"Around the World in 80 Days"
Rated G; 1956
It's no secret that many an Academy Award winner, even for Best Picture, would not have won the year before or any year thereafter. They were of their moment. Their timing was as good as it possibly could be.
One such Best Picture winner was "Around the World in 80 Days," which, in one of the best of all movie years, beat "Giant," "The Ten Commandments," "Friendly Persuasion," "The King and I" and a host of worthy contenders crowded off the main slate.
Unquestionably an entertaining epic based on Jules Verne's novel, "80 Days" was to win on the strength of a newfangled form of old-fashioned ballyhoo whereby all Hollywood was wooed to an unprecedented degree by ultimate producer-promoter Mike Todd.
It was the only picture he ever produced on his own. He died in a plane crash a year after his triumph.
This was the movie for which he coined the phrase "cameo" to characterize an appearance, however fleeting, by an identifiable star such as Frank Sinatra or Marlene Dietrich. The first cameo player signed was Noel Coward, whose participation was used to attract many other names. Gregory Peck signed for a small part, but Todd fired him for not taking the part seriously.
The fact that more than 50 stars made, or played, cameos was central to the picture's campaign, along with an antic drawing of a hot-air balloon, a mode of travel that wasn't even part of Verne's classic novel.
Critic-historian Robert Osborne suggested in a recent interview that part of the reason "80 Days" played less and less well for younger audiences is that with each passing year the cameos meant less to generations who didn't recognize the stars passing through just long enough to be noticed.
For years, you could see much-edited widescreen prints of "80 Days" on TV or "full-screen" versions that were somewhat longer. Generally the film ran 167 or 142 minutes. The new double-disc letterboxed DVD is restored to its original reserved-seat length of 182 minutes.
Osborne contributes an on-screen introduction. BBC Radio's Brian Sibley does an exceptionally well-researched audio commentary. A few tidbits they disclose:
Though virtually unknown in the States, Mexican actor Cantinflas, who plays Passepartou, was at the time the wealthiest actor in the world. Robert Newton, who appears as Mr. Fix, fulfilled his pledge to behave well throughout production but died a month later.
Shirley MacLaine, in only her third movie role, never understood why Todd wanted her for the lead female role of Princess Aouda. David Niven regarded his role as Phileas Fogg his favorite.
Michael Anderson was hired to direct the picture after John Farrow resigned or was fired one week into production.
"The Great Escape"
Unrated but PG in nature; 1963
Arguably the most suspenseful and personalized of all epic action films, "The Great Escape" is back on DVD in a new double-disc special edition that contains several hours of extras including documentaries on the escape and the man on whom Steve McQueen's character of Virgil Hilts was ever-so-loosely based. There's also an audio commentary by director John Sturges and cast and crew.
Tidbits: Americans were not central to the real escape, but most of the leading roles were played by Americans, some as American military personnel, to enhance the box-office prospects.
Characters were condensed and consolidated. The real escape took much longer than depicted. The escape was designed to create a diversion from D-Day. The picture was shot mainly in Bavaria. It was to be made in the States, but the Screen Actors Guild would make no concessions with regard to non-union extras.
The location of the POW camp was near Poland at the time and is IN Poland now.
During production, Charles Bronson launched a relationship with Jill Ireland and eventually married her. She was the wife of his co-star, David McCallum, who says the actors became friendly for the sake of their children and even golfed together but that it was awkward.
James Coburn and James Garner are on record as saying Bronson always was a loner on film sets. "Judgmental," Coburn says.
Garner says that when he selected a turtleneck sweater as part of his primary costume, Steve McQueen was disgruntled. "Steve was always very competitive with me." Garner and Donald Pleasence lost their two best scenes in the final editing, he adds, a fact of life in filmmaking.
Sturges had a terrible time getting the rights to film the story and then tried without success for years to get it financed. The material was considered too downbeat, although eventually he found a coda that permitted an optimistic final moment.
He wanted Richard Harris for the role finally played by Richard Attenborough, whose character, Roger Bushell, is the story's true centerpiece.
"The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
Unrated but R in nature; 1967
The first of Clint Eastwood's three spaghetti westerns for director Sergio Leone, "A Fistful of Dollars," was released in Europe in 1964. "For a Few Dollars More" followed in 1965. By the time United Artists purchased all three, including the epic "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly," for U.S. distribution, Eastwood had concluded his TV series "Rawhide" (1959-66).
U.A. released them within a 12-month period starting in January 1967, turning Eastwood into a box-office sensation and opening the floodgates for dozens of vastly inferior Italian-Spanish westerns to reach the States.
Because the Eastwood-Leone pictures were marketed as the "Man With No Name" trilogy, we assumed Eastwood was playing the same character in each - poncho, thin cigars, steely glint and all.
Not so, says Richard Schickel, the critic-historian and Eastwood biographer who contributes an amiable, chatty commentary to the new double-disc "Ugly" DVD. Nor does Lee Van Cleef play the same character in the last two.
By the time they made "Ugly," Eastwood's rapport with Leone was cooling. The actor turned down Leone's offer to return for "Once Upon a Time in the West," though they later dined together more congenially.
The new DVD runs the original Italian length of three hours, about 21 minutes longer than any version seen previously here.
Schickel calls attention to all previously unincluded footage and to the epic's influences - surrealist paintings, a concentration camp metaphor - as well as the operatic cinematography, a revolutionary quotient of violence, the deliberate pacing of action set-ups and the penny whistles and Jew's harps of Ennio Morricone's best-known score.
There are documentaries on Leone, the film, the audio re-recording and the Civil War.
"Miracle"
Rated PG; 2004
Nearly all sports films build to the inevitable uplift of an underdog's victory. "Miracle" reaches the finish more triumphantly than most because it troubles itself to shade the characterization of its hard-nosed coach, Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell).
Brooks, who missed an opportunity to play for the 1960 U.S. Olympics hockey team, tries, tries again as coach of a 1980 team that perceives itself rather too much as underdogs - that is, inferior.
Part of the interest for local audiences is that Craig Patrick, later executive vice president and general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins, is an assistant coach in "Miracle," where he's played by Noah Emmerich.
It's a good story, realized with plenty of heart and integrity.
The double-disc DVD contains outtakes, a conversation with Brooks, Russell and the filmmakers, a making-of documentary and an audio commentary by director Gavin O'Connor and other craftsmen.
