A Few Words About A few words about...™ The Golden Year: 5 Classics Films from 1939 -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

[Dick]

Top Ten...


Gone With the Wind

The Wizard of Oz

Of Mice and Men

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Stagecoach

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Jesse James

Gunga Din

On Borrowed Time

Young Mr. Lincoln


or so...


The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Gulliver's Travels

Babes in Arms

If you are speaking of the 1939 animated version of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, Thunderbean has an unparalleled Blu-ray out there right now (though it is not a Warner Bros. property). If not, to what version are you referring?

 

[Matt Hough]

My Top 10 1939 films:


The Wizard of Oz

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Hound of the Baskervilles/The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (sorry to use two films in one slot)

Wuthering Heights

Stagecoach

The Women

Dark Victory

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

Gone With the Wind

 

[Nick*Z]

It's about time Warner took a more serious approach to the treasure trove of classics still MIA from their overflowing catalog. Saying goodbye to sets that are a combination of leftovers and new stuff is definitely a step in the right direction.


The Warner/MGM catalog for 1939 ought to have yielded new remasters of at least Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. We'll wait in the hope of better things. There are too many truly great movies to list in the Warner catalog that are nowhere to be found in hi-def; Academy Award winners like The Great Ziegfeld, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, The Life of Emile Zola; Metro musicals of merit like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, High Society, Silk Stockings, Holiday in Mexico, Maytime, Broadway Melody (and its sequels), Till The Clouds Roll By, That Midnight Kiss, The Harvey Girls, Good News, The Student Prince; superb book to screen adaptations like The Brothers Karamazov, Raintree County, Mildred Pierce, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo & Juliet, The Valley of Decision, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Scaramouche, The Good Earth; melodramas like Boom Town, China Seas, Marie Antoinette, San Francisco, National Velvet, The Letter, Weekend At The Waldorf, Mrs. Parkington, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, Red Dust, Blackboard Jungle, The Bad and the Beautiful, Executive Suite, Bad Day at Black Rock, Battleground; gritty noirs like Mystery Street, Act of Violence, Murder My Sweet, They Drive By Night; glowing comedies like Adam's Rib, Woman of the Year, Pat and Mike, The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, Designing Woman, and on and on. Here's to hoping at least some of these titles will finally find their way onto Blu-ray - fully restored.


Let's be honest, fair and frank. It's about time that they did!

 

[warnerbro]

Too bad we have to double-dip with Gone With The Wind in this set. This is it's 5th release on Bluray. They should have included Wuthering Heights. But the screen captures I've seen on these are Warner Bros. usual superior work. No one comes close. Hunchback looks especially jawdropping. And I love the old Technicolor look of Dodge City.

 

[SeanAx]

Ten favorites from Hollywood from 1939, in alphabetical order:


Drums Along the Mohawk

Gunga Din

Love Affair

Midnight

Ninotchka

Only Angels Have Wings

The Roaring Twenties

Stagecoach

The Wizard of Oz

The Women


Which, of course, leaves out many fine films, but we're picking favorites, not "best" films, I go with these.


Non-Hollywood, of course, would include:

The Rules of the Game (France)

Le Jour se leve (France)

The Story of the Last Chrysamthemums (Japan)

and perhaps The Four Feathers (UK)

 

[marsnkc]

It's about time Warner took a more serious approach to the treasure trove of classics still MIA from their overflowing catalog. Saying goodbye to sets that are a combination of leftovers and new stuff is definitely a step in the right direction.


The Warner/MGM catalog for 1939 ought to have yielded new remasters of at least Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. We'll wait in the hope of better things. There are too many truly great movies to list in the Warner catalog that are nowhere to be found in hi-def; Academy Award winners like The Great Ziegfeld, The Greatest Show on Earth, Around the World in 80 Days, The Life of Emile Zola; Metro musicals of merit like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, High Society, Silk Stockings, Holiday in Mexico, Maytime, Broadway Melody (and its sequels), Till The Clouds Roll By, That Midnight Kiss, The Harvey Girls, Good News, The Student Prince; superb book to screen adaptations like The Brothers Karamazov, Raintree County, Mildred Pierce, Pride and Prejudice, Romeo & Juliet, The Valley of Decision, Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Scaramouche, The Good Earth; melodramas like Boom Town, China Seas, Marie Antoinette, San Francisco, National Velvet, The Letter, Weekend At The Waldorf, Mrs. Parkington, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, Red Dust, Blackboard Jungle, The Bad and the Beautiful, Executive Suite, Bad Day at Black Rock, Battleground; gritty noirs like Mystery Street, Act of Violence, Murder My Sweet, They Drive By Night; glowing comedies like Adam's Rib, Woman of the Year, Pat and Mike, The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, Designing Woman, and on and on. Here's to hoping at least some of these titles will finally find their way onto Blu-ray - fully restored.


Let's be honest, fair and frank. It's about time that they did!

My head is spinning!

I'll take them all, but particularly desperate for Around the World in 80 Days; The Letter; The Big Sleep and Red Dust.


This and the 1939 lists remind me of David Lean at his AFI tribute (quoting Irving Thalberg to admonish filmmakers, some squirming in their seats): "Don't come out of the same box twice." What would he say now (never mind what an audience from 1939 would think) had he lived to see the same regurgitations being foisted on us with mind-numbing regularity. They give the term 'sausage factory' a bad name. (Being a fan of 3D, I bought some of these 'franchises', but gave up twenty minutes into Iteration 3 - out of I don't know how many at this stage - and felt pretty stupid for wasting my money on something I'd already seen in the previous parts and in countless other 'franchises').


Someone on another thread here said that you only have to look at the New York Times' best seller list from 50 years ago to see how dumbed down the culture has become.


(Darell @ warnerbro: GWTW is not in this set)

 

[Dr Griffin]

 

[Mike Frezon]

(Darell @ warnerbro: GWTW is not in this set)

Yeah it is.


And as you can see from Dr. Griffin's image above, it has been colorized by the Wachowskis. I almost thought that was Neo & Trinity there...

 

[atfree]

Received my set today....just watched "Dodge City". Magnificent!

 

[marsnkc]

Hadn't clocked the box, but that explains what RAH meant by "Beyond that fifth film". I thought it and the heading were typos since he doesn't mention 'that fifth film' by name. Sorry, Darrell.

(Of course, I had in mind Wizard and GWTW when I made the earlier 'joke' about wondering what others came out of that year).

 

[Miguel M Santos]

I also have a soft spot for NORTHWEST PASSAGE, MIDNIGHT, SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, THE ROARING TWENTIES & John Stahl's WHEN TOMORROW COMES, a great film staring Irene Dunne & Charles Boyer (and is almost impossible to see) which was later remade by Douglas Sirk as INTERLUDE (For the record, WHEN TOMORROW COMES won an Oscar in 1939: for best sound.)

WHEN TOMORROW COMES was released as an extra feature in the French DVD of INTERLUDE released by Carlotta. It looked nice if I recall correctly.

 

[classicmovieguy]

WHEN TOMORROW COMES was released as an extra feature in the French DVD of INTERLUDE released by Carlotta. It looked nice if I recall correctly.

It's also included as an extra on the Australian release of "Interlude". I really need to get around to watching that soon.

 

[Mike Boone]

RAH's evaluation of this set is really welcome news. Of these films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the film I'm most eager for, because it's the one I haven't seen in more than 50 years. And the quality rating of 5 that Mr Harris gave for the Blu-ray, certainly doesn't dim my enthusiasm, either. Also, very much appreciated him mentioning the included documentary about all the films of 1939. What nice icing for a very tasty cake.

 

[lark144]

It's also included as an extra on the Australian release of "Interlude". I really need to get around to watching that soon.

Thanks, Miguel & Bryon. I just placed my order with Amazon US for the Aussie DVD set, as the Carlotta set is OOP, and only available on Amazon.fr from individual sellers who won't ship to the USA.

 

[Mike Boone]

Great stuff! The two I'm interested in, Dodge City & Hunchback, I never expected to see on Blu-ray. A warning for Warner, we're going to be asking for more Flynn after this, The Sea Hawk & They Died With Their Boots On, but meanwhile I'm going to enjoy the hell out of Dodge City (which like, The Adventures Of Robin Hood, I grew up seeing in b/w on our little telly).

...& I had no idea that The Hunchback Of Notre Dame original negs. still existed, esp. as it's an RKO production

Yes, it is really something to finally see films in color that you had only see previously on a black & white TV.


We used to watch The Wizard of Oz every year but I never knew what the big deal was with Dorothy opening that door to Oz until,

not having seen the film in more than 30 years, I popped the first DVD release of it into the player and watched it on a Sony 35" XBR

series CRT. Seeing that movie for the first time in color, I was about as enthralled as our granddaughter seeing it with us for her first time.

Holly was only 4, and the only time she made a sound during the entire movie was when she was a little scared by the flying monkeys.

(and maybe, the first time she saw the witch)

 

[Paul Penna]

Warner added the 1939 cartoon "The Lone Stranger and Porky" to the Hunchback extras, but for some reason used a colorized version rather than the original black-and-white.

 

[Mark-P]

As no one has reviewed it as of yet, the bonus disc that comes with this set is a DVD and contains the following:


1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, documentary, 2009, 68 minutes, 4X3

Breakdowns of 1939, 14 minutes

Sons of Liberty, 20 minutes (duplicated from Dodge City disc)

Drunk Driving, 21 minutes (duplicated from Hunchback of Notre Dame disc)

Prophet Without Honor, 11 minutes (duplicated from Ninotchka disc)

Sword Fishing, 10 minutes

Detouring America, 8 mintues

Peace on Earth, 9 minutes

And trailers for Gone With The Wind, Dark Victory, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Ninotchka, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights.

 

[Cineman]

If you are speaking of the 1939 animated version of GULLIVER'S TRAVELS, Thunderbean has an unparalleled Blu-ray out there right now (though it is not a Warner Bros. property). If not, to what version are you referring?

Yes, that is the one. I always enjoy watching it. Thanks for the heads up on the Blu-ray version!

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Too bad it took WB so long to smell the bit rate coffee. Especially the early years where even the biggest titles got the shaft and were released with below 20 Mbit/s averages were a disgrace. Matrix trilogy and most Harry Potters, anyone?

 

[Dick]

RAH's evaluation of this set is really welcome news. Of these films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the film I'm most eager for, because it's the one I haven't seen in more than 50 years.

Perhaps you first saw this on t.v. (I saw it probably a dozen times during the week it was shown on Million Dollar Movie in New York), cut by about forty minutes to fit into a 90-minute time slot with commercial breaks. I was unprepared for the full 117-minute version, which I bought as an imported Super 8mm print. Entire sub plots were completely new to me. What a revelation! My Blu arrives tomorrow and will, I am sure, make my week.