Old Hollywood films come to town but with a heavy price tag.
Although a variety of international films are now available on DVD in our music stores (walk into a retail outlet these days and the first thing you see is the “world cinema” display), there has been a definite dearth of box-sets. Which is why Sony Pictures’ new series of compound discs is good news, especially if you’re a fan of old Hollywood.
Elegantly packaged in black covers, these sets are tributes to legendary male stars — James Stewart, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif among them — and include three films starring the actor in question. A bonus attraction is a collection of autographed postcards, mostly publicity stills, but these are curios at best: there’s a photocopied look about them.
Each set is priced at Rs 999, which would normally be reasonable for a collection of three legit DVDs, but I have a couple of reservations. First, most of the discs are bereft of special features, which is a real letdown when you consider that the internationally available versions of these films have a wealth of carefully put together interviews and supplementary documentaries.
Second, the selection of movies appears to have followed a well-thought-out formula: combine one undisputed classic from the actor’s filmography with a couple of films that are of indifferent quality (or hold a relatively unimportant place in his career).
Thus the Brando set contains the wonderful early biker-gang classic The Wild One (in which the Young Mumbler famously snarls “What’ve you got?” in response to the question “What are you rebelling against?”) but also includes Arthur Penn’s uneven The Chase and the 1990s comedy The Freshman, in which Brando played a supporting role.
Also Read
For the movie buff, the rub is that if the one true classic happens to be a film that isn’t easily available elsewhere, you might end up buying the whole box-set for it. My own undoing was the James Stewart set, which I simply had to pick up for the sole reason that it included the magnificent courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.
But the two other films — the buddy Western Two Rode Together and the witchcraft comedy (!) Bell, Book and Candle — are middling at best, and the experience left me feeling slightly cheated. How easily this set could have been redeemed if they had thrown in just one of Stewart’s Hitchcock thrillers, or the dark Westerns he made with Anthony Mann in the 1950s.
In this context, an honorable nod must be made to another Sony Classics box-set that isn’t quite part of this series: The Cary Grant Collection, which includes five films starring the great matinee idol. What’s notable is that all these films are from the actor’s peak years. At least three (The Awful Truth, His Girl Friday and Talk of the Town) are masterpieces of their genre while the other two (Holiday and Only Angels Have Wings) are solid films that nearly any 1930s movie fan would want to have in their personal collection.
But really, Rs 1999 is too much to pay even for these gems; a screwball-comedy hound like me might fall for it, but that price tag is hardly likely to lead new viewers to discover these classic films. So here’s my DVD box-set wishlist for the coming Christmas: 1) Slash the prices by at least 30 per cent, 2) Throw in an extra disc with a feature-length documentary on the actor, 3) Start a similar series for female stars, with Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck at the top of the list. Someone at Sony/Columbia, please get out that Santa costume!