Heavenly Christmas Film Classics

Festival Films is offering a perfect opportunity to make the perfect Christmas present for film lovers dear to you.
"Heavenly Christmas Film Classics" contains rare and even never before seen shorts or TV episodes.

Animation fans are in for a treat! If you don't know Lotte Reiniger, this is a perfect introduction to her work. She is a pioneer in animation and if you think Walt Disney's Snow White is the first animated feature, well you're wrong. It is the first in color, but Lotte Reiniger had directed (with the help of her husband Carl Koch) The Adventures of Prince Achmed, a 1926 feature film entirely animated with articulated paper silhouettes.
The same technique is employed here in The Star Of Bethlehem although the film is narrated by Barbara Ruick and it is Reiniger's second short in color.

Christmas is Magic is a truly moving story about a John Doe with amnesia (played by Hank Patterson who carried his character Fred Ziffel through 3 different series: Petticoat Junction, The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres) who meets a young war-widow and her kid. He's all alone in the world, with not even a home town to go back to and she's engaged to a grumpy guy who dislikes Christmas.You guessed it : their lives are about to get better.

The little jewel of this DVD is a short produced, directed and played by James Mason in 1954, at the height of his success, when A Star Is Born had just been released (he actually used the same cinematographer for this Xmas short: Sam Leavitt). It seems Mason had directed two shorts that year, both starring his little daughter Portland. And this one, entitled (like Lotte Reiniger's short) The Star Of Bethlehem is such an obscure title that it did not even have an entry on the imdb (it should have one soon though).

You know that Little Joseph, don't you?

There are basically two parts to this film: first James Mason reads aloud from what I suppose is the Bible. Then he kisses his kids good night and his daughter dreams that she is the Virgin Mary and the story is told with a cast of children in the way of a school play. The sets are designed by Serge Krizman, who worked on the Batman TV series which should give you a good idea of the scenery.
And of course, Joseph is played by little Jerry Mathers who went on to star in Alfred Hitchcock's The Trouble With Harry and in the famous TV series Leave it to Beaver.

Another story with kids taught me a thing or two about Christmas in Latin America. Three Young Kings starts with Scarlett O'Hara's father Thomas Mitchell. Did you know that in Latin countries, the Epiphany is when kids get their presents? And these presents are brought, not by Santa Claus, but by the Three Kings.
This is the story of three pupils chosen to portray the Three Kings in their school to bring all their classmates presents. On their way to do that, they come across many kids from less fortunate families and decide to do the right thing. How are they going to explain that to the school's parents?

Finally, two versions of the story of the song Silent night bookend the program: a 1939 British short and a 1953 color version. All of these are available on the Festival Films website and on amazon.com.

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I wish you a very merry Christmas!

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Dracula

Universal is celebrating its 100th anniversary and one of the studio's trademark has recently seen a Blu-ray box set release.
Universal monsters movies have defined the codes of the genre, not to mention the features of Halloween masks for centuries to come.
And the first Universal talking picture stars the most famous of them all. In 1931, the first official screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula hit the screen. It had been preceded by Murnau's famous Nosferatu which, although a masterpiece, was not granted permission to use the story by Bram Stoker's widow. She subsequently tried to have the negatives and all copies destroyed.






Universal's movie was adapted from Hamilton Dean's successful stage play. The studio had wanted to pair the two "masters" of horror: star Lon Chaney, who had triumphed in The Phantom of the Opera, and MGM director Tod Browning. They managed to lure Tod Browning in the Universal family, but Lon Chaney died of lung cancer. After several casting considerations like Conrad Veidt, it was finally decided to go with the easy choice and use the star of the play, Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi.

The latter gave such a memorable performance that he was typecast in the horror genre for the rest of his career.

A rather unknown alternate version of the film is simply the silent version. Indeed, at the time, many theaters weren't equipped with sound and so the film was also edited silent, with the usual title cards for dialog.
In the early 1930s, sound being the new wonder that it was, the technique of dubbing was in its infancy and it was decided that the best way to export a film abroad was to re-shoot it whatever language that was needed. Such was the case with Dracula. When the English crew finished their day's work, a Spanish-speaking crew would come in those same sets and shoot their version of the film at night.

The viewing of this version starring Carlos Villarías is rather unsettling. It is a different movie, yet the scenes are almost sequenced identically. The sets are often photographed in very different ways, showing off more production values that Browning's version. But the Spanish cast gives an impression of camp which is not readily apparent in the English version where the actors seem to take things more seriously. In any case, the scenes drag in the Spanish version and the film lasts about 30 more minutes.

"Nunca bebo... vino"

That version was missing a whole reel for several decades, and the missing scenes (everything from Renfield fainting in Dracula's castle to the opera scene in London) were located in Cuba. There is a very noticeable drop in quality in the restored print throughout these sequences.

For the Blu-ray release, the film has been lovingly and intensively restored. I must say it was easier to appreciate that way, because not only did it erase a good deal of the ravages of time, but it actually corrected several problems that were probably there on first release.

For one thing, the ground noise (hiss) was among the worst I could remember. It was not eliminated but is significantly reduced on the Blu-ray. And the main title was plagued by a jump cut and a drop in the audio, which were both erased.

Through time, some elements of the film were changed. Censorship imposed Dracula's screams to be removed when Van Helsing drives the stake through his heart. They were restored along with Renfield's when he meets his fate.

In 1999, Philip Glass offered the film what Universal executives felt it had been missing since day one: a musical score. Except for a brief fragment of Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake over the main titles and the opera scene, there is no music in Dracula, as filmmakers at the time felt that the audience wouldn't understand where the music was coming from if you didn't see the orchestra on the screen.
The new score gives a more modern feel to the film, even though I felt it was a bit obtrusive at times. It is interesting to notice that the newly recorded alternate language versions offered on the Blu-ray (such as the French track) contain that score and a new foley track, meaning there is no age related hiss to be heard.

In spite of its restoration, there is a scene still missing from the film. In the spirit of the next monster movie's prologue Frankenstein, Dracula originally ended with a short scene with professor Van Helsing addressing the audience in front of a blank screen and telling them, in essence "Just a moment ladies and gentlemen! Just a word before you go. We hope the memories of Dracula won't give you bad dreams. So just a word of reassurance. When you get home tonight, and the lights are turned out, and you're afraid to look behind the curtains, and you dread to see a face appear at the window, well... Just pull yourself together and remember: after all... There ARE such things!"
This scene, although apparently still extant, is not available in a decent quality and only a small portion of it can be seen in the documentary available in the bonus section.

In any case, and despite obvious budget limitations, Dracula remains a milestone in film history and I strongly recommend this new release.
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That's all for today folks!

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