More recommended new 4K-UHDs and Blu-rays!
His Girl Friday/The Front Page — 4K-UHD/Blu-Ray — Criterion
Molly: They ain’t human.
Hildy: I know. They’re newspaper men.
from His Girl Friday
In the early days of Hollywood, there weren’t nearly as many remakes or reworkings as there are today, but they did exist and seldom was the remake better than the original. But one great example of a Tinseltown rethink of an Oscar-nominated film that actually bested the original is Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday, a 1940 retelling of the 1931 black comedy classic, The Front Page, which was nominated for three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director (Lewis Milestone) and Actor (Adolphe Menjou).
But don’t take my word for it. Now, you can be the judge since Criterion has put together a fantastic package for His Girl Friday giving it a truly clean and clear 4K treatment plus a 4K digital restoration of The Front Page on the Blu-ray disc.
The only way this package could have been better would have been the inclusion of Billy Wilder’s Golden Globe-nominated 1974 remake starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Carol Burnett (I believe Kino Lorber has those rights so the 4K may be a-coming) and Ted Kotcheff’s underrated 1988 modernization Switching Channels starring Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds and Christopher Reeve.
All the above movies were adapted from Ben Hecht & Charles MacArthur’s 1928 play, The Front Page. Exhale.
Milestone’s 1931 pre-Code film was startling for its time since it boasted fast-paced, overlapping dialogue (in the very early days of sound) as well as quick cuts to make the newsroom appear to be as frenzied as it probably really was back then. The play and movie provided a wicked indictment of yellow journalism as these reporters made up whatever story they felt would sell papers, truth be damned. (Replace “story” with “social media post” and it’s 2025!) The film was also a searing look at corrupt politicians, who would see an innocent man put to death to assure themselves good press and reelection.
Times haven’t really changed much, have they?
Both Menjou as Walter Burns and Pat O’Brien as Hildy Johnson do spectacular work and Mae Clarke, who got grapefruited by James Cagney in The Public Enemy, superbly attacks all her moments as the much-maligned Molly Malloy.
The Front Page digital restoration was made from a recently discovered print of director Milestone’s preferred version (the US domestic release as opposed to the international), with uncompressed monaural soundtrack. Both the visuals and sound are the best we’ve ever seen (not perfect, but that’s okay). Bravo, Criterion, for caring enough to rescue a public domain film from totally disintegration.
In the late ‘30s, director Howard Hawks (Only Angels Have Wings), who thought the script of The Front Page contained, “the finest modern dialogue that had been written”, had the brilliant stroke of making a remake and switching genders for the character of Hildy. The original writers weren’t available so Hawks asked Charles Lederer (who wrote “additional dialogue” on the original) to pen the script—which would see Walter and Hildy as former marrieds. More writers were brought in, and the creatives began to do battle with the censors.
Cary Grant was an immediate choice for Walter—and a perfect fit. The part of Hildy was originally offered to Carole Lombard and Jean Arthur. Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Margaret Sullivan, Ginger Rogers and Joan Crawford were all considered. But it was Rosalind Russell, hot off George Cukor’s The Women, who ultimately got the part and watching this comic masterpiece today, it’s impossible to see ANYONE else playing the role.
There’s a moment where Russell’s Hildy is standing in the doorway of the press room, trying to decide whether to stay or go, all quivering after the escape of a man on death row. What she does with no words and just a few facial expressions and body movements is nothing short of miraculous.
How Russell did not receive an Academy Award nomination is anyone’s guess. The entire film was snubbed. And, sure, Oscar has never been overly kind to comedies, but Katharine Hepburn was recognized that same year for The Philadelphia Story. Go figure! Of course, Russell would go on to garner four nominations (My Sister Eileen, Sister Kenny, Mourning Becomes Electra, Auntie Mame) but, sadly, never won one outright. She was given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1973.
Grant gets to flex his comic muscle and has some wonderful meta lines. And his chem with Russell is off the charts.
His Girl Friday takes the basic plot of The Front Page and adds a dash of romance while firing up the snappy dialogue overlap and revving up the speed of sparring. It also shears some of the reporter babble excess.
Hawks also manages a perfect blend of dark comedy with heavy drama and wild satire.
It is truly one of the great films and holds up magnificently today. It’s also never looked so good on any format. Kudos to Criterion
Blu-ray special features include an interview with film scholar David Bordwell, archival interviews with Hawks, featurettes from 1999 and 2006 about Hawks and Russell, programs about the restoration, the adaptation and on Hecht and the radio adaptation starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray (fun to listen to).
https://www.criterion.com/films/27903-his-girl-friday
Howard’s End — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray — Cohen Film Collection/Kino Lorber
Considered by many to be the Jewel in the Merchant Ivory Crown, Howard’s End is quite simply a masterpiece. It stands with A Room with a View, Maurice,The Remains of the Day and the highly underrated Mr. & Mrs. Bridge as the best in a partnership that produced some of the finest films of the late 20thcentury.
The creatives included director James Ivory, producer Ismael Merchant and, more often than not, screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who won her second Oscar for this striking adaptation.
Emma Thompson’s sublime performance won her the Best Actress Award and catapulted her extraordinary career.
The film is quite pointed in its indictment of upper-class privilege while also examining characters that stay true to their integrity and idealism in a society that is constantly attempting to erode such things.
The entire cast is magnificent beginning with Thompson. The luminous Vanessa Redgrave, garnering a Supporting Oscar nomination, is simply glorious. Anthony Hopkins, fresh off his Silence of the Lambs Best Actor win, allows us to sympathize with a hard and difficult character. And Merchant Ivory perennial Helena Bonham Carter lends vital support.
Cohen Film Collection presents a stunning 4K restoration from the original negative, overseen and approved by director James Ivory and cinematographer Tony Pierce-Roberts.
The 4K-UHD disc boasts an audio commentary by critics Wade Major and Lael Lowenstein and the Blu-ray portals over a host of goodies from the first BD release including several featurettes and interviews with Ivory and Redgrave.
This is a must for collectors.
https://kinolorber.com/product/11-18-2025
Dead of Night — 4K-UHD/Blu-ray – Kino Lorber
Horror fans rejoice!
The first time I had the privilege of seeing this unsettling, Eeling Studios horror anthology film, Dead of Night, it was projected by my then NYU professor, the great film historian, William K. Everson, at his home, via my British Film course. It was an old but watchable print, part of his amazing collection. I recall just how excitedly this teddy bear cinephile spoke about the movies he was most passionate about. Dead of Night was a favorite. And I recall being truly startled by certain moments from the 1945 classic.
All these years later, seeing this terrific work restored to such pristine glory was a true treat and one can easily see just how much influence it had on subsequent supernatural films.
The narrative assembles a group of diverse characters, gathered at a country estate, as a stranger, Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns), arrives and informs the others that he’s had the same recurring dream about all of them in that same home. Craig is convinced something terrible will happen. Each person begins to share stories of strange events that they either lived through or were told about—arguably the most chilling involving a ventriloquist (Michael Redgrave) and his being driven mad by his dummy. I was on the edge of my seat wondering what terrible fate was awaiting these folks—a testament to the solid storytelling.
Four amazing directors were responsible for Dead of Night, Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob), Basil Dearden (The Mind Benders), Alberto Cavalcanti (They Made Me a Fugitive) and Robert Hamer (It Always Rains on Sunday).
Kino Lorber presents the uncut and complete UK version, newly restored in 4K from original archival materials for the first time in decades and looking marvelous.
Disc One includes an audio commentary by novelist Tim Lucas.
Disc Two has a fantastic 75-minute doc, Remembering Dead of Night where a few film historians wax poetic about the movie, including one who seems fixated on all things sexual.
https://kinolorber.com/product/dead-of-night-4kuhd
For Whom The Bell Tolls — Special Edition Blu-ray — Kino Lorber
Based on the best-selling novel by Ernest Hemingway, Sam Wood’s For Whom the Bell Tolls saw stars Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman unite to play an expatriate American demolition expert and a war-ravaged young woman, who fall in love against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War. Robert Jordan (Cooper) sets out to aide a band of anti-fascist freedom fighters led by the tough-as-nails Pilar (Katina Paxinou in an astonishing Oscar-winning performance) and the untrustworthy Pablo (Akim Tamiroff). The group are enlisted to blow up a bridge.
This epic was the second highest-grossing motion picture of 1943 and received a whopping nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and was nominated in every acting category—still a rare feat. The film originally clocked in at nearly 170 minutes, including the overture and intermission. It was then cut down to 134 minutes for re-release, and the first version had not been seen for decades, until the movie was restored for DVD in the late 1990s.
Kino Lorber has fully restored the film to its full original version.
I realize that FWTBT was made in the early days of color films and I was not there in 1943 to see this premiere on the big screen but on the BD the colors look off —oddly tinted the way Ted Turner’s colorized films used to look. And many of the night scenes were so dark that I sometimes didn’t know what I was looking at. I read that the film was originally shot using a three-strip Technicolor process so in order to get the true original look, you’d need to filter-restore each strip and that this is a new 4K remastering, but from a 4K Scan of the UCLA Film Elements—an old digital restoration. Bottom line, it looks strange and I found myself squinting and being pulled out of the narrative during many action and long shot scenes.
Still, Bergman and Cooper have great chemistry and Paxinou seizes the screen, stealing all her moments. Bergman and Cooper would reunite two years later, with Wood at the helm, for the underrated, Saratoga Trunk.
This Special Edition Blu-ray disc includes a new audio commentary by film historians David Del Valle and Dan Marino.
https://kinolorber.com/product/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-special-edition
Airport: The Complete 4-Film Collection — 4K-UHD — Kino Lorber
The Box Set. Read my review of all four Airport films HERE.
https://kinolorber.com/product/airport-the-complete-4-film-collection-4kuhd
Speaking of The Front Page, I really need to watch Mr Wilder's 1974 adaptation even if it's not as highly acclaimed as Mr Hawks' film.
It's actually terrific. Most of Wilder's lesser appreciated post-Apartment films are much better than critics at the time noted. The Hollywood Foreign press may have been controversial in the day, but they usually appreciated Wilder's later work, like AVANTI, FRONT PAGE, ONE TWO THREE. Personally, I love KISS ME, STUPID, PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES and FEDORA.
One Two Three is sensational. Thanks for additional suggestions, gotta check them out.