A couple of the R1 Wests I haven't seen, so I'll be double-dipping (or triple-dipping given that Chickadee is on the Fields set as well). Agreed that the quality of the films is variable. The Lombard set looks pretty good as I haven't seen any of them. As to a Stanwyck box, didn't George Kaufman fantasize about that? Or was it James Agee? Anyway a set of her pre-code films would be nice. How about Night Nurse, Baby Face, Shopworn, Forbidden and Ten Cents a Dance?

Screen menus, dvd cover artwork and more info about the releases here:
http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59938

I am in paradise with the R1 Uni DIETRICH GLAMOUR COLLECTION.. I woulda been in hog heaven with just MOROCCO for 21 bucks! But the other 2 Sternbergs, plus the Clair & Liesen, it's just

Hea-ven.. I'm in heaven...

Now CC needs to produce on SHANGHAI... and um, some-company-or-other-with-the-old-Paramount-catalog, needs to deliver the remaining Sterno silents on DVD

Toldya Dave, R1 wouldnt be far behind.

I'll start having more orgasms when they do a box of Angel, Desire, Zaza and Swing High Swing Low. Call it the Glamour Flixy Collection.

DId someone mention head? (Not Edith!)

How is the video presentation on the Dietrich box set? I'm suspicious of five movies on two discs and was curious about the compression et al.

Like the Bela and Cooper boxes before them all titles probably run to around 3.5 gigs and the others frankly looked fine. (The French discs are around 3.7 to 4 gigs each. So are the UK Stanwycks and Wests.)

DVDSavant review up.

Have you ever read such tosh in your life. The man has no appreciation at all for Sternberg's poetry. (I always thought he was an appalling reviewer.)

I used to like Savant's reviews, but he's become really erratic lately. His glowing review of the new King Kong is almost unbelievable in its lack of any critical perspective. He's been getting some fairly important details wrong: For instance, in his review of Stalag 17, he calls that movie the first to depict WWII POW life. (Hello? What about Ealing's 1946 film The Captive Heart?) He missed the poetry of Bela Tarr and Jean Epstein in fairly recent reviews of their work. I must confess that I'm beginning to re-evaluate my opinion of his critical faculties, too.

Though he did produce the best review of Ryan's Daughter that I've ever come across, and that was only a few months ago.

According to the back cover of the Mae West collection, she was one of Hollywood's most "hilarius" leading ladies.

Morons.

Didn't you say that all you wanted was a Mae West collection at a reasonable price? Hey, now you have it. Enjoy!!!

That Russian copy of "Shanghai Express", though not up to perfect quality, is awesome nonetheless. It's a GREAT lost treasure, that someday, hopefully will be given a well-deserved preservation !

I did say that, but I should have specified that it was contingent on the set containing She Done Him Wrong. And on not having spelling errors on the cover.

Does anyone else dislike the word "franchise" when used to describe an actor or director's body of work?

"Franchise" reminds me too much of fast food and corporate business. Quite fitting for Universal's DVD efforts, actually.

I hope Universal plans to follow these up with second volumes. This would explain the fact that some of the missing films.

Searching for Tryavna's report of Savants gaffe on Epstein (being a JE fanatic) I found this amusing quote in the review for 28's USHER:




Which is hilarious as NOSFERATU absolutely destroyed Prana-Film, which was the brand new company Murnau made his masterpiece for. The film as we know was hamstrung by a lawsuit situation via Stoker's widow who obtained an order that all prints of NOS be not only pulled but trashed. This was the first and-- owing to the early yank from distribution-- only film the company ever made. It completely ruined the company.

Aside from that gaffe based on the reality of the real world beyond the bounds of Glenn's sentence, read the sense of the sentence itself. If the film itself was Hugely Successful, how could it's cinematic followers possibly be few and far between???

So would it be a correct recap to say that the French release "Agent X-27" is the best way to go for Dishonored and that Shanghai Express is still inexplicably nowhere in sight?
By the way, these sets are now $15.99 at Amazon.

I think so. I'd add to that order the French Scarlet Empress which is so far superior to the Criterion as both the R2 Black Narcissus discs are. From memory Dishonored was the last of the Dietrich Sternbergs to get a VHS release in the 90s.

Given Shanghai Express' initial popularity and the Laserdisc release I still can only assume Universal are attempting to restore the cut interrogation sequence to the film before releasing it.

Unfortunately, to get "EVERYTHING" puts some importance on films that are, frankly, uneven....not everything she or ANYONE ever did was THAT good, and I'm sure this is something that even she would agree with.

For me, of the released titles I think "Morroco", "Pittsburgh", and "Scarlett Empress" will do it for me, in addition, presently, of course to the available Russian release of "Shanghai Express".

Von Sternberg's films with her are really exceptional.

Aren't a great many films hugely successful in financial terms, but quickly forgotten in the collective conscience after a few months or years? I think Erickson is assuming that not all the people who attend movies and thus contribute to their financial success are "cinematic followers" of the films they watch - I guess some are just considered to be consumers.

How interesting--the back cover of the Mae West set also credits an "Archie Night" with directing Night After Night.

Well, it's not like "Mayo" is a household word... d'oh!

What would they make of the first Mrs Bogart, Mayo Methot! (One food group, one alcoholic beverage? The mind runs riot..)

Jesus!! (And this from the dislexia queen of the board.)

Andre that line you often draw between consumer (contemporaneous) and cinephile had a recent coincidental outing at a_film_by in a discussion on Sternberg.

From word go his 1925 debut (made for peanuts) the Salvation Hunters was a "success" and indeed caught Chaplin's eye sufficient to have him employ Sternberg to make A Woman of the Sea to resurrect the failing career of by now alcoholically stupefied Edna Purviance.
Subsequently Underworld was a huge popular success (indeed probably the first real gangster picture.) Morocco was extremely popular and Shanghai Express enormously so, as well as massively influential (see Capra's Bitter Tea of General Yen and hundreds of other imitators, good and bad.)

Everything went off the rails with Scarlet Empress and Devil is a Woman, the latter of which was pulled from circulation shortly after release at the request of Franco's new fascist government to the State Department. Then LUbitch sacked him from Paramaount. Plus ca change, etc... Sternberg's later pictures were billed as cut-price "exotica" (Shanghai Gesture) or extremely niched (Anatahan) or else done over by Hughes (Macao and Jet Pilot.)

End result - Stenberg is revered today not by virtue merely of the successes, which went out of circulation and into the great black hole of television along with all the other "failures". But by virtue of his inherent qualities as a director. They remain - I think - still niche works for dedicated cinephiles, despite the connections to the star/studio system of the thirties. And anyhow "success" in 1932 is meaningless now, and it falls to people like us to reaffirm all the qualities of those pictures.

I gotta go downstairs & find out what the fuck HVAC is pumping into Distribution's air. Archie Night-- sounds like wednesday evenings at some cheeseball hole in the wall bar where they devote the whole 8pm-midnite hours running ALL IN THE FAMILY reruns.

Andre you may be right, i e that's what Glenn meant by that question repro'd above. It's very ambiguous and screams for an editor. No way to know what he meant unless someone asks him, but I've never had contact with the guy.

Dave I'd have to correct you on the gangster film thing (I've heard that claim before about UNDERWORLD). REGENERATION from '15 is probably the first gangster feature (beyond PIG ALLEY short by Grif)-- TRAFFIC IN SOULS is a gangster picture too... thats from 1913.

But aside from REGENERATION, the other straight up hardcore real-deal gangster pic that leaps to mind is (among some of the pre-25 Chaney's-- i e WICKED DARLING from 1919) THE PENALTY from '20 (in my view is also the first true film noir and one of the greatest crime melodramas ever made, period.)