Fox Noir Collection

[sevenarts]

Any word on when these are coming out? Very excited to see more Preminger, though I don't know anything about the other 3. Any of them worth seeing too?

[domino harvey]

Boomerang! is mildly interesting if you're a fan of the police procedural subgenre of noir.

[Jack Phillips]

Daisy Kenyon is an excellent woman's picture, with great performances by all concerned. I'm not sure what it's doing in this series (no crime occurs), but I'm glad to see it come available.

[david hare]

I dont care if they put out Daisy Kenyon as a fucking Marquee Musical - it's one of Preminger's and Crawford's greatest pictures. Long overdue.

[domino harvey]

so are these ever coming out or what

[Belmondo]

Daisy Kenyon is an excellent woman's picture, with great performances by all concerned. I'm not sure what it's doing in this series (no crime occurs), but I'm glad to see it come available.

Ditto. Haven't yet seen it, but all of Preminger's early stuff has provided me with much more pleasure than his later movies.

By the way, there was no crime in James M. Caine's novel "Mildred Pierce" either. The murder was added to the screenplay.

[HerrSchreck]

I like the look of the new covers but I have to express my feeling that I wish they would have tried to maintain some consistency with their release schedule and the design. It is supposed to be a collection afterall and in some ways they originally looked like the covers of the "pulps" that inspired so many of these films. Still it is nice to see that Fox has not abandoned the line.

I totally agree, by the way. These covers look like the Brahm set-- clearly the same person who did those three did these three... and since they're two seperate "collections" there should be just a touch of uniformity to each... and separation in a sense beween the two.

Glad to hear about CRY OF THE CITY coming from CC. If true, good news (though I'm not sure how much better a CC will be than a Fox release.. the CC will be a bunch more expensive though, thats fursure.)

[alandau]

doubt Boomerang will ever be released

[Ashirg]

Foxclassics is listing these as upcoming:

Daisy Kenyon
Dangerous Crossing
Black Widow

DVD Empire has these for pre-order to be released on March 11.

[Jeff]

FOX HOME ENTERTAINMENT'S LATEST LINE-UP
OF SUSPECTS HITS THE MEAN STREETS ON DVD MARCH 11

BLACK WIDOW
DAISY KENYON
DANGEROUS CROSSING

Restored And Remastered, Each Of These Gritty Noir Classics Comes
Fully-Loaded With Audio Commentaries, Still And Poster Galleries,
Featurettes, An Interactive Pressbook Gallery And More!

CENTURY CITY, Calif. – Darkness and shadow have never looked better than Fox Home Entertainment's latest line-up of unusual suspects; brooding film noir classics steeped in intrigue, betrayal and deception, fully restored suspense masterpieces Black Widow, Daisy Kenyon and Dangerous Crossing emerge from the studio vault and onto DVD for the first time ever on March 11. An electrifying drama about a predatory female – and the first crime-of-passion story to be presented in Cinemascope – Black Widow (1954) stars Oscar®-winners Ginger Rogers (Best Actress, Kitty Foyle: The Natural History Of A Woman, 1940) and Van Heflin (Best Supporting Actor, Johnny Eager, 1942) as well as nominee Gene Tierney (Best Actress, Leave Her To Heaven, 1945) and George Raft (Some Like It Hot, Scarface) in a murderous tale of Broadway ambition. A classic love triangle featuring heartbreak and betrayal, Daisy Kenyon (1947) stars Oscar-winners Joan Crawford (Best Actress, Mildred Pierce, 1954) and Henry Fonda (Best Actor, On Golden Pond, 1981), with a powerful supporting performance by noir-staple Dana Andrews (Laura, Boomerang) and stunning black-and-white direction by three-time Academy Award nominee Otto Preminger (Laura, 1944; Anatomy Of A Murder, 1959 and The Cardinal, 1963). Exploring the darkest corners of the mind, the classic psychological thriller Dangerous Passage stars Oscar-nominee Jeanne Crain (Best Actress, Pink, 1949) and Michael Rennie (The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Robe) in a high-seas mystery.

Each of the Film Noir DVDs comes fully restored and remastered, with film historian audio commentaries, poster art, still galleries, theatrical trailers, interactive pressbook galleries and more for the suggested retail price of $14.98 U.S./$16.98 Canada. Prebook is February 13.

BLACK WIDOW
Nancy Ordway (Peggy Ann Garner) is an aspiring writer hoping to make it big in New York at the expense of everyone around her, including Broadway producer Peter Denver (Van Heflin), who reluctantly lets her use his apartment to work during the day. And when Peter's wife Iris (Gene Tierney) comes home from a trip to find Nancy dead in the bathroom, the assigned detective, Lt. Bruce (George Raft), soon realizes this assumed suicide is more likely a murder. Everyone Ordway knew is suddenly suspect while a series of flashbacks reveal that she was weaving her own plan to climb the social ladder…

Bonus features include:
· Audio commentary by film noir historian, Alan K. Rode
· Ginger Rogers at Twentieth Century Fox featurette
· Gene Tierney: Final Curtain for a Noir Icon featurette
· Poster, still, and behind the scenes galleries
· Interactive pressbook
· Theatrical trailer

DAISY KENYON
Daisy Kenyon (Joan Crawford) is a lovelorn commercial artist caught in a romantic triangle with two men ─ one she loves but cannot have and one who's love she cannot return. While in an emotionally draining love affair with married attorney Dan O'Mara (Dana Andrews), who refuses to leave his wife, she meets returning army sergeant Peter Lapham (Henry Fonda) ─ a decent and gentle man ─ who instantly falls in love with her. Although she carries a torch for Dan, she knows Peter will give her the secure life she desires and she agrees to marry him. But when Dan divorces his wife, Daisy is suddenly torn between her obligations…and her passions.

Bonus features include:
· Audio commentary by Film Noir historian, Foster Hirsch
· From Journeyman to Artist: Otto Preminger at Twentieth Century Fox featurette
· Life in the Shadows: The Making of Daisy Kenyon
· Poster, still, and behind the scenes galleries
· Interactive pressbook
· Theatrical trailer

DANGEROUS CROSSING
Ruth Bowman (Jeanne Crain) is a new bride glowing with delight as she and her charming new husband John (Carl Betz), set sail on the S.S. Monrovia for a transatlantic honeymoon. But when John inexplicably vanishes, Ruth discovers that no one on the ship has any record of his existence! As she slips into hysteria, Ruth has to prove that her marriage ─ and John's existence ─ is not just her own delusion. The ship's physician, Dr. Paul Manning (Michael Rennie), might be the only person onboard who can save Ruth from a terrifying predicament.

Bonus features include:
· Audio commentary by film historian, Aubrey Solomon
· Peril at Sea: Charting a Dangerous Crossing
· Poster, still, and behind the scenes galleries
· Interactive pressbook
· Theatrical trailer

[Belmondo]

Thanks, Jeff, for posting the specs. No reason to assume that any of these will be disappointing, but, even if they are, the bonus features and commentary tracks always make me satisfied with my purchase.
I am unfamiliar with these film historians who will be doing the commentaries - anyone know anything about them?

There are no bad films noir, and even the sort of bad ones, such as THE RACKET and LADY IN THE LAKE are enlivened by their commentary tracks.

[domino harvey]

Solomon's been on several of the Fox Studio Classics, the Snake Pit and some others that escape me.

[Jeff]

I am unfamiliar with these film historians who will be doing the commentaries - anyone know anything about them?

Foster Hirsch is the author of the new Preminger biography. He also did a commentary (that I haven't listened to yet) on Mankiewicz's House of Strangers. I think he's written a couple of books on noir as well.

[HerrSchreck]

They are all fantastic additionally for one huge and overriding reason: they are not Ursini and Silver. These guys are spent and talked out and to top it off they hate each other's guts. The honeymoon is clearly over, and they are suffering workrelationship-rot the same way bands self destruct on tour or in the studio right after a tour after spending WAY too much time together. I think each is feeling they wound up somehow having half-a-career, and won't be considered for an audio essay without the other.

When you sleepwalk through the recovered/resurrected masterpieces of John Brahm and Brute Force, you've hit the end of the line. They need time in the woods beating primevial drums made of rough hides and screaming at the top of their lungs.

Silver is so annoying, the petulant sound of his snobby, always slightly irritated voice... grrrr. Then you see the guy, which is like motionless slapstick.

[Dylan]

I can't wait to see Daisy Kenyon!

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

There's a Foster Hirsch commentary and davidhare likes the film so now I'm really interested! However, how's Fonda in Daisy Kenyon?

[zone_resident]

DVD Beaver reviews:

Black Widow
Daisy Kenyon
Dangerous Crossing

[domino harvey]

I want to thank the DVD Talk for revealing the ending to Black Widow in the first fucking line of their review.

[Belmondo]

Daisy Kenyon is an excellent woman's picture, with great performances by all concerned. I'm not sure what it's doing in this series (no crime occurs), but I'm glad to see it come available.

Just watched it; and again with the commentary track by film historian Foster Hirsch. He makes a good case that the lighting, deep focus photography, sense of unease, etc., put it in the noir category. And, he makes a nice point in saying that even though no crime occurs, it sure feels like one could happen at any moment.

Still, I believe the definition of noir is being stretched for current marketing reasons. If intrigue, betrayal, deception, (and crime) are the hallmarks of the noir style, then you could just as easily make a case that this is instead a classic woman's picture much more obviously than it is film noir.

Don't get me wrong. I love the movie and I'm not preoccupied with squeezing it into any genre. On the other hand, the large banner on the box says "Fox Film Noir". Is it really?

[david hare]

The Noir moniker is ridiculous. But as I said somewhere else I couldn't have cared less as long as they got the movie out. It's totally a market tactic (and I havent bothered to play the commentary).

Daisy is a key Preminger movie and a masterpiece, not simply either a Noir or a Crawford picture (good as she and all the others are.)

A last comment on "Noir", the only conceivable links could be to Crawford with Mildred Pierce or Possessed at Warners, or Preminger and Laura in 45 (and the later early 50s Noirs.) But the picture simply doesn't fall into either of these genres in any fundamental way.

I really think new viewers to the movie might try to take the picture in as a three hander for the principals which is a complex study in choice and outcome and which, underlying all of that is one of the most complex and resonant studies of marriage and relationships ever put to film. The two men in Daisy's life are clearly multi dimensional. Her dilemma - to put it at the simplest - is the choice between the impossible and the possibly iveable to her. The screenplay (credited to David Hertz from the Elizabeth Janeway novel) is constantly attentive to nuance, and it's almost certainly Preminger who has shaped it into both narrative pace and created the opportunity for his mise en scene to circulate around the characters and allow a fully ambuiguous moral dimension to encircle and link them.

I absolutely hate to do this - yet again -but the print is extremely weak. I don't know what on earth Fox have used but - for instance- in every medium two shot the sides of the image are blurred making it look like a technical fault with the original telecine. Image overall is a little too dark, and soft, and - never mind the few tramline scratches - it looks like a completely unrestored sceond gen print dragged out of the back shelf. I have absolutely no idea how this compares to the other two titles in the set as I didn't buy them but it's simply one of weakest Fox 40s transfers/prints I've ever seen.

Be that as it may the minute I put it on I could not stop watching the movie through again.

[Jack Phillips]

Has anyone else watched the Preminger doc on the Daisy Kenyon disc? It uses lots of clips from the other Preminger films in the Fox Noir series (natch), but also a couple other Fox titles not yet released. One is Margin For Error (which features Otto as an actor as well as a director) and the other is Forever Amber. Now, Margin For Error has just been released in the UK, so it wouldn't be surprising to see an R1 version soon. But Forever Amber? And here's where it gets interesting. At the end of the doc the clips are all credited, and most are tagged with the phrase "Available to Own on Fox DVD" (or something like that). Margin For Error does not have the tag, but Forever Amber does. Curious, no?

[david hare]

Amber came out as a laserdisc. It was quite a nice print too - but that was before Fox started seriously fucking up their three strip Technicolor movies for DVD.

Both it and Centennial Summer (not Techni but B&W) used to turn up on cable (but not recently - at least in Oz)

[filmnoir1]

The latest releases in the Fox film noir line do not disappoint. Once again Fox have given us just enough extras, trailers and interactive pressbooks (these are a must for film scholars) and small featurettes on these discs to satisfy buyers demands and to make them a valuable investment for lovers of noir.
While Daisy Kenyon may not be a noir picture, it does not matter. it is great to see this film get a release because it shows three actors at the height of their careers (Crawford, Fonda and Andrews) engaging with very adult themes in a mature and dignified maner. There are moments in this film wherein it feels as if Preminger had taken a page out of Lubitsch's style manuel for handling sensousness, infidelity, and the irreverant fun of fluid sexualities. The lighting is masterful, as throughout the film Daisy and Dan are always bathed in shadows, highlighting the duplicity of their relationship. Like Laura, this film contains a subtext of sexual tension, repression, and the effects these "norms" were having on the formation of the "self" in America after the most devasting economic crisis and the most horrific period of human suffering and destruction in WW II.
Dangerous Crossing which was a low budget film, as displayed by its running time (76 min) and constant reliance on sets from previous films made on the Fox lot (Titanic and Gentleman Prefer Blondes) is a dazzling display of psychoanalysis, mystery, romance, and suspense. Michael Rennie more well known for playing Klatu sparkles as the ship's doctor who is shown to be a modern man of science and the heart. Jeanne Crain excells in her role as the hysterical new bride who believes everyone is out to harm her and her new husband.
Together these two films illustrate the growing pressures and anxities that Americans were facing as a result of a rapidly changing world. No matter whether they are "noirs" or not, it is good to see Fox continue to release these forgotten films so that they can find new audiences with film lovers, academics, and the causal viewer. The real question left to ask is how many more of these "Fox film noirs" will be released?

[dr. calamari]

Anybody hear any news regarding if Boomerang is ever going to be released? I read DVD Savant's review and it made me really want to see it...not enough to pay $35.00 or whatever it's going for on eBay, but still, it sounds like a really good picture. I know there were legal issues, but jeez, the movie is 60 years old already, who's going to be hurt by anything in it by now?

[redbill]

Just got around to watching Street with no Name. Is it just me, or was there a striking resemblance between the final scene and the Joker origin scene at Axis Chemical from Batman ?