Lupino is really great in it, too. I have mixed feelings about the film as a whole, though. It's enjoyable, but far from top-tier noir.

Still, I might buy it anyway. It's really nice to see so much noir coming out on Blu, and not just the most obvious titles.

Private Hell 36 (can we pause here to admire the hardboiled beauty of its title, please!?) is very underrated. A terrific little dirty cop noir. Anyone who has Netflix can stream it now and try before they buy.

What a new release list! THe McCarey is absolutely major, germane MCCarey - Tag and the late Robin Wood consider it a major McCarey and a film that signals the dissolution of the family in McCarey's universe. This is so exciting!

The Siegel is a major Siegel and the undertones of LA early 50s literally dripping with the corruption of the cops and the movie business here which are leered into by James Ellroy in Black Dahlia permeate the film. A terrific pick up out of nowhere.
The Leisen while unseen by me is almost certain to be major 40s melodrama-Noir from a period of his work I am in the process of rediscovering as complete narrative and character masterpieces (No Time for Love as his greatest essay in gender roles and homo/hetero postwar panic.) Again totally out of nowhere and so exciting.

And all these in untampered with masters/encodes from Paramount which Olive simply deliveres unhampered and clear, with natural grain, MoC style.

For anyone not sure, Stevens' (DVD only) Something to Live for is a staggering masterpiece, Stevens very best film IMO and a final sublime break with classical expressionist/romantically suffused American cinema. The High keylight CU and lap dissolve montages of master DP George Barnes are among the finest achievements in post war B&W.

Olive has kind of become the new MoC hasn't it? Whoever is programming there has fabulous taste!

Did McCarey ever show a positive and wholesome view of the conventional family unit? Anyway, not sure I'd agree that it was a major McCarey for Wood, though he did stick up for it as underappreciated. He made a convincing case for reevaluating it but he (correctly) called the last 45 minutes a "crude and insufferable anti-Communist tract," which is exactly the reputation of the entire film. That final stretch is exactly what I don't want to endure again. The whole thing is well worth seeing once, but for my purposes there are just too many better melodramas to revisit -- and we still don't have a single Sirk film on blu-ray anywhere, unless I've somehow missed it, in addition to nearly all the greatest Hollywood melodramas by other directors still MIA on blu and in some cases not even in print on DVD, though none of that is any reason specifically for Olive not to release My Son John.

Well I buy Robin Wood's later readings of the whole family trajectory in McCarey from prewar to finality with this masterpiece. They also underline surely the growing corruption of the American Empire. I thought Wood had revised his view of this picture, just as he did Seven Women, not long before he died. Anyway, the very fact that John is so commonly read solely under the supposedly hysterical anti Commie rubrick (as though this were the only issue of weight in the film) is why I salute Olive for putting it out.

My view in brief is that the levels of family mistrust and treachery extend far beyond the "Commie" theme and signal a real breakdown in control and cohesion. And the evidence for a far more complex reading is in the very opening shots, in which the mother's neurosis and unease completely counterpoints and undercuts the family meal, and the "healthy" brothers stride out in uniformed conformity, already badmouthing the "outsider" brother, not only the last 45 minutes of plot and denouement. Indeed David Ehrenstein's take as a gay reading is quite illuminating in terms of the tensions between freedom and control within families. In any case I think we could profitably leave a discussion of this film in detail to the release date when more people can see it and make their own conclusions, waddya think?

I'm not sure to what extent Colin does change during the film. I haven't seen it in a while, but his final statement appears to me to be a rejection of the Conservative, establishment values that the Governor has been trying to impose on him (resulting in a race against a public - here meaning exclusive and fee paying - school), and a restatement of the working class identity that he's being punished for in the first place. He accepts his punishment, and hates the manual labout he's forced to do, but chooses it (and the retention of his identity) over deference to an establishment that hates his class and hates who he is. It's not about changing or being a 'blind sheep', it's the reality that in Britain the class into which you're born informs how you see yourself, something which a Canadian(?) may not fully appreciate.

I guess my point is that I don't think it's particularly useful to refer to certain films as 'shallow' when they're actually very robust and sophisticated responses to the society in which they're produced. I don't think the foreignness of a topic such as class to a reader should inform qualitative statements about the text.

Because they can still bone you with $20 DVD-Rs.

I've seen My Son John a few times through the years and like many find it both dreadful and fascinating. So many strange choices, especially Helen Hayes' performance. I'm really looking forward to the blu-ray though,if only for the amazing Harry Stradling's (Streetcar, A Face in the Crowd) b/w cinematography. I recall the interiors being very dark which certainly fit the tone. I think it's the only film he shot for McCarey.

For those who would like a preview of My Son John, there is an instant-view version on Netflix. Even in this format, it might make a good sales pitch for those who haven't seen it; it's such a fascinating film.

I really didn't know there was this much interest in it, so I retract my earlier comment when I linked the IMBd thread. No offense meant to anyone here.

I certainly don't mean to stifle any talk. And I should add the last appearance of My Son John on TCM this year was a pretty good print (possibly the source for this forthcoming BD.) It was certainly worthy of Stradling's photography.

Not sure if it's been posted here or not but I just found and pre-ordered Olive's releases of Numero Deux and Ici et Ailleurs. I am so excited to get these dvds.

Any reason why the covers say The JLG Collection?

There is I believe 2 more Godard films after this that they have, so they might just be doing a small Godard Collection.

Not sure if you have seen this but just in case and for the benefit of those who haven't...
http://www.mastersofcinema.org/bresson/Words/RichardHell_on_Bresson.html
I am sure I have seen him writing extensively about another Bresson but can't find it on Bresson.com or his own site.

Does anyone know whatever happened to The Savage Innocents? That was the one title I was excited about when this operation started up...it never seems to have been released...anyone know where the rights lay?

i suppose i'm the only one excited about The Boogens....but my best friend and I watched it many times in 7th grade and thought it was awesome. pure nostalgia buy for me but i've waited many years to see it on a shiny disc, and i'm shocked it's going to be a blu ray.

Oh no, you're not alone. I caught this on TCM a while back and really enjoyed it. I'll definitely be picking up a copy of The Boogens.

When Olive announced it, it was supposed to be one of the titles licensed from Paramount. They were the original U.S. theatrical distributors. It was actually produced by a consortium of companies in France, Italy, and the U.K. though, and I believe Pathe is claiming all worldwide media rights. I think this dispute between Pathe and Paramount is where the problem lies, what caused the MoC disc to go out of print, and what's been holding up the Olive/Paramount release. This is all just speculation on my part.

Paramount owns the North American rights for SAVAGE INNOCENTS. There's no dispute, so please stop creating false rumors. The reason this film was dropped twice by Olive is no acceptable film element. They looked here and in Europe was not happy with what they saw and didn't want to release a standard version from the same master as the previously released UK DVD. Which would've been their best option.

I thought saying that "this is all just speculation on my part" made it pretty clear that it was simply a guess, and not an attempt to "create false rumors." Masters of Cinema stated that their disc went out of print due to a rights dispute, so my guess was hardly unreasonable.

I certainly think that a region one port of the transfer MoC used would be better than nothing (which is what is currently available with the MoC out of print).

Are you saying Olive had a problem with this? Olive has settled for similar "lesser" materials before (the theatrical version of Face to Face only on DVD), so if you're going to take such a curt tone over an understandable assumption (the original UK Savage Innocents DVD WAS forced OOP for exactly the reason being discussed here) I think you should clarify the subject more than you have.

That DVD was uncut and in the correct aspect ratio - anyone would have jumped at it if a Blu-ray wasn't feasible. In fact, Olive has released DVDs and subsequently published Blu-rays several months later without informing the consumer that they would be doing so, so again, nothing unreasonable about the above speculation under this consideration. So what, is Paramount making a new HD telecine for Olive?

Was Olive given the cut pan & scan version that replaced the original UK DVD and which is on Netflix right now? Which master are we talking about here?

The master that MoC used was non-anamorphic. Once they'd uprezzed it to 16:9, it looked surprisingly good, but the Beev was right to note that it was "a notch below MoC's other releases in image quality".

I don't know why I replied to this, I just wanted to clarify things a bit. They decided to release the standard FACE TO FACE because that was their best option. The master which was created from Paramount prints was in horrible condition and no negative was available to them. They didn't want to repeat the fiasco and have some crappy so called critics rip them a new one again. What they received from Paramount was a widescreen HD master created from surviving prints and they were not happy with it. It has nothing to do with uncut, they didn't want to release a BD or DVD of film where the material went from great, to good and sometime bad. They tried to get material from PATHE, but there elements was just as bad. The rest of the world rights is owned by an Italian company and they were the ones that told Pathe to remove the UK DVD from the market. I'm sorry to say, but I don't think you'll see a beautiful version of SAVAGE INNOCENTS released in the US anytime soon.

i'd happily take a "notch below" in quality to own the film...can't believe a company that releases 90% of their films with zero features and some of the worst cover art in the industry would be that picky.

I didn't know Artificial Eye was releasing Savage Innocents.