Myrna Loy, whose combination of wry intelligence and unflappable freshness made her a beloved star in the movies of the 1930s and `40s, receives a four-disc salute in a new boxed package of laserdiscs,
”Rediscovering Myrna Loy” (MGM/UA Home Video ML102799, $99.95).
The set, which comes with an illustrated appreciation of the actress`
career, contains four Loy films, each directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the man who launched her and William Powell in ”The Thin Man” series.
The most famous of the movies is ”Manhattan Melodrama” (1934), with Powell and Clark Gable as Loy`s lovers on opposite sides of the law. It was just after seeing this film at the Biograph Theater that John Dillinger was gunned down by FBI agents in Chicago.
The other three, all quick, breezy program fare from the MGM factory and all making their first appearance on home video, are: ”Penthouse” (1933), with Loy as a bright shady lady aiding criminal lawyer Warner Baxter in solving a murder; ”The Prizefighter and the Lady” (1933), with Loy married to bouncer-turned-heavyweight boxer Max Baer; and ”I Love You Again” (1940), with Powell as an amnesiac who must rewin Loy, his estranged wife.
The movies, in reasonably good shape in their black-and-white pictures, are chapter-encoded for instant access to choice scenes and come with their original theatrical trailers.
Also from the MGM vaults is the ever-popular ”Ninotchka” (MGM/UA ML102797, $34.95). Thanks to a newly remastered print, this beloved romantic comedy of 1939, with Ernst Lubitsch directing the witty script of Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch, looks fresher than ever.
This edition is encased in a gatefold jacket and is chapter-encoded, so that you can jump instantly to the scene in which (as the ads for the movie proclaimed) ”Garbo Laughs!”
A new wave of old films directed by Francois Truffaut is beginning to appear on laserdisc. First out, widescreen and in French with clear English subtitles, are: ”The Last Metro” (Criterion Collection 1301L, two discs, $69.95), with Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve as members of a theater troupe under pressure from the Nazis in occupied Paris; and ”The Story of Adele H.” (MGM/UA ML102333, $34.95), with Isabelle Adjani as a fragile young woman obsessed with love for a cad.
The color cinematography by Nestor Almendros is beautifully presented on both films.
Alfred Hitchcock`s first sound film, the innovative ”Blackmail”
(Criterion CC1297L, $49.95), the story of a woman who kills her would-be rapist and then is blackmailed, comes with a rare film clip showing the director tossing off a bawdy joke to his leading lady, Anny Ondra, during a sound test.
A further supplement is the running commentary, on a second sound track, by Charles Bennett, the author (now in his 90s) of the play from which the thriller was taken.
”Shelley Duvall`s Bedtime Stories” (MCA/Universal Home Video 41314, $34.95) contains six nicely animated color stories, each introduced by Duvall and narrated by a movie, TV or pop star. Best of the lot is Big Mama Bette Midler telling Audrey Wood`s charming tale of ”Weird Parents.”
Also out on laserdisc this month:
”House of Wax” (Warner Home Video 11054, $34.95), with Vincent Price, one of the best of the 3-D horror movies produced in the 1950s, unfortunately has only the standard two dimensions here, but the print-cleaned up for the film`s recent theatrical re-release-retains deep shadows and crisp colors in its transfer to laserdisc.
”Dangerous When Wet” (MGM/UA ML100863, $34.95), a 1953 Esther Williams musical, in addition to the celebrated sequence in which Williams swims with the cartoon cat and mouse combo of Tom and Jerry, has pretty Technicolor, lively songs by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, and a supporting cast that includes Jack Carson, William Demarest and Charlotte Greenwood.
”The Picture of Dorian Gray” (MGM/UA ML102798, $34.95), based on the Oscar Wilde novel, is notable on disc for Harry Stradling`s Oscar-winning black-and-white cinemaography and the Technicolor inserts of the decaying portrait of the title character, painted for the film by Ivan Albright.
