Video Dispatches is a regular column covering recent home video releases.
There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) – Kino Lorber
Though predominantly known for his lush technicolor melodramas, Douglas Sirk did magnificent black and white work throughout his career, including two late-period Barbara Stanwyck films Kino Lorber is releasing concurrently, All I Desire and There’s Always Tomorrow. Though I only had a chance to review There’s Always Tomorrow, I will say that both are equally great films that showcase Sirk’s incredible compositional acumen.
Both films also involve a character (played by Stanwyck) coming to town and, in effect, causing disruption. Here, a woman who chose a career in New York City over settling down runs into her former lover (played by Fred MacMurray), who feels sidelined by his own family and by domesticity, more generally.
The film gently and powerfully depicts the idea of being stuck in a rut or never having a rut to be stuck in and the potential heartbreak of both. Sirk’s understanding of these situations keeps him from judging anyone involved and lets their impulses lie in ambiguity. MacMurray is great, but Stanwyck really steals the show, and she subtly reveals deep layers of sorrow.
Samm Deighan has a commentary track on the disc, and she is quickly becoming my favorite contributor to these. She’s always informed, of course, but has a genuine interest and conversational tone that comes naturally and keeps her from sounding didactic or pretentious. Here, what she offers, on the gender politics and the unusual ground Sirk covers within them, is terrific stuff.
An Ideal Place to Kill (1971) – Mondo Macabro
Umberto Lenzi’s An Ideal Place to Kill, also known to some as Oasis of Fear or Dirty Pictures, recently got the HD treatment via Mondo Macabro. I hadn’t heard of this one previously, as someone slowly educating myself on giallos and other adjacent Eurosleaze films, but I found this Bonnie and Clyde riff about two young gap-toothed beauties who are kicked out of Italy after selling pornography to be quite a lot of fun.
It touches quite a bit of genre ground, going from small-time urban crime film to road film to home invasion thriller and love triangle. And Lenzi’s filmmaking, while not showy, is alive, bright, and energetic. Think a very paired down Pierrot le fou.
The disc includes an archival interview with Lenzi, where he talks about how the film originally meant as a riff on Easy Rider but was mangled under Carlo Ponti’s control. Lenzi doesn’t sound nostalgic, but disappointed in the final form, though not completely demoralized.
Much of what he says in the piece is expounded upon in the commentary by Troy Howarth and the always dependable Eurosleaze specialist Nathaniel Thompson, who also talk from a contemporary vantage point about the use of Ornella Muti as a sex kitten despite being 15 or 16 years of age. Elsewhere, their knowledge of Lenzi and his contemporaries is list-inspiring, naming off so many other overlooked giallos for viewers to seek out … or wait for a label like Mondo Macabro to do justice.
Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema IV (1946-1955)
Kino Lorber has recently released the fourth issue of its box set series Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema, which includes three films: Calcutta, Six Bridges to Cross, and An Act of Murder.
John Farrow’s Calcutta, a B-noir set in the titular city following a man (Alan Ladd) trying to find out who committed the sudden murder of his friend, is a grimy picture that makes up what it lacks in narrative momentum in the sleazy atmosphere and quick-cutting dialogue.
The commentary on this disc is done by Nick Pinkerton, who is, as usual, a fount of knowledge. He talks about the film bridging the genre gap between the adventure film and the noir, touches on the film’s milieu, is exhaustive in all players (including notes on substance abuse issues, of course) and, most significantly, gives us some depth on Farrow as an auteur. Pinkerton mentions the director has been underwritten about — something he tried to abate with a lengthy issue of his newsletter — so it’s great to hear some details and attention paid here, such as his love for the extended take. It’s the type of commentary that lifts the experience of the film, which is by no means a masterpiece and leads viewers to further explore Farrow’s work.
Joseph Pevney’s Six Bridges to Cross is an odd entry about a man (Tony Curtis) who’s spent a life of crime and his interconnected relationship with a man (George Nader) on the other side of the law — a policeman who shot him as a child, rendering him sterile. While the film isn’t in the noir pantheon, there is an emotional core between the two leads and some solid setpieces that drive this film along nicely.
Deighan appears again on the commentary here, breaking down both Pevney and writer Sydney Boehm’s careers before placing the film within its many subgenre touchpoints — crime, heist, noir, mob, prison break — and gives historical spectrums for each, as well as bringing up essential questions of these films, like where do normal, sympathetic people fit in with a life of crime? Six Bridges to Cross is, more than anything else, a great example of that type of exploration, mostly due to Curtis’s performance. Deighan also gives a nice breakdown of Curtis’s biography and career trajectory.
Deighan takes a similar approach for the commentary on An Act of Murder, the least satisfying film of the bunch and the most obliquely noir of them — but as she notes on both commentaries, she considers noir a movement, not a genre, and all these movies certainly fall under that tag. Michael Gordon’s film takes place seven years prior to Six Bridges, in 1948, so the covered topics are expectedly different, including more immediate post-war and censorship issues. An Act of Murder, about an important, obstinate town judge and his wife, who is suddenly suffering from a strange disease, is rooted in real chemistry. However, it’s a fairly flat film, dramatically, aside from a few moments of percolating tension.
As a whole, Kino Lorber’s package is an odd one, offering three distinctly different takes on the noir movement — each pushes us away from a prototypical understanding. And importantly, each disc comes with an outstanding commentary to help us better understand the movement as a whole.
Distant Journey (1950) – Second Run
UK distributor Second Run recently put out Alfred Radok’s Distant Journey in their continued dedication to reviving important mid-century Czech films that are rather obscure. Radok’s film is an early film about the Holocaust that is so clearly an influential piece of European filmmaking — Radok’s mix of documentary footage (Nazi propaganda footage), experimental form, theatrical artifice, and bleak war-time drama is incredible — but has been a key that is missing in so many of our viewing histories.
Again, this disc continues an inadvertent trend in this issue of the Video Dispatches column of Deighan popping up on the commentary. She’s joined by Mike White and Kate Ellinger here, and their discussion is integral to really grasp Radok’s bold filmmaking and how Distant Journey fits into the Holocaust film canon as a specific Czech film. For instance, among other things, Deighan talks about specific political language concerns in Czechoslovakia at the time that Rodak’s film involves but will surely be otherwise lost on most contemporary Western audiences.
Second Run’s disc also importantly includes two extremely rare shorts: one by Radok, The Opening of the Wells, a poetic Panavision film that shows a much different, albeit still (incredibly) gorgeous side of the filmmaker a decade later, and Miro Bernat’s Butterflies Don’t Live Here, a documentary about children of the Terezin ghetto from 1958 included as an obvious thematic tie.
This package, which includes a 20-page booklet, is another stellar release from a distributor I’ve come to expect no less from.
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