An Open Letter To Mr. Feltenstein re: The Warner Bros. Archives (1 Viewer)

[PMF]

Philip, I wouldn't even trust my own knowledge of movies.

Knowledge in movies are ever-growing;
but first, one must have the knowledge of what one has liked.
This is where it all begins.
In other words, I trust your good tastes in film, Mr. RMajidi.

 

[Ed Lachmann]

Most of my "unexpected treats" these days come from Kino, Eureka, BFI, Olive and Network UK, who recently announced the release of E. A. Dupont's fascinating Moulin Rouge. Imagine a world where the greatest silent titles of all times (the best already restored and scored by Carl Davis through Photoplay by Kevin Brownlow) were made available for folks who'd love them to purchase them in HD. I'm sure that if Kino or Flicker Alley could have gotten them, they'd have released them by now. Still, I do understand that this is far far too much to ask. Just be thankful for The Big Parade and shut the hell up.

 

[PMF]

Most of my "unexpected treats" these days come from Kino, Eureka, BFI, Olive and Network UK, who recently announced the release of E. A. Dupont's fascinating Moulin Rouge. Imagine a world where the greatest silent titles of all times (the best already restored and scored by Carl Davis through Photoplay by Kevin Brownlow) were made available for folks who'd love them to purchase them in HD. I'm sure that if Kino or Flicker Alley could have gotten them, they'd have released them by now. Still, I do understand that this is far far too much to ask. Just be thankful for The Big Parade and shut the hell up.

Respectfully, the "unexpected treats" (albeit found within all BD distributors) was a sub-topic celebrating the title releases that are exclusive to WAC; along with a high-lighted Thanks to Mr. Feltenstein.

 

[Ed Lachmann]

When you have Mr. Feltensteins attention, I'm one to make good on the opportunity to toss a few thoughts out there.

 

[PMF]

When you have Mr. Feltensteins attention, I'm one to make good on the opportunity to toss a few thoughts out there.

Actually, I re-read your Post and came to appreciate where you were really going with your message.
It's funny how the exact same words and text can be read differently on the second go-round.
So, correct me if I'm wrong; but you're asking WAC to delve further into their Silent Film catalogue.
THE BIG PARADE was such an important offering from Warner and it is true and well worth reminding the powers that be;
if they've got more Silent Films in their stash, then why not follow it up with more?
BTW, this requests to Mr. Feltenstein may not - in the end - be such a distraction to the giving of our praises.
Our praises and thanks reflect the quality of work and output from WAC; leaving us all to want more.
In this case, the "more" is about an entire genre of Warner's motion picture history.

 

[PMF]

Just purchased two days ago:

Finian's Rainbow - WAC
Bad Day at Black Rock - WAC
Wait Until Dark - WAC
The Man Who Would Be King - WB

And yes, I also purchased Olive's Strategic Air Command;
but that's only to hold me over in anticipations for a WAC release of The Spirit of St. Louis.

 

[JPCinema]

I'm eagerly awaiting the Blu Ray Archive titles for April!

 

[Alan Tully]

I'm eagerly awaiting the Blu Ray Archive titles for April!

Over at blu-ray.com someone posted that Warner (via their Facebook page) said that there wouldn't be any announcements for a couple of weeks, & that was a week ago, so expect something next weekend, well they did release five for March.

 

[Ed Lachmann]

Actually, I re-read your Post and came to appreciate where you were really going with your message.

I didn't mean to disparage any of the fine blu-ray releases the Archive has provided, as I did purchase plenty of them. My post reflects an experience I had a few years ago at one of those rare screenings of Rex Ingram's phenomenal Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We were invited to a Q&A with Kevin Brownlow just after the screening. The question came up as to why this and other silent masterpieces were absent on DVD or blu-ray, especially those belonging to WB. Mr. Brownlow admitted that "lack of interest" was the major reason. I'm not sure he was referring to this "lack" as something primarily due to the whims of potential customers. When the crowning masterpieces of silent cinema, titles like Four Horsemen, Greed, The Crowd, The Wind and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg lie dormant in vaults even after already being restored then scored by the likes of Carl Davis, I can't help but feel a bit saddened that "lack of interest" keeps them from those who certainly love them the most. I do apologize that I can seem to be a bit "salty" about it.

 

[Robin9]

I didn't mean to disparage any of the fine blu-ray releases the Archive has provided, as I did purchase plenty of them. My post reflects an experience I had a few years ago at one of those rare screenings of Rex Ingram's phenomenal Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. We were invited to a Q&A with Kevin Brownlow just after the screening. The question came up as to why this and other silent masterpieces were absent on DVD or blu-ray, especially those belonging to WB. Mr. Brownlow admitted that "lack of interest" was the major reason. I'm not sure he was referring to this "lack" as something primarily due to the whims of potential customers. When the crowning masterpieces of silent cinema, titles like Four Horsemen, Greed, The Crowd, The Wind and The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg lie dormant in vaults even after already being restored then scored by the likes of Carl Davis, I can't help but feel a bit saddened that "lack of interest" keeps them from those who certainly love them the most. I do apologize that I can seem to be a bit "salty" about it.

I think we have to accept that a central element in deciding which genres are released by a studio or label is the personal preferences of the senior staff at those companies. Criterion do not release many Westerns or musicals but love art house movies. Warner Archive give short shrift to glamor girls like Lana Turner but love musicals.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think we have to accept that a central element in deciding which genres are released by a studio or label is the personal preferences of the senior staff at those companies. Criterion do not release many Westerns or musicals but love art house movies. Warner Archive give short shrift to glamor girls like Lana Turner but love musicals.

I think availability of title and condition of elements can also play a factor.

For instance, in the case of Criterion, I would imagine that they're favoring more art house fare now because a lot of those films produced independently may be less expensive to license than titles owned by major studios. For a long time, in general, major studios released their own titles, and if they ever did license them out, Criterion was really the only player in town for that. Now, with Olive and Kino and Twilight Time and others, there are more labels that a studio can go to, which may be driving up the cost for the rights on some of the studio titles. I have no inside information, but I would suspect in some cases that it's simply more economically feasible for them to release art house titles than studio productions. Criterion has released at least a decent number of westerns; I just bought four of them this month. I'm sure they're also looking at sales data and going, "The audience for this art house title is willing to pay any price for it, so they'll purchase it from us." It may be that westerns haven't sold for them at the prices they charged - Warner put out a bunch of westerns with retail prices around $15-20, that often are sold for $10 or less. Perhaps Criterion has found that western fans will spend $10 for a film, but are less likely to spend $30-40 on one.

For Warner Archive, a lot of what they're putting out seem to be titles where the elements are known to be in good physical condition, so they can do high quality releases on smaller budgets. The less successful a film was at the box office, the better chance that the elements will be in good condition because they would have been used less. Some of the musicals that Warner Archive has been putting out fall into that category, where I think they're being chosen for having good elements ready to go as much as anything else.

Call me a cynic, but I think sales are down across the board, and any label will be happy to release any kind of title that they think has a chance to sell. I suppose personal preference could be a factor, but my own guess would be that quality of the elements, licensing costs, and past sales figures have more of an effect on the choices than the genre preferences of the people working at the label. (For instance, when people ask Twilight Time why they don't release more of a particular genre, their answer is usually, "We love those films and would very much like to, but they haven't sold well for us.")

 

[Dick]

I think we have to accept that a central element in deciding which genres are released by a studio or label is the personal preferences of the senior staff at those companies. Criterion do not release many Westerns or musicals but love art house movies. Warner Archive give short shrift to glamor girls like Lana Turner but love musicals.

Also probably has much to do with existing elements. Criterion has actually released a fair number of outright classic westerns even when the PQ wasn't able to meet its usual standards (i.e. STAGECOACH). It's true they haven't done much with musicals, but I think they realize that gap is being well-covered by niche labels these days. But they have a good rep for getting silent films out there, and for that reason I hope they can affect a deal with Warner Bros for the release of THE WIND, THE CROWD, GREED, etc. either singly or as part of an incredible box set. That's if WB isn't planning to get these out through the Archives, which I am sure is quite aware of our collective desire to own these in HD.

We also have to keep in mind that the escalation of Archives releases is fairly new -- it started out as occasional Blu-rays, then about one per month, and now four, which is very nearly the output of both Criterion and Twilight Time...we need to be patient and cautiously optimistic about these old faves...and that bringing us Errol Flynn, Rogers and Astaire, and other most-wanted stars is going to be dependent upon how good the source material is and cost of bringing them up to Blu-ray quality, and Lana Turner's catalog would fall into that category.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

We also have to keep in mind that the escalation of Archives releases is fairly new it started out as occasional Blu-rays, then about one per month, and now four, so we need to be patient and cautiously optimistic about these old faves), and that bringing us Errol Flynn, Rogers and Astaire, and other most-wanted stars is going to be dependent upon how good the source material is and cost of bringing them up to Blu-ray quality, and Lana Turner's catalog would fall into that category.

Exactly! If there's a more known title that will cost $100,000 to prepare for Blu-ray, compared to ten lesser known titles that will cost $10,000 each to get ready, Warner Archive is choosing to work on the ten lesser known titles over one more well known one. For the most part, I'm happy with the trade-offs they've made and the titles they have chosen to put out. For the past couple years, they've really been on a roll.

 

[Richard M S]

I'm came across this post for the first time tonight and the timing could not have been better. I just watched the superb Private Screenings interview Robert Osborne conducted with Betty Hutton 17 years ago - which I had not seen in many years. Clip after clip of Betty's Paramount musicals were shown, all of which Robert referred to as very big hits of their day and yet here we are 17 years later and none of those films - Let's Face It with Bob Hope, the all-star Duffy's Tavern, the musicals Incendiary Blonde, And The Angels Sing, Somebody Loves Me, etc - still have not been properly released.

As I watched I thought if only WarnerArchives had the rights to some of these films - Betty's career would have become so much better known and movie buffs would not have been deprived the enjoyment of her films.

So all the praise to George Feltenstein and Warners - without their output all these years from VHS to laser disc and DVD and now to blu-ray - we all would have missed so much great entertainment.

 

[Robert Harris]

I'm came across this post for the first time tonight and the timing could not have been better. I just watched the superb Private Screenings interview Robert Osborne conducted with Betty Hutton 17 years ago - which I had not seen in many years. Clip after clip of Betty's Paramount musicals were shown, all of which Robert referred to as very big hits of their day and yet here we are 17 years later and none of those films - Let's Face It with Bob Hope, the all-star Duffy's Tavern, the musicals Incendiary Blonde, And The Angels Sing, Somebody Loves Me, etc - still have not been properly released.

As I watched I thought if only WarnerArchives had the rights to some of these films - Betty's career would have become so much better known and movie buffs would not have been deprived the enjoyment of her films.

So all the praise to George Feltenstein and Warners - without their output all these years from VHS to laser disc and DVD and now to blu-ray - we all would have missed so much great entertainment.

Have not checked other titles, but orig negs for Incindiary appear to survive, and be at UCLA.

 

[Dick]

Did I understand from a thread somewhere that the Archives takes the month of December off from releasing a new batch of Blu-rays?

 

[atfree]

Did I understand from a thread somewhere that the Archives takes the month of December off from releasing a new batch of Blu-rays?

Yes, they haven't released in December for several years. They will probably announce January titles in mid to late December. Past January releases have included Bogart and Hitchcock so I'm hoping for some great titles in January (always praying for some Errol Flynn)

 

[Matt Hough]

It sure would be great to get Stage Fright.

 

[TravisR]

It sure would be great to get Stage Fright.

And the underrated Mr. And Mrs. Smith. If only to close out their Hitchcock movies.

 

[Camps]

Warner Bros. sold well with its 3D blus of House of Wax and Dial M.... but the production costs were apparently too high to incentivize them to issue more catalog 3D blus. George should talk to Bob Furmanek, or the Twilight Time folks. I will happily pay a premium for a 3D blu of Phantom of the Rue Morgue -- with an extra of the 1941 MGM Pete Smith short Third Dimensional Murder -- and George need to look no further than Kino's gangbusters sales of Gog and Twilight Time's gangbusters sales of Mad Magician to know that economically restored catalog 3D blus will realize WB a tidy profit.