CineSavant Column
Hello!
June will be a superb month for fans of classic pix from The Warner Archive Collection. Pictured above are Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell from Howard Hughes’ weirdly distorted comedy-noir potboiler His Kind of Woman, also starring Vincent Price.
That’s only the flashiest Blu-ray bait for the month. Also on the docket are —
Elia Kazan’s masterpiece Splendor in the Grass with Natalie Wood & Warren Beatty; its colors ought to be sensational in HD.
Robert Wise’s Executive Suite, an all-star battle for a company’s presidency, with William Holden, June Allyson, Fredric March, Barbara Stanwyck, Shelley Winters and several others.
John Cromwell’s The Enchanted Cottage, a twisted romantic fantasy with Robert Young and Dorothy McGuire, and a weird take on beauty vs ugliness.
King Vidor’s The Citadel is a worthy prestige classic; it stars Robert Donat and Rosalind Russell and was nominated for a pile of Oscars.
and MGM’s A Date with Judy ought to please fans angling for a Technicolor musical … it co-stars Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor, Wallace Beery, Carmen Miranda and Robert Stack.
The appeal of the Archive Collection is to see the beautiful digital remasters … we’re so accustomed to older transfers of these films, sometimes just 16mm TV copies. The remastering of Technicolor pictures is almost always a revelation … new colors, new clarity.
And we can’t resist … Michael McQuarrie links us to the Internet Archive’s online collection of the entire set of Topps Mars Attacks! trading cards, the inspiration for the 1996 feature film by Tim Burton (which is still a favorite).
For a lot of ’60s kids, these cards were our first contact with outright gore being sold to minors as entertainment. Close associate Todd Stribich invested in an entire original set of cards, which you can bet is locked up securely. Their value continues to accrue.
Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson