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Italian crime thriller director Fernando Di Leo is a favorite of Quentin Tarantino -- the director has gone on record crediting Di Leo's 1972 The Italian Connection as an inspiration for Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction -- but apart from a few dubbed and often recut VHS releases, his films were not readily available on home video for Americans to see. Raro Video has made it their mission to correct that oversight. In 2011 they released the box set Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection, featuring four stand-out gangster movies on DVD (the Blu-ray edition came out in 2012), and after a few stand-alone releases in the interim, they follow it up in 2013 with Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime Collection Vol. 2 (Raro) on both DVD and Blu-ray.

This three-disc set boxes up Shoot First, Die Later (1974), a ruthless crime drama starring Luc Merenda as a corrupt cop on a mission of righteous vengeance (previously released as a stand-alone disc), with two disc debuts: Naked Violence (1969), a juvenile delinquent cop drama by way of social commentary, and Kidnap Syndicate (1975), a revenge thriller with Merenda, this time playing an innocent bystander roused to take justice into his own hands.

Shoot First, Die Later, one of Di Leo's best, stars Merenda as Domenico Malacarne, a hotshot cop on the Milan strike force. Young, good looking, and at the center of big, dangerous cases, he is the department poster boy for police heroism and Di Leo kicks off the film with a volatile undercover assignment and a ferocious car chase that rivals The French Connection. Just the thing to introduce Domenico as an ambitious hero with a penchant for muscular assignments and brazen action, right before revealing that he's on take. The collision of the unpredictable nature of character with the impersonal code of mafia business is at the center of Di Leo's best gangster films and revenge is big, bloody, and violent. So when Domenico's father, a modest and idealistic career cop who sacrifices all for his son (including, at one point, his moral code), is murdered by a local mafia lieutenant, Domenico goes after the mob and its business-like boss (Richard Conte), who negotiates the crisis with ruthless aplomb after his underlings botch the job.

Domenico doesn't have much dimension as a character -- he's just a guy who thrives on the adrenaline of a dangerous assignment and lives beyond his salary on the payoffs from the mob as if he's earned it -- but he takes the condemnation of his father like a slap and the combination of guilt and fury fuels his rampage in palpable. Di Leo revs up the film some of the most impressive car chases I've seen in seventies cinema. (The stunt driving in the two car chase scenes were coordinated by French stunt driver Remy Julienne, and his team gets prominent billing in the opening credits.)

Again, Italian crime cinema takes its cue from American movies and then adds its own cynical edge and melodramatic intensity. American cop heroes of the seventies were mavericks, outcasts, idealists, and obsessives, but they were always focused on justice, however they defined it. Di Leo's hero is the compromised cop who stops justifying his corruption only when he's pushed too far and crossed by his paymasters. It's not justice, it's revenge, but since he's avenging an innocent and taking out the bad guys, he'll do as the hero in this equation.

Kidnap Syndicate is much angrier and more bilious, with the outrage split between the kidnappers of the title and the dispassionate industrialist (James Mason, playing the part with silky corruption and unfeeling arrogance) whose son was the original target. Merenda plays a working class single father, a simple auto mechanic who is caught up in the high stakes game when his boy is grabbed up along with the industrialist's son. The innocent kid is just collateral damage, another bargaining chip in a game where tycoons and criminals treat human life as a business deal, something to be negotiated for maximum leverage.

Where Shoot First, Die Later features elaborate and visceral car chases, Merenda's mechanic in Kidnap Syndicate is a retired motorcycle racer and the third act relies on his biker skills to complete his vengeance against the kidnappers. While not exactly political, Di Leo makes the case here that big business and mob business are just two sides of the same coin and the working class is the victim of both. It's all in the title: the kidnapping of children of the rich is presented as veritable cottage industry masterminded by the mob with the dirty work contracted out to a network of thugs for hire. Di Leo makes a point of the business-like hierarchy of the syndicate, at first to emphasize the corporate structure of the criminal enterprise, and then to chart the father's journey to find the thugs who killed his son. His revenge isn't a matter of balancing the scales, it's simply payback from a man who hasn't anything left to live for, and thus nothing to lose.

In contrast to these two hard-edged cops-and-criminals thrillers, Naked Violence is a social drama with an exploitation hook. Think The Blackboard Jungle updated for the violent, sexually permissive late sixties by way of a police drama. The film opens with gargoylish close-ups of the boys in a class for problem kids and by the end of the opening credits, they have raped and murdered their teacher and left her sprawled naked on the desk for the police to find. The film proper follows dedicated Commisario Duca Lamberti (Pier Paolo Capponi) -- tough, compassionate, and weary of both the out-of-control social culture and the politically-motivated police command -- as he doggedly searches for the truth behind the stories told by the rogues gallery of juvenile delinquents.

The social drama ends up with a Psycho-sexual undercurrent of power and intimidation while our dedicated hero also proves to be both a tough and tender ladies' man who not only wins over the social worker (Susan Scott) but ends up making her a partner in his investigation and his romantic life, and even becomes a father figure to the most vulnerable boy of the group. It's not the usual Di Leo crime film we've come to expect in these sets, but it is effective (if blunt) and dynamic.

Shoot First, Die Later is mastered from the original 35mm negative (it still looks a little rough but that's a matter of wear on the original elements; the image is sharp and vivid) and the two others are digitally restored from less-than-stellar prints (especially Naked Violence, which is full of surface speckling and audio distortions) but look perfectly acceptable thanks to the clarity of the film image in these transfers. All feature original Italian soundtracks with new English subtitle translations plus an optional English dub soundtrack.

Supplements in this set include five interview featurettes originally made for Italian DVD, some of them produced before Di Leo's death in 2003: "The Good Fellas" (18-minute remembrance of Naked Violence with Fernando Di Leo, actor Pier Paolo Capponi, and others), "Fernando di Leo at the Cinematèque Français" (15-minute discussion with programmers at the famed cinemateque discussing Di Leo's work), "Master of the Game" (25-minute interview with Di Leo), "The Second Round of the Game" (21-minute featurette with actor Luc Merenda, assistant director Franc Lo Cascio, and editor Amedeo Giomini), and "Violent Cities: The Other Fernando Di Leo Trilogy" (a 28-minute discussion of the early career of Di Leo with the director, Meranda, and other collaborators). Also includes a booklet with (mostly anonymous and grammatically challenged) notes on the films.

By Sean Axmaker

Distributor VCI has recently released onto DVD a slew of 1930s British movies starring Jessie Matthews, England's best-loved musical film star of the era. One of the most interesting is Friday the Thirteenth (1933), which is not a musical but does have some musical interludes featuring the actress.

The movie, which has nothing to do with the 1980s Hollywood horror franchise, was inspired structurally by Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in which a bridge collapse inspires a look back at the lives of those who perished. In Friday the Thirteenth, the climactic event is a bus crash, on the rainy streets of London at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth. The moments leading up to the crash start the film, as we are introduced to the bus's occupants. We aren't shown the outcome of the crash, but are told two people perished in it. Then the film flashes back to that morning -- signified by Big Ben's rewinding hands -- and we start to see all the occupants' individual stories, building at a faster and faster pace, leading to their stepping onto that bus, and culminating in a series of ironic resolutions.

There's a love triangle involving a stage star; a blackmailing story; a tale of a big stock trade that may or may not have gone through in time; a meek bank clerk who doesn't realize his wife is leaving him; another meek husband who tries to walk a big dog and gets comically fleeced in a park; and a garrulous barker at the Caledonian Market who traffics in stolen art. There are two or three additional plot threads woven in as well, making for a too-cluttered script that nonetheless does eventually start to sort itself out and build significant interest -- as soon as the audience has a chance to start caring about the characters, that is, and wondering which two are going to die. The multiple stories also make the film rocket a bit too unevenly between comedy and tense drama, resulting in neither being 100% effective. But despite these flaws, Friday the Thirteenth is a fascinating and immersive piece of early talkie British cinema that deserves to better known.

The picture is equally fascinating for the chance to see a roster of superb British actors of the time: Ralph Richardson (in only his second film appearance), Edmund Gwenn, Gordon Harker, Max Miller (famous British comic and something of the British equivalent of the fast-talking Lee Tracy), Emlyn Williams (an actor-writer soon to reach fame as the playwright of Night Must Fall and The Corn is Green), and of course Jessie Matthews.

Matthews had become a sensation in the previous couple of years, and while this film is not her best musical showcase, she does get the chance to sing and dance and wear surprisingly provocative outfits. She may not be to all tastes, but one can sense her star appeal, and she has a charming presence, a warbling voice, and unforgettably big, round eyes. Matthews' husband, Sonnie Hale, plays the bus conductor here. He was a frequent co-star and director of her films, and while they were by now married in real life, their relationship had begun in scandal because Hale was still married at the time to his previous wife.

There was some interesting talent behind the camera, too. Contributing to the screenplay were the aforementioned Emlyn Williams as well as Sidney Gilliat, who built a solid career as writer, producer and occasionally director, and is best remembered for writing The Lady Vanishes (1938) and writing and directing Green For Danger (1946).

Director Victor Saville was an interesting fellow who worked well as director, producer and writer on both sides of the Atlantic. He directed several other Jessie Matthews vehicles such as The Good Companions (1933), Evergreen (1934) and his personal favorite It's Love Again (1936), he directed Vivien Leigh's first starring role, in Dark Journey (1937), and in Hollywood he helmed the underrated Rita Hayworth vehicle Tonight and Every Night (1945). Among his producing credits are The Citadel (1938) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). While not a great visual stylist, certainly Saville was an artist of taste and wide-ranging interest, and he consistently turned out engaging movies.

Of Friday the Thirteenth, Saville later wrote, "[It] was perhaps the most complicated film I ever had anything to do with." The demands of telling six stories taking place in one day, all leading chronologically to one event, were very challenging. Film scholar William Everson later wrote that another impressive aspect to this film was Saville's ability to use bits and pieces of sets to suggest much larger sets altogether.

The other Jessie Matthews titles now available from VCI are There Goes the Bride (1932), The Man From Toronto (1933), The Good Companions (1933) -- an important and hugely successful entry co-starring John Gielgud, Edmund Gwenn and Max Miller, and again directed by Victor Saville -- and Climbing High (1938), co-starring Michael Redgrave and Alastair Sim and directed by Carol Reed.

By Jeremy Arnold

The European films of Max Ophuls are elaborate dances of romance and seduction in a world of social constraints and fickle lovers, and his 1953 The Earrings of Madame de..., considered by some critics one of the perfect pictures of cinema, is the most elegant of these melancholy waltzes. And it is amazing, a piece that is not just directed, not just choreographed, but sculpted, with actors and décor as the raw materials and the camera carving out the story in time and space and black and white.

Danielle Darrieux is the Madame de... of the title, an old-world socialite in 19th century Paris in a marriage of convenience to confident, cultured diplomat Charles Boyer. She plays the Countess as a supremely poised actress who stages her own personal dramas for effect, such as fainting to force the sale of the earrings, or to stop a confrontation at a dance. Boyer gives the most delicate and nuanced performance of his career as the General, the very picture of a cultured gentleman at ease with social convention and manners, the confident, smiling high society habitué. Together they master the illusion of the perfect social pair while spending their free time dallying with flirtatious suitors and casual lovers, but the illusion is shattered when the Italian diplomat Baron Donati (Vittorio De Sica) enters the picture.

Where Boyer's General is easy and joshing to hide a lack of feeling, De Sica has an effortless charm that covers a romantic passion, and he falls for the Countess in a magical dance sequence that Andrew Sarris describes so eloquently: "In a series of Strauss waltz sequences, the most dazzling courtship in film history is conducted before the probing eyes of the Parisian Belle Epoque aristocracy." The Countess's whole social life has been a series of flirtations and romantic play, but this scene is unabashedly romantic, a fairy tale of love at first sight. But it's a fleeting moment, and for all the dreamy romance of the scenes, there's no heat between them. The passion simply doesn't break through their carefully cultivated facades and their romance isn't so much true love as a glimpse into the possibilities of true emotion that she has denied herself. Donati isn't necessarily her soulmate, but he shows her that perhaps such a thing is possible, and that possibility haunts her.

As in Ophuls' La Ronde, there is a circularity to the story carried along by the journey of the earrings of the title. They are sold at the opening of the film by Madame, bought again by the Count, given away as love tokens and farewell gifts, and ultimately make their way back to Madame. The jewels are never more than tokens, and the heart-shaped diamonds are a cold, impersonal stand-in for affection, but by the time they come back to the Countess as a gift from Donati, she has invested them with a meaning far greater than they ever had when they were merely a present from her husband.

Ophuls choreographs as much as he directs and his camera is both an intimate part of the dance and a distant observer of inevitable tragedy, capturing a culture of courtly manners petrified into meaningless ritual threatened only by the irrationality of emotion. He's sympathetic, but never really intimate. The camera acts like a respectful partner in an elaborately choreographed routine, one of those elaborate 19th Century group dances where you spend more time moving away from and dancing around your partner than actually touching them, always maintaining a proper distance.

Darrieux is so restrained that, by the end, it's not passion but desperation that drives her. She's enthralled by the ideal of love that she has denied herself. Boyer's Count is as emotionally driven as she is -- his jealousy is as real as her heartsick love -- yet his actions are determined more by pride and ego than romantic passion. It's not her affair that he objects to, it's her emotional engagement. A meaningless distraction he can understand, but love with another man an affront to everything that defines his life. He's as much a victim of social convention as is his wife.

The tragedy of The Earrings of Madame de... is ultimately not about losing a soulmate -- de Sica's Baron Donati is simply too removed a lover to have an emotional presence, a man who plays the game of romance so well that he never really seems to risk his heart -- but the realization that her life has been so empty, and is about to be so again. She realizes how meaningless her little games and flirtations have been when faced the possibility of something more. Fear of a life without the hope of something more meaningful (real or not) becomes more than she can face.

Criterion previously released the film on DVD in 2008 in a windowboxed edition. The Blu-ray is newly remastered (with no windowboxing) from Gaumont's 2012 2k restoration and the image is cleaner, sharper, and richer than the earlier DVD, though there have been pockets of criticism accusing the Gaumont restoration of too much digital filtering. That may be true, but on my screen it's a distinct improvement over the DVD.

New to disc is an "Introduction" by Paul Thomas Anderson, which is more accurately a 14-minute appreciation with discussion of some key scenes (and some spoilers). Carried over from the earlier release is commentary by film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar, which is a decidedly scholarly affair of prepared essays presented as a conversation, and an excellent 17-minute video essay on the visual style by Tag Gallagher. Also from the earlier release is a lengthy video interview with Ophuls' assistant director Alain Jessua, archival interviews with co-screenwriter Annette Wademant and assistant decorator Mar Frédérix (both from 1989), and a 1965 interview with Louise de Vilmorin, the author of the original story.

The accompanying booklet features an essay by critic Molly Haskell, an excerpt from costume designer Georges Annenkov's 1962 book Max Ophuls, and Louise de Vilmorin's novella Madame de, which inspired the film.

By Sean Axmaker

When child star Roddy McDowall graduated into a busy adult career as a character actor, he also became an accomplished photographer specializing in intimate and candid shots of the movie stars he knew and admired. Late in the 1960s he was quick to seize a long-desired opportunity to direct a film of his own. For subject matter McDowall chose a fantastic tale derived from a border country ballad by Robert Burns, about Tam Lin, a legendary Scot trapped by the Queen of the Fairies, and the woman whose love redeems him. Shifted to the present day, the legend seemed perfect for 1970, when the cultural spotlight on the British Isles had begun to fade. The Beatles had broken up, and the fantasy of Carnaby Street and Swinging London could no longer sustain itself.

McDowall used his sterling professional connections to arrange a classy production for this horror fable, to be filmed on location in Scotland. He signed rising star Ian McShane as the Tam Lin character, and lobbied Hollywood legend Ava Gardner for months to take the lead role. The 47 year-old preferred to work as little as possible, and was perhaps wary of the "hag horror" roles then being filled by older actresses -- Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead. Ms. Gardner was also concerned about doing sex scenes, especially with an actor twenty years younger than she. But McDowall was convinced that Ava was the perfect choice to play his imperious woman of mystery, and she wanted to help him become a director.

Writer William Spier's original screenplay lacks dramatic conflict. Fabulously wealthy, the beautiful but aging Michaela "Micky" Cazalet (Ava Gardner) lives life as a never-ending party. For amusement she keeps a crowd of young people around her, smartly dressed hangers-on that are allowed to partake of her generosity even as she treats them with contempt. Driving a flotilla of luxury sports cars, they relocate from the lady's urban town house to the luxurious Carter Hall in Scotland. Michaela's present lover-consort is Tom Lynn (Ian McShane), a photographer who has been her willing playmate for several months of endless ease and vacationing. Tom slowly becomes aware that he's living in a gilded cage. Michaela's personal secretary Elroy (Richard Wattis) runs all of her personal business, including the task of eliminating lovers that she tires of, or who displease her. Michaela's fierce pride puts Tom in jeopardy when he falls in love with Janet Ainsley (the popular Stephanie Beacham), a local vicar's daughter. Micky immediately senses his disloyalty, as do Elroy and Oliver (David Whitman), a hanger-on who would like to take Tom's place. When Tom takes off with Janet for a few days, Michaela has Elroy prepare a terrible punishment.

A lot of terrible things can happen to unlucky movies, and most of them seem to have happened to The Ballad of Tam Lin. It never received a real release. There were no problems during filming, but Commonwealth United couldn't decide on a title: as Tam Lin sounded Chinese they initially went with Games and Toys. Distribution was eventually arranged through American-International Pictures, which was having success with an English remake of Wuthering Heights. Despite going on official record with a U.K. release date of 1970, trade notices reported that The Ballad of Tam Lin was sold to American-International in an incomplete state, and that Roddy McDowall was obliged to volunteer to make revisions, without pay. Trimmed by six minutes, it saw a very brief release in 1972. The reviews were not kind. McDowall's direction was criticized as mannered and fussy; it was also noted that the Mod fashions on view were already painfully out of style. American-International re-titled the picture The Devil's Widow and offered it to theaters with early-'70s exploitation fare such as Blacula and The Thing with Two Heads.

An instant 'lost picture', The Ballad of Tam Lin was considered enough of a rarity to be later showcased on Los Angeles' legendary "Z" Channel cable station, in a pitiful pan-scanned video transfer. Until now it has remained something of a mystery. Roddy McDowall referred to it as an allegory for the end of the swinging '60s.

Tam Lin is a true oddity in that one can enjoy its component elements even as a compelling story fails to emerge. The screenplay lacks forward momentum -- sidebar characters and issues pop up, but fail to amount to anything. Stephanie Beacham's Janet is likeable enough, but several scenes with her father (Cyril Cusack) go nowhere, as does Janet's inquiry into an abortion. Some horror authorities praise the film's dreamlike qualities. The movie is shapeless: nothing that happens seems to be of consequence. The story unfolds as if the audience were already familiar with the original Tam Lin legend.

Micky's crowd of attractive freeloaders mostly fail to distinguish themselves -- besides David Whitman's schemer, only the baby-doll whining of Madeline Smith (The Vampire Lovers, Taste the Blood of Dracula) makes an impression. The group plays dull parlor games, eats and lounges about. No debauchery or drugs is depicted. When she's angry Michaela throws tantrums, calling "her children" moochers and scum. At one point she has Elroy dismiss them all and get in a different crowd. The new crop dresses severely and seems more willing to indulge in cruelties, but we learn nothing about them. Does Elroy have teams of party people stashed in local hotels, waiting for his call?

Most of the story barely connects with the traditional legend. An early scene is filmed through an ornate etched glass representation of the source story, and at one point Michaela wears a glittering, colorful tribal mask. The folk rock group The Pentangle provides two good songs, Tam Lin and The Best Part of You, with vocals that also evoke the traditional source tale. But the brief voiceover explanation of the ballad is soon forgotten as the movie unspools. The unfortunate advertising reference to the 'Devil's Widow' prompts viewers to expect Michaela Cazalet to be revealed as a demonic entity. Her concern with aging also makes us think that the legend might be similar to vintage pulp tales about savage queens in lost worlds that stay young by draining the life force from their male lovers. But Micky is not a supernatural force and her decadent hangers-on are not a coven.

Ian McShane's personal charm is sorely taxed, for there's little in his character to inspire us. Tom Lynn is pretty stupid not to pick up on the abundant clues of danger, and he remains careless even after it becomes clear that his life is on the line. He and Janet walk on the foggy shore in yet another beautiful scene that neutralizes any sense of apprehension. After an endless middle section, the movie finally puts Tom in a situation similar to the classic thriller The Most Dangerous Game. Given an LSD-like drug, he's beaten severely and then set loose to flee for his life in a sleek white sports car. Elroy and Micky expect him to crash and burn, but he instead finds himself stumbling through a swamp, hallucinating horrible monsters. The reason for this could have been made clear - in the original legend, Tam Lin transforms into several monstrous forms, and is only saved because his true love Janet refuses to leave his side.

Ava Gardner brings a sense of credibility to the selfishly amorous Micky. A bedroom scene sees her getting Tom drunk, and laughing herself silly when he collapses naked on the floor. Ava has a wrinkle or two around the eyes but can still turn on the glamour. She looks properly intimidating in impressive fashions by Balmain of Paris. As a woman scorned Gardner can muster 57 varieties of displeasure: biting sarcasm, resentful pleading, promises of happiness, and finally a simmering hatred that cannot be cooled. Gardner is also able to infer without words that Michaela holds some kind of secret power over her secretary Elroy. Actor Richard Wattis spent a lifetime playing bored valets and stuffy authority figures. His jaded stare in this film is so sinister that we wish the character were better explained.

So much is left unexplained in The Ballad of Tam Lin that it eventually becomes a frustrating experience. The lush visuals and Roddy McDowall's careful direction are compensations, but even they falter when the film tries to visualize Tom Lynn's nightmare in the swamp. At one point Tom thinks he's on fire, which cues a blast of impressive animated flames. But audiences invariably laugh when Tom literally transforms into a bear. The cinematography looks good but McShane is all too obviously wearing an unconvincing bear costume.

The film's younger cast members held a reunion a few years back to celebrate when they went to Scotland to play Gents and Dolly Birds. Among the beautiful people in Michaela's coterie are Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous, Jenny Hanley (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and Bruce Robinson, who would later write The Killing Fields and write and direct the admired Withnail & I.

Olive Films' Blu-ray of The Ballad of Tam Lin is a beautiful widescreen (Panavision) encoding of the longest (106 minutes) version of Roddy McDowall's ill-fated film. The on-screen title is The Ballad of Tam Lin. Billy Williams' glowing cinematography can at last be appreciated, as can the director's carefully planned shots. A few scenes make extensive use of a zoom lens, but always with a plan in mind. Tam Lin is an ambitious film idea that simply needed to be told in a more cohesive manner.

By Glenn Erickson

In 1925 the newly consolidated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was determined to conquer Hollywood on a grand scale, and soon launched the epic Ben-Hur, to be filmed in Italy. But its biggest success of the silent period was King Vidor's The Big Parade, a war drama that was expanded in scale during filming. Director Vidor very much wanted to make movies of lasting importance, and Laurence Stallings' tale of a green recruit thrown into battle arrived just when audiences were ready to see the WW1 experience revisited on theater screens. Star John Gilbert was one of MGM's top matinee idols; he shaved off his signature mustache for the film. Cooperative and easy-going, director King Vidor combined technical proficiency with an understanding of actors to make movies with a deeper vision. The Big Parade placed him at the top of the Hollywood game.

MGM's epic has been given a remarkable 4K restoration that makes the 1925 release look as if it were filmed yesterday. The impeccable presentation was supervised by David Gill and Kevin Brownlow.

Author Laurence Stallings' most famous work was the play What Price Glory. His own experiences as a U.S. infantryman form the basis of the story that became the template for film scenarios about The Great War. Wealthy but uninspired, young Jim Apperson (John Gilbert) becomes enthused by a military parade. He enlists, leaving behind his mother and father (Hobart Bosworth & Claire McDowell) as well as his girlfriend Justyn Reed (Claire Adams), who promises to wait for him. At boot camp he falls in with Slim (Karl Dane), a rowdy construction steeplejack, and Bull (Tom O'Brien), a tough bartender from the Bowery. In the French town of Champillon, Jim falls in love Melisande (Renée Adorée), a local girl who understands no English. Jim realizes that she's the love of his life when his unit is called up to join the front lines. Their objective is a difficult one -- to take Belleau Wood away from the Germans.

The Big Parade was a landmark picture for MGM, which promoted it as one of the studio's enduring classics. But it wasn't screened during WW2, after being placed on a list of films that might be detrimental to morale. Lewis Milestone's highly emotional All Quiet on the Western Front was withdrawn as well.

Harry Behn and Joseph Farnham's screenplay stresses universal experiences. Cheerful Jim Apperson enlists on a momentary impulse. The fact that he leaves his car in the middle of the street to join a patriotic parade sums up his mental state. Everything seems out of his hands. His girlfriend Justyn is the one to break the news to his parents.

The basic story has been so frequently re-told that we're surprised how fresh it all seems. Jim Apperson's time in France before battle is the stuff of military comedies. He and his jolly Army buddies are billeted to a barn previously occupied by pigs. They sing quite a bit (in text inter-titles) and get in trouble with superior officers. All three pursue the adorable Melisande in pursuit of a kiss, but she chooses Jim. Their barnyard courtship sees Jim introducing her to chewing gum, a motif that King Vidor uses to excellent effect. When the call to arms separates them Vidor creates a classic farewell scene that's been imitated ever since. Melisande runs after Jim's departing truck, and audiences were moved to tears. After Jim's gone we see Melisande once again chewing gum, and we know she's thinking about him. Gilbert and Adorée make an attractive couple, brought together and separated by war.

King Vidor's lengthy Belleau Wood battle sequence is designed in a formal, slightly artificial style. To create a specific visual rhythm Vidor assigned musicians to play drums for the actors to march to. The soldiers march through the Wood in strict cadence, their movements evoking a vision of a grim funeral machine. Most every other shot in the film is a static angle, but in the Belleau Wood scene the camera constantly moves with the advancing troops. Realism is not a major factor -- the soldiers do not break step even as snipers kill scores of them. When German machine guns open fire, only a couple of soldiers fall, instead of entire lines of men (see Peter Weir's Gallipoli for an extreme example of this).

Commentators persist in describing The Big Parade as neither pro-war or pacifist, when the show is definitely "pro". The final confrontation on a shell-cratered open field is bad news for Jim and his friends, but also a conventional triumph of old-school battle emotionalism. Jim assaults the enemy line single-handed because "the b______s killed my best friend." He may not know what he's fighting for, but the lesson is taught that combat by blood and steel is still a defining ritual that real men never shirk. Jim and his comrades compete to see who will go on the suicide mission. Alone and wounded in no-man's land, Jim claws his way forward with his bayonet, eager to kill some more. The fact that he shows mercy to a dying foe only completes the image of his gallantry.

The movie's honest sentimentality won over the mass audience. Jim was the Universal Soldier of the time, the man who went cheerfully to war and if lucky came back in one piece. When Jim's mother's greets his return, King Vidor uses a rapid truck-in to her heartbroken reaction. After all the static scenes the abrupt camera motion increases the shock. The bittersweet upbeat finish -- true love conquers all -- surely made audiences feel more secure after the harrowing battle scenes.

Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front now plays as a possible rebuttal to The Big Parade. King Vidor's epic may not reflect the full horror of The Great War, but it doesn't portray it as a picnic, either. It was an emotional summation of the conflict that audiences of 1925 were ready to accept.

Warner Home Video's Blu-ray of The Big Parade is an impressive, nearly perfect presentation. The level of detail revealed by the 4K scan is amazing, and whatever cleanup was necessary is all but invisible. The restoration people have retained the special effect of an ambulance with its Red Cross glowing bright red in the middle of a B&W; movie. In HD we can also appreciate MGM's excellent special effects for the combat scenes. An automatic matting system is used to place actors in the middle of miniature battlefields; lines of men become transparent as they cross into the double-exposed miniature areas. Elsewhere, excellent matte paintings turn Melisande's farm into a complete wreck.

The presentation features a powerful, heartfelt music score composed and conducted by Carl Davis. The 151-minute running time reflects a slowed projection speed. Motion is natural, although in the 'metronome march' in Belleau Wood the frame transposition rate affects the motion of the marching legs. At one hour and sixteen minutes a couple of seconds of damaged film have been replaced with an image from the 1931 talkie reissue. We can tell this because the left-hand frame line jumps -- the sound-on-film release cropped some of the image to make room for the soundtrack.

The presentation comes in Warners' book-like packaging. The 56-page souvenir booklet contains a long essay on King Vidor and The Big Parade by Kevin Brownlow, the man who championed the rediscovery of silent films in the 1960s and '70s. The book is embellished with vintage photos and a reproduction of the film's original souvenir booklet.

Author Jeffrey Vance's commentary is packed with fascinating information about the film and the interesting personalities of the people that made it. We learn that battle scenes were filmed in Griffith Park, on the undeveloped hills of Westwood and in Cloverfield Park, which is now a heavily developed section of Santa Monica. Vance goes into detail on Vidor's struggle to have Jim Apperson's screen injury mirror author Laurence Stallings' actual war wound. Vance helpfully points out an inter-title reference to Ernest Hemingway, which was added for the '31 reissue. In 1925 Hemingway's name was not yet a household word.

Also on view is the oft- screened 1925 MGM Studio Tour short subject, the one that shows the various departments and the lineups of silent-era cameramen and directors. Unfortunately, it's still in Standard Definition. An impressive silent trailer finishes the package.

By Glenn Erickson

Italian crime thriller director Fernando Di Leo is a favorite of Quentin Tarantino -- the director has gone on record crediting Di Leo's 1972 The Italian Connection as an inspiration for Jules and Vincent in Pulp Fiction -- but apart from a few dubbed and often recut VHS releases, his films were not readily available on home video for Americans to see. Raro Video has made it their mission to correct that oversight. In 2011 they released the box set Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection, featuring four stand-out gangster movies on DVD (the Blu-ray edition came out in 2012), and after a few stand-alone releases in the interim, they follow it up in 2013 with Fernando Di Leo: The Italian Crime Collection Vol. 2 (Raro) on both DVD and Blu-ray.

This three-disc set boxes up Shoot First, Die Later (1974), a ruthless crime drama starring Luc Merenda as a corrupt cop on a mission of righteous vengeance (previously released as a stand-alone disc), with two disc debuts: Naked Violence (1969), a juvenile delinquent cop drama by way of social commentary, and Kidnap Syndicate (1975), a revenge thriller with Merenda, this time playing an innocent bystander roused to take justice into his own hands.

Shoot First, Die Later, one of Di Leo's best, stars Merenda as Domenico Malacarne, a hotshot cop on the Milan strike force. Young, good looking, and at the center of big, dangerous cases, he is the department poster boy for police heroism and Di Leo kicks off the film with a volatile undercover assignment and a ferocious car chase that rivals The French Connection. Just the thing to introduce Domenico as an ambitious hero with a penchant for muscular assignments and brazen action, right before revealing that he's on take. The collision of the unpredictable nature of character with the impersonal code of mafia business is at the center of Di Leo's best gangster films and revenge is big, bloody, and violent. So when Domenico's father, a modest and idealistic career cop who sacrifices all for his son (including, at one point, his moral code), is murdered by a local mafia lieutenant, Domenico goes after the mob and its business-like boss (Richard Conte), who negotiates the crisis with ruthless aplomb after his underlings botch the job.

Domenico doesn't have much dimension as a character -- he's just a guy who thrives on the adrenaline of a dangerous assignment and lives beyond his salary on the payoffs from the mob as if he's earned it -- but he takes the condemnation of his father like a slap and the combination of guilt and fury fuels his rampage in palpable. Di Leo revs up the film some of the most impressive car chases I've seen in seventies cinema. (The stunt driving in the two car chase scenes were coordinated by French stunt driver Remy Julienne, and his team gets prominent billing in the opening credits.)

Again, Italian crime cinema takes its cue from American movies and then adds its own cynical edge and melodramatic intensity. American cop heroes of the seventies were mavericks, outcasts, idealists, and obsessives, but they were always focused on justice, however they defined it. Di Leo's hero is the compromised cop who stops justifying his corruption only when he's pushed too far and crossed by his paymasters. It's not justice, it's revenge, but since he's avenging an innocent and taking out the bad guys, he'll do as the hero in this equation.

Kidnap Syndicate is much angrier and more bilious, with the outrage split between the kidnappers of the title and the dispassionate industrialist (James Mason, playing the part with silky corruption and unfeeling arrogance) whose son was the original target. Merenda plays a working class single father, a simple auto mechanic who is caught up in the high stakes game when his boy is grabbed up along with the industrialist's son. The innocent kid is just collateral damage, another bargaining chip in a game where tycoons and criminals treat human life as a business deal, something to be negotiated for maximum leverage.

Where Shoot First, Die Later features elaborate and visceral car chases, Merenda's mechanic in Kidnap Syndicate is a retired motorcycle racer and the third act relies on his biker skills to complete his vengeance against the kidnappers. While not exactly political, Di Leo makes the case here that big business and mob business are just two sides of the same coin and the working class is the victim of both. It's all in the title: the kidnapping of children of the rich is presented as veritable cottage industry masterminded by the mob with the dirty work contracted out to a network of thugs for hire. Di Leo makes a point of the business-like hierarchy of the syndicate, at first to emphasize the corporate structure of the criminal enterprise, and then to chart the father's journey to find the thugs who killed his son. His revenge isn't a matter of balancing the scales, it's simply payback from a man who hasn't anything left to live for, and thus nothing to lose.

In contrast to these two hard-edged cops-and-criminals thrillers, Naked Violence is a social drama with an exploitation hook. Think The Blackboard Jungle updated for the violent, sexually permissive late sixties by way of a police drama. The film opens with gargoylish close-ups of the boys in a class for problem kids and by the end of the opening credits, they have raped and murdered their teacher and left her sprawled naked on the desk for the police to find. The film proper follows dedicated Commisario Duca Lamberti (Pier Paolo Capponi) -- tough, compassionate, and weary of both the out-of-control social culture and the politically-motivated police command -- as he doggedly searches for the truth behind the stories told by the rogues gallery of juvenile delinquents.

The social drama ends up with a Psycho-sexual undercurrent of power and intimidation while our dedicated hero also proves to be both a tough and tender ladies' man who not only wins over the social worker (Susan Scott) but ends up making her a partner in his investigation and his romantic life, and even becomes a father figure to the most vulnerable boy of the group. It's not the usual Di Leo crime film we've come to expect in these sets, but it is effective (if blunt) and dynamic.

Shoot First, Die Later is mastered from the original 35mm negative (it still looks a little rough but that's a matter of wear on the original elements; the image is sharp and vivid) and the two others are digitally restored from less-than-stellar prints (especially Naked Violence, which is full of surface speckling and audio distortions) but look perfectly acceptable thanks to the clarity of the film image in these transfers. All feature original Italian soundtracks with new English subtitle translations plus an optional English dub soundtrack.

Supplements in this set include five interview featurettes originally made for Italian DVD, some of them produced before Di Leo's death in 2003: "The Good Fellas" (18-minute remembrance of Naked Violence with Fernando Di Leo, actor Pier Paolo Capponi, and others), "Fernando di Leo at the Cinematèque Français" (15-minute discussion with programmers at the famed cinemateque discussing Di Leo's work), "Master of the Game" (25-minute interview with Di Leo), "The Second Round of the Game" (21-minute featurette with actor Luc Merenda, assistant director Franc Lo Cascio, and editor Amedeo Giomini), and "Violent Cities: The Other Fernando Di Leo Trilogy" (a 28-minute discussion of the early career of Di Leo with the director, Meranda, and other collaborators). Also includes a booklet with (mostly anonymous and grammatically challenged) notes on the films.

By Sean Axmaker

Distributor VCI has recently released onto DVD a slew of 1930s British movies starring Jessie Matthews, England's best-loved musical film star of the era. One of the most interesting is Friday the Thirteenth (1933), which is not a musical but does have some musical interludes featuring the actress.

The movie, which has nothing to do with the 1980s Hollywood horror franchise, was inspired structurally by Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, in which a bridge collapse inspires a look back at the lives of those who perished. In Friday the Thirteenth, the climactic event is a bus crash, on the rainy streets of London at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth. The moments leading up to the crash start the film, as we are introduced to the bus's occupants. We aren't shown the outcome of the crash, but are told two people perished in it. Then the film flashes back to that morning -- signified by Big Ben's rewinding hands -- and we start to see all the occupants' individual stories, building at a faster and faster pace, leading to their stepping onto that bus, and culminating in a series of ironic resolutions.

There's a love triangle involving a stage star; a blackmailing story; a tale of a big stock trade that may or may not have gone through in time; a meek bank clerk who doesn't realize his wife is leaving him; another meek husband who tries to walk a big dog and gets comically fleeced in a park; and a garrulous barker at the Caledonian Market who traffics in stolen art. There are two or three additional plot threads woven in as well, making for a too-cluttered script that nonetheless does eventually start to sort itself out and build significant interest -- as soon as the audience has a chance to start caring about the characters, that is, and wondering which two are going to die. The multiple stories also make the film rocket a bit too unevenly between comedy and tense drama, resulting in neither being 100% effective. But despite these flaws, Friday the Thirteenth is a fascinating and immersive piece of early talkie British cinema that deserves to better known.

The picture is equally fascinating for the chance to see a roster of superb British actors of the time: Ralph Richardson (in only his second film appearance), Edmund Gwenn, Gordon Harker, Max Miller (famous British comic and something of the British equivalent of the fast-talking Lee Tracy), Emlyn Williams (an actor-writer soon to reach fame as the playwright of Night Must Fall and The Corn is Green), and of course Jessie Matthews.

Matthews had become a sensation in the previous couple of years, and while this film is not her best musical showcase, she does get the chance to sing and dance and wear surprisingly provocative outfits. She may not be to all tastes, but one can sense her star appeal, and she has a charming presence, a warbling voice, and unforgettably big, round eyes. Matthews' husband, Sonnie Hale, plays the bus conductor here. He was a frequent co-star and director of her films, and while they were by now married in real life, their relationship had begun in scandal because Hale was still married at the time to his previous wife.

There was some interesting talent behind the camera, too. Contributing to the screenplay were the aforementioned Emlyn Williams as well as Sidney Gilliat, who built a solid career as writer, producer and occasionally director, and is best remembered for writing The Lady Vanishes (1938) and writing and directing Green For Danger (1946).

Director Victor Saville was an interesting fellow who worked well as director, producer and writer on both sides of the Atlantic. He directed several other Jessie Matthews vehicles such as The Good Companions (1933), Evergreen (1934) and his personal favorite It's Love Again (1936), he directed Vivien Leigh's first starring role, in Dark Journey (1937), and in Hollywood he helmed the underrated Rita Hayworth vehicle Tonight and Every Night (1945). Among his producing credits are The Citadel (1938) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). While not a great visual stylist, certainly Saville was an artist of taste and wide-ranging interest, and he consistently turned out engaging movies.

Of Friday the Thirteenth, Saville later wrote, "[It] was perhaps the most complicated film I ever had anything to do with." The demands of telling six stories taking place in one day, all leading chronologically to one event, were very challenging. Film scholar William Everson later wrote that another impressive aspect to this film was Saville's ability to use bits and pieces of sets to suggest much larger sets altogether.

The other Jessie Matthews titles now available from VCI are There Goes the Bride (1932), The Man From Toronto (1933), The Good Companions (1933) -- an important and hugely successful entry co-starring John Gielgud, Edmund Gwenn and Max Miller, and again directed by Victor Saville -- and Climbing High (1938), co-starring Michael Redgrave and Alastair Sim and directed by Carol Reed.

By Jeremy Arnold

The European films of Max Ophuls are elaborate dances of romance and seduction in a world of social constraints and fickle lovers, and his 1953 The Earrings of Madame de..., considered by some critics one of the perfect pictures of cinema, is the most elegant of these melancholy waltzes. And it is amazing, a piece that is not just directed, not just choreographed, but sculpted, with actors and décor as the raw materials and the camera carving out the story in time and space and black and white.

Danielle Darrieux is the Madame de... of the title, an old-world socialite in 19th century Paris in a marriage of convenience to confident, cultured diplomat Charles Boyer. She plays the Countess as a supremely poised actress who stages her own personal dramas for effect, such as fainting to force the sale of the earrings, or to stop a confrontation at a dance. Boyer gives the most delicate and nuanced performance of his career as the General, the very picture of a cultured gentleman at ease with social convention and manners, the confident, smiling high society habitué. Together they master the illusion of the perfect social pair while spending their free time dallying with flirtatious suitors and casual lovers, but the illusion is shattered when the Italian diplomat Baron Donati (Vittorio De Sica) enters the picture.

Where Boyer's General is easy and joshing to hide a lack of feeling, De Sica has an effortless charm that covers a romantic passion, and he falls for the Countess in a magical dance sequence that Andrew Sarris describes so eloquently: "In a series of Strauss waltz sequences, the most dazzling courtship in film history is conducted before the probing eyes of the Parisian Belle Epoque aristocracy." The Countess's whole social life has been a series of flirtations and romantic play, but this scene is unabashedly romantic, a fairy tale of love at first sight. But it's a fleeting moment, and for all the dreamy romance of the scenes, there's no heat between them. The passion simply doesn't break through their carefully cultivated facades and their romance isn't so much true love as a glimpse into the possibilities of true emotion that she has denied herself. Donati isn't necessarily her soulmate, but he shows her that perhaps such a thing is possible, and that possibility haunts her.

As in Ophuls' La Ronde, there is a circularity to the story carried along by the journey of the earrings of the title. They are sold at the opening of the film by Madame, bought again by the Count, given away as love tokens and farewell gifts, and ultimately make their way back to Madame. The jewels are never more than tokens, and the heart-shaped diamonds are a cold, impersonal stand-in for affection, but by the time they come back to the Countess as a gift from Donati, she has invested them with a meaning far greater than they ever had when they were merely a present from her husband.

Ophuls choreographs as much as he directs and his camera is both an intimate part of the dance and a distant observer of inevitable tragedy, capturing a culture of courtly manners petrified into meaningless ritual threatened only by the irrationality of emotion. He's sympathetic, but never really intimate. The camera acts like a respectful partner in an elaborately choreographed routine, one of those elaborate 19th Century group dances where you spend more time moving away from and dancing around your partner than actually touching them, always maintaining a proper distance.

Darrieux is so restrained that, by the end, it's not passion but desperation that drives her. She's enthralled by the ideal of love that she has denied herself. Boyer's Count is as emotionally driven as she is -- his jealousy is as real as her heartsick love -- yet his actions are determined more by pride and ego than romantic passion. It's not her affair that he objects to, it's her emotional engagement. A meaningless distraction he can understand, but love with another man an affront to everything that defines his life. He's as much a victim of social convention as is his wife.

The tragedy of The Earrings of Madame de... is ultimately not about losing a soulmate -- de Sica's Baron Donati is simply too removed a lover to have an emotional presence, a man who plays the game of romance so well that he never really seems to risk his heart -- but the realization that her life has been so empty, and is about to be so again. She realizes how meaningless her little games and flirtations have been when faced the possibility of something more. Fear of a life without the hope of something more meaningful (real or not) becomes more than she can face.

Criterion previously released the film on DVD in 2008 in a windowboxed edition. The Blu-ray is newly remastered (with no windowboxing) from Gaumont's 2012 2k restoration and the image is cleaner, sharper, and richer than the earlier DVD, though there have been pockets of criticism accusing the Gaumont restoration of too much digital filtering. That may be true, but on my screen it's a distinct improvement over the DVD.

New to disc is an "Introduction" by Paul Thomas Anderson, which is more accurately a 14-minute appreciation with discussion of some key scenes (and some spoilers). Carried over from the earlier release is commentary by film scholars Susan White and Gaylyn Studlar, which is a decidedly scholarly affair of prepared essays presented as a conversation, and an excellent 17-minute video essay on the visual style by Tag Gallagher. Also from the earlier release is a lengthy video interview with Ophuls' assistant director Alain Jessua, archival interviews with co-screenwriter Annette Wademant and assistant decorator Mar Frédérix (both from 1989), and a 1965 interview with Louise de Vilmorin, the author of the original story.

The accompanying booklet features an essay by critic Molly Haskell, an excerpt from costume designer Georges Annenkov's 1962 book Max Ophuls, and Louise de Vilmorin's novella Madame de, which inspired the film.

By Sean Axmaker

When child star Roddy McDowall graduated into a busy adult career as a character actor, he also became an accomplished photographer specializing in intimate and candid shots of the movie stars he knew and admired. Late in the 1960s he was quick to seize a long-desired opportunity to direct a film of his own. For subject matter McDowall chose a fantastic tale derived from a border country ballad by Robert Burns, about Tam Lin, a legendary Scot trapped by the Queen of the Fairies, and the woman whose love redeems him. Shifted to the present day, the legend seemed perfect for 1970, when the cultural spotlight on the British Isles had begun to fade. The Beatles had broken up, and the fantasy of Carnaby Street and Swinging London could no longer sustain itself.

McDowall used his sterling professional connections to arrange a classy production for this horror fable, to be filmed on location in Scotland. He signed rising star Ian McShane as the Tam Lin character, and lobbied Hollywood legend Ava Gardner for months to take the lead role. The 47 year-old preferred to work as little as possible, and was perhaps wary of the "hag horror" roles then being filled by older actresses -- Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead. Ms. Gardner was also concerned about doing sex scenes, especially with an actor twenty years younger than she. But McDowall was convinced that Ava was the perfect choice to play his imperious woman of mystery, and she wanted to help him become a director.

Writer William Spier's original screenplay lacks dramatic conflict. Fabulously wealthy, the beautiful but aging Michaela "Micky" Cazalet (Ava Gardner) lives life as a never-ending party. For amusement she keeps a crowd of young people around her, smartly dressed hangers-on that are allowed to partake of her generosity even as she treats them with contempt. Driving a flotilla of luxury sports cars, they relocate from the lady's urban town house to the luxurious Carter Hall in Scotland. Michaela's present lover-consort is Tom Lynn (Ian McShane), a photographer who has been her willing playmate for several months of endless ease and vacationing. Tom slowly becomes aware that he's living in a gilded cage. Michaela's personal secretary Elroy (Richard Wattis) runs all of her personal business, including the task of eliminating lovers that she tires of, or who displease her. Michaela's fierce pride puts Tom in jeopardy when he falls in love with Janet Ainsley (the popular Stephanie Beacham), a local vicar's daughter. Micky immediately senses his disloyalty, as do Elroy and Oliver (David Whitman), a hanger-on who would like to take Tom's place. When Tom takes off with Janet for a few days, Michaela has Elroy prepare a terrible punishment.

A lot of terrible things can happen to unlucky movies, and most of them seem to have happened to The Ballad of Tam Lin. It never received a real release. There were no problems during filming, but Commonwealth United couldn't decide on a title: as Tam Lin sounded Chinese they initially went with Games and Toys. Distribution was eventually arranged through American-International Pictures, which was having success with an English remake of Wuthering Heights. Despite going on official record with a U.K. release date of 1970, trade notices reported that The Ballad of Tam Lin was sold to American-International in an incomplete state, and that Roddy McDowall was obliged to volunteer to make revisions, without pay. Trimmed by six minutes, it saw a very brief release in 1972. The reviews were not kind. McDowall's direction was criticized as mannered and fussy; it was also noted that the Mod fashions on view were already painfully out of style. American-International re-titled the picture The Devil's Widow and offered it to theaters with early-'70s exploitation fare such as Blacula and The Thing with Two Heads.

An instant 'lost picture', The Ballad of Tam Lin was considered enough of a rarity to be later showcased on Los Angeles' legendary "Z" Channel cable station, in a pitiful pan-scanned video transfer. Until now it has remained something of a mystery. Roddy McDowall referred to it as an allegory for the end of the swinging '60s.

Tam Lin is a true oddity in that one can enjoy its component elements even as a compelling story fails to emerge. The screenplay lacks forward momentum -- sidebar characters and issues pop up, but fail to amount to anything. Stephanie Beacham's Janet is likeable enough, but several scenes with her father (Cyril Cusack) go nowhere, as does Janet's inquiry into an abortion. Some horror authorities praise the film's dreamlike qualities. The movie is shapeless: nothing that happens seems to be of consequence. The story unfolds as if the audience were already familiar with the original Tam Lin legend.

Micky's crowd of attractive freeloaders mostly fail to distinguish themselves -- besides David Whitman's schemer, only the baby-doll whining of Madeline Smith (The Vampire Lovers, Taste the Blood of Dracula) makes an impression. The group plays dull parlor games, eats and lounges about. No debauchery or drugs is depicted. When she's angry Michaela throws tantrums, calling "her children" moochers and scum. At one point she has Elroy dismiss them all and get in a different crowd. The new crop dresses severely and seems more willing to indulge in cruelties, but we learn nothing about them. Does Elroy have teams of party people stashed in local hotels, waiting for his call?

Most of the story barely connects with the traditional legend. An early scene is filmed through an ornate etched glass representation of the source story, and at one point Michaela wears a glittering, colorful tribal mask. The folk rock group The Pentangle provides two good songs, Tam Lin and The Best Part of You, with vocals that also evoke the traditional source tale. But the brief voiceover explanation of the ballad is soon forgotten as the movie unspools. The unfortunate advertising reference to the 'Devil's Widow' prompts viewers to expect Michaela Cazalet to be revealed as a demonic entity. Her concern with aging also makes us think that the legend might be similar to vintage pulp tales about savage queens in lost worlds that stay young by draining the life force from their male lovers. But Micky is not a supernatural force and her decadent hangers-on are not a coven.

Ian McShane's personal charm is sorely taxed, for there's little in his character to inspire us. Tom Lynn is pretty stupid not to pick up on the abundant clues of danger, and he remains careless even after it becomes clear that his life is on the line. He and Janet walk on the foggy shore in yet another beautiful scene that neutralizes any sense of apprehension. After an endless middle section, the movie finally puts Tom in a situation similar to the classic thriller The Most Dangerous Game. Given an LSD-like drug, he's beaten severely and then set loose to flee for his life in a sleek white sports car. Elroy and Micky expect him to crash and burn, but he instead finds himself stumbling through a swamp, hallucinating horrible monsters. The reason for this could have been made clear - in the original legend, Tam Lin transforms into several monstrous forms, and is only saved because his true love Janet refuses to leave his side.

Ava Gardner brings a sense of credibility to the selfishly amorous Micky. A bedroom scene sees her getting Tom drunk, and laughing herself silly when he collapses naked on the floor. Ava has a wrinkle or two around the eyes but can still turn on the glamour. She looks properly intimidating in impressive fashions by Balmain of Paris. As a woman scorned Gardner can muster 57 varieties of displeasure: biting sarcasm, resentful pleading, promises of happiness, and finally a simmering hatred that cannot be cooled. Gardner is also able to infer without words that Michaela holds some kind of secret power over her secretary Elroy. Actor Richard Wattis spent a lifetime playing bored valets and stuffy authority figures. His jaded stare in this film is so sinister that we wish the character were better explained.

So much is left unexplained in The Ballad of Tam Lin that it eventually becomes a frustrating experience. The lush visuals and Roddy McDowall's careful direction are compensations, but even they falter when the film tries to visualize Tom Lynn's nightmare in the swamp. At one point Tom thinks he's on fire, which cues a blast of impressive animated flames. But audiences invariably laugh when Tom literally transforms into a bear. The cinematography looks good but McShane is all too obviously wearing an unconvincing bear costume.

The film's younger cast members held a reunion a few years back to celebrate when they went to Scotland to play Gents and Dolly Birds. Among the beautiful people in Michaela's coterie are Joanna Lumley of Absolutely Fabulous, Jenny Hanley (On Her Majesty's Secret Service) and Bruce Robinson, who would later write The Killing Fields and write and direct the admired Withnail & I.

Olive Films' Blu-ray of The Ballad of Tam Lin is a beautiful widescreen (Panavision) encoding of the longest (106 minutes) version of Roddy McDowall's ill-fated film. The on-screen title is The Ballad of Tam Lin. Billy Williams' glowing cinematography can at last be appreciated, as can the director's carefully planned shots. A few scenes make extensive use of a zoom lens, but always with a plan in mind. Tam Lin is an ambitious film idea that simply needed to be told in a more cohesive manner.

By Glenn Erickson

In 1925 the newly consolidated Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was determined to conquer Hollywood on a grand scale, and soon launched the epic Ben-Hur, to be filmed in Italy. But its biggest success of the silent period was King Vidor's The Big Parade, a war drama that was expanded in scale during filming. Director Vidor very much wanted to make movies of lasting importance, and Laurence Stallings' tale of a green recruit thrown into battle arrived just when audiences were ready to see the WW1 experience revisited on theater screens. Star John Gilbert was one of MGM's top matinee idols; he shaved off his signature mustache for the film. Cooperative and easy-going, director King Vidor combined technical proficiency with an understanding of actors to make movies with a deeper vision. The Big Parade placed him at the top of the Hollywood game.

MGM's epic has been given a remarkable 4K restoration that makes the 1925 release look as if it were filmed yesterday. The impeccable presentation was supervised by David Gill and Kevin Brownlow.

Author Laurence Stallings' most famous work was the play What Price Glory. His own experiences as a U.S. infantryman form the basis of the story that became the template for film scenarios about The Great War. Wealthy but uninspired, young Jim Apperson (John Gilbert) becomes enthused by a military parade. He enlists, leaving behind his mother and father (Hobart Bosworth & Claire McDowell) as well as his girlfriend Justyn Reed (Claire Adams), who promises to wait for him. At boot camp he falls in with Slim (Karl Dane), a rowdy construction steeplejack, and Bull (Tom O'Brien), a tough bartender from the Bowery. In the French town of Champillon, Jim falls in love Melisande (Renée Adorée), a local girl who understands no English. Jim realizes that she's the love of his life when his unit is called up to join the front lines. Their objective is a difficult one -- to take Belleau Wood away from the Germans.

The Big Parade was a landmark picture for MGM, which promoted it as one of the studio's enduring classics. But it wasn't screened during WW2, after being placed on a list of films that might be detrimental to morale. Lewis Milestone's highly emotional All Quiet on the Western Front was withdrawn as well.

Harry Behn and Joseph Farnham's screenplay stresses universal experiences. Cheerful Jim Apperson enlists on a momentary impulse. The fact that he leaves his car in the middle of the street to join a patriotic parade sums up his mental state. Everything seems out of his hands. His girlfriend Justyn is the one to break the news to his parents.

The basic story has been so frequently re-told that we're surprised how fresh it all seems. Jim Apperson's time in France before battle is the stuff of military comedies. He and his jolly Army buddies are billeted to a barn previously occupied by pigs. They sing quite a bit (in text inter-titles) and get in trouble with superior officers. All three pursue the adorable Melisande in pursuit of a kiss, but she chooses Jim. Their barnyard courtship sees Jim introducing her to chewing gum, a motif that King Vidor uses to excellent effect. When the call to arms separates them Vidor creates a classic farewell scene that's been imitated ever since. Melisande runs after Jim's departing truck, and audiences were moved to tears. After Jim's gone we see Melisande once again chewing gum, and we know she's thinking about him. Gilbert and Adorée make an attractive couple, brought together and separated by war.

King Vidor's lengthy Belleau Wood battle sequence is designed in a formal, slightly artificial style. To create a specific visual rhythm Vidor assigned musicians to play drums for the actors to march to. The soldiers march through the Wood in strict cadence, their movements evoking a vision of a grim funeral machine. Most every other shot in the film is a static angle, but in the Belleau Wood scene the camera constantly moves with the advancing troops. Realism is not a major factor -- the soldiers do not break step even as snipers kill scores of them. When German machine guns open fire, only a couple of soldiers fall, instead of entire lines of men (see Peter Weir's Gallipoli for an extreme example of this).

Commentators persist in describing The Big Parade as neither pro-war or pacifist, when the show is definitely "pro". The final confrontation on a shell-cratered open field is bad news for Jim and his friends, but also a conventional triumph of old-school battle emotionalism. Jim assaults the enemy line single-handed because "the b______s killed my best friend." He may not know what he's fighting for, but the lesson is taught that combat by blood and steel is still a defining ritual that real men never shirk. Jim and his comrades compete to see who will go on the suicide mission. Alone and wounded in no-man's land, Jim claws his way forward with his bayonet, eager to kill some more. The fact that he shows mercy to a dying foe only completes the image of his gallantry.

The movie's honest sentimentality won over the mass audience. Jim was the Universal Soldier of the time, the man who went cheerfully to war and if lucky came back in one piece. When Jim's mother's greets his return, King Vidor uses a rapid truck-in to her heartbroken reaction. After all the static scenes the abrupt camera motion increases the shock. The bittersweet upbeat finish -- true love conquers all -- surely made audiences feel more secure after the harrowing battle scenes.

Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front now plays as a possible rebuttal to The Big Parade. King Vidor's epic may not reflect the full horror of The Great War, but it doesn't portray it as a picnic, either. It was an emotional summation of the conflict that audiences of 1925 were ready to accept.

Warner Home Video's Blu-ray of The Big Parade is an impressive, nearly perfect presentation. The level of detail revealed by the 4K scan is amazing, and whatever cleanup was necessary is all but invisible. The restoration people have retained the special effect of an ambulance with its Red Cross glowing bright red in the middle of a B&W; movie. In HD we can also appreciate MGM's excellent special effects for the combat scenes. An automatic matting system is used to place actors in the middle of miniature battlefields; lines of men become transparent as they cross into the double-exposed miniature areas. Elsewhere, excellent matte paintings turn Melisande's farm into a complete wreck.

The presentation features a powerful, heartfelt music score composed and conducted by Carl Davis. The 151-minute running time reflects a slowed projection speed. Motion is natural, although in the 'metronome march' in Belleau Wood the frame transposition rate affects the motion of the marching legs. At one hour and sixteen minutes a couple of seconds of damaged film have been replaced with an image from the 1931 talkie reissue. We can tell this because the left-hand frame line jumps -- the sound-on-film release cropped some of the image to make room for the soundtrack.

The presentation comes in Warners' book-like packaging. The 56-page souvenir booklet contains a long essay on King Vidor and The Big Parade by Kevin Brownlow, the man who championed the rediscovery of silent films in the 1960s and '70s. The book is embellished with vintage photos and a reproduction of the film's original souvenir booklet.

Author Jeffrey Vance's commentary is packed with fascinating information about the film and the interesting personalities of the people that made it. We learn that battle scenes were filmed in Griffith Park, on the undeveloped hills of Westwood and in Cloverfield Park, which is now a heavily developed section of Santa Monica. Vance goes into detail on Vidor's struggle to have Jim Apperson's screen injury mirror author Laurence Stallings' actual war wound. Vance helpfully points out an inter-title reference to Ernest Hemingway, which was added for the '31 reissue. In 1925 Hemingway's name was not yet a household word.

Also on view is the oft- screened 1925 MGM Studio Tour short subject, the one that shows the various departments and the lineups of silent-era cameramen and directors. Unfortunately, it's still in Standard Definition. An impressive silent trailer finishes the package.

By Glenn Erickson