has a large following, but, more to the point, a decided place of importance inside the history of American cinema in totem (It was the first time ever that more than one star personage was inserted into a production). Hence, it simply does not make good historical sense to commercially release Grand Hotel in its present deplorable condition - unless, of course, the executive studio philosophy is to go back and redo it at some later date, thereby making the DVD consumer re-buy its product.

Considering how rapidly films are deteriorating, this reviewer’s frame of mind is that time is of the essence, but, more to the point, that there is NO TIME like THE

PRESENT.

Finally, Warner is presently and feverishly working on restoration efforts on three previously available Bogart titles: Key Largo, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon.

And, while these revisions may indeed be applauded, it behooves this reviewer to state that while we are being inundated with multiple copies of certain films on DVD other major and important works have yet to see the light even once. Perhaps more consideration should be placed on getting as much of film history out there to the consumer as possible, rather than simply re-issuing what is already available in repackaged and with more, or in some cases, simply different extras. Films that fall into this ‘missing in action’ category may surprise you. In Warner Bros. case they ostensibly include: David O. Selznick’s version of The Prisoner of Zenda,

Babes in Arms, , , , Boom

Town, Captain’s Courageous, Red Dust, Rosalie, May Time, Rose Marie, Kings

Row, Journey for Margaret, Wife Vs. Secretary, Saratoga, The Merry Widow

(1934), Marie Antoinette, , , Viva Villa!,

Treasure Island, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, Broadway Melody of

1936, Naughty Marietta, China Seas, San Francisco, Reckless, Boys Town, The

Great Waltz, Idiots Delight, Pride and Prejudice, Waterloo Bridge, The Clock,

When Ladies Meet, Keeper of the Flame, A Guy Named Joe, , On

An Island with You, This Time for Keeps, Girl Crazy, Best Foot Forward, Lost

Angel, The Three Musketeers, Cabin in the Sky, I Dood It, Mrs. Parkington, Kismet

(1944 Ronald Colman version), The Picture of Dorian Gray, , Our

Vines Have Tender Grapes, Words & Music, The Pirate, Black Hand, Madame

Bovary, That Midnight Kiss, , & , Julius Caesar,

Luxury Liner, Quo Vadis, The Magnificent Ambersons, That Forsythe Woman, The

Belle of New York, , I Love Melvin, Lovely to Look At, Small

Town Girl, Marjorie Morningstar, Easy to Love, Latin Lovers, The Glass Slipper,

Lili, Executive Suite, Hit The Deck, The Swan, Invitation to the Dance, The V.I.Ps,

The Yellow Rolls Royce, Yolanda & the Thief, The Barretts of Wimpole Street,

Summer Stock, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, Born To Dance, , Gold

Diggers of 1933, The Telegraph Trail, , Dames, Gold Diggers of

1935, Anthony Adverse, The Charge of the Light Brigade, Gentleman Jim, The Sisters, Juarez, The Old Maid, The Desert Song, The Male Animal, Watch on the

Rhine, Reunion in France, The Human Comedy, , Christmas in

Connecticut, Deception, The Two Mrs. Carols, Life With Father, Romance on the

High Seas, Flamingo Road, The Foutainhead, Dream Wife, Big Jim McLain, A

Woman’s Face, , , Meet John Doe, Royal

Wedding, Topper and The Nun’s Story. Indeed then, it seems as though there is NO

TIME LIKE THE PRESENT.