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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A Star Is Born Again

I mentioned a restoration technique that I thought was interesting when I discussed Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. A complete soundtrack was still extant but whole chunks of footage were missing. Instead of discarding the soundtrack, the restoration team opted to replace the missing parts with appropriately placed still pictures.

Mason in costume

When the time came to restore A Star Is Born, a similar problem occurred. Even before the film’s premiere, many scenes were removed to tighten an already long story. Scenes of Norman Maine shooting a pirate film on location are now only remembered through a few stills.

Mason in a pre-premiere outtake

But this can be considered part of the making of the film. However, soon after the premiere, Warner Brothers decided that the film was too long and an intermission was inappropriate. So under the pressure of local distributors (who wanted a shorter film to allow more showings per day) the film was heavily butchered in several places without the assistance of director George Cukor. Since the idea was to shorten the film only through editing, no reshoots were planned to explain missing plot points or to sweeten awkward transitions.

Deleted picnic scene

That meant that once it was decided that the first scene of Norman Maine’s extensive search for Esther was gone, the rest of the scenes had to go too. And indeed it did, along with two musical numbers (when there weren’t that many to begin with) and many other scenes.

The restoration began when the complete monaural copy of the soundtrack was located in the vaults of Warner Brothers. This gave the restorers the hope that, if the missing footage could be located, the world could once again see the original edit of the film. Their goal was to show it to George Cukor who could never sit through the film again.

At the time the decision to cut the film was made, Warner requested the cuts of the copies already in circulation to be shipped back to the studio. It soon became apparent that they had not only tossed away these cuts, but had also cut the original negative and thrown away the outtakes.

With apparently nothing to work with, they went on an extensive search for uncut copies. Except for the missing musical sequences that they got from the vaults of the studio or from a private collector who had stolen the “Long Face” sequence long ago, the all important dramatic scenes of the first third of the film could not be located in their entirety. The decision was taken to use the bits of film found in the department that stored stock footage (the bits and pieces that were considered usable for other films like streets, cars, locations, etc.) and the studio stills over the soundtrack in place of the cut scenes.

The main problem with this was the fact that, to save on costs, and unlike the regular studio practice of the time, very few studio stills were taken on this production (one only per scene average). So they sometimes had to recreate a still by combining several unrelated ones or by completely photographing new scenes (The tenant of the Oleander Arms is an actress from the eighties).

In spite of that, two dialog-heavy scenes still had to be shortened for the restoration, the complete version of which are offered as bonus features on the Blu-ray.

However, the result looks marvelous and even though the appearance of the stills intercut with live footage can seem weird to some, it does help to raise awareness to film preservation. Unfortunately George Cukor died before this restoration was completed and screened.

As a matter of fact, according to this article, at least one complete copy of the film (and even some scenes cut prior to release) still exist in the hands of a private collector named Michael Arick, which seems believable enough considering how the "Long Face" sequence was recovered. However, due to a conflict about a previous collaboration with Warner over a complete print of A Streetcar named desire (among other things), Arick does not wish to deal with them again. Let's pray that the film will some day be complete.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

The Blu-ray also offers other versions of the very famous Man That Got Away sequence, because it was filmed to playback several times before everyone involved was satisfied with costumes, lights and the overall look of it.

Early concept for The Man That got Away

I strongly suggest you to buy the soundtrack CD if you like the film. After all, it IS a musical. Also, a great book called “A star is born, The making of the 1954 movie and its 1983 restoration” was written by Ronald Haver, who is responsible for this restoration. The first part tells the fascinating story of the film at the time of the making which helps to explain the decisions made at the time regarding its fate (it was the first Warner Cinemascope picture), and the second part is about the epic restoration.

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That’s all for today folks!

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Lost Horizon

Now there's an alternate title for my blog!

Welcome to Shangri-la! The name probably rings a bell. Can't remember where you heard it? Shangri-la is a fictitious place imagined by James Hilton, great author of a beautiful novel I read while I was in French Guiana. The isolation of the characters was similar to mine at the time when the place was new to me. Thankfully, the screen adaptation of this spellbinding story was given to one of the best directors in Hollywood.

The irony is that a film about the legend of the fountain of youth has known so much strife for a still incomplete version to be presented to us today. However, a special restoration technique has been used on the film, and this is what I'd like to discuss.

Frank Capra explains in his gripping autobiography that he strated blossoming in his work from the moment on he made films with a message that spoke to him on a personal level, instead of made to order blockbusters for Columbia (these had success anyway, the man had talent!).

And Lost Horizon is from that second part of his career that exalts human kindness at the risk of being over-optimistic, a critique often made about Capra but also a quality that bases his most famous films like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, It's A Wonderful Life, etc.

Lost Horizon was supposed to be the first 3-hour Columbia blockbuster. Plane crash, avalanche, superb settings are part of the show. Capra wrote he had to cut the first two reels of the film due to a disastrous preview in Santa Barbara: a framing that turned the rest of the film into a giant flash-back. He claims he destroyed the reels himself then. So there would be no chance of ever finding them again. However this can be considered pre-production as the final version of the film had not been released yet.

But the following theatrical releases was the film cut from 132 minutes to 118, then 95. In the seventies, the result was appalling: not only was the negative lost (it deteriorated), but all known copies had several scenes cut. By searching throughout the world, the restoration crew gathered elements including a complete soundtrack, but no complete film. Some scenes were available in poorer quality and the difference does show, but others simply had not survived.

The restoring team made a bold and honorable decision: they kept the complete film and replaced missing portions by stills and production photographs and the result is stunning. The fact that the film is in black and white draws less attention to the technique than in A Star Is Born even if I appreciate the work on that film immensely too.

Enough about technician aspects. About this film, except for the story and the outstanding direction, I recommend Dimitri Tiomkin's great score available on CD (Considering the fate of the film, it is amazing that the soundtrack was preserved). As for the casting, Ronald Colman stars. He also shined in the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda (the best one and it is a tough competition). But secondary characters are just great. First Thomas Mitchell, Scarlett's father in Gone With The Wind, as a good hearted crook, and especially Edward Everett Horton, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's eternal sidekick in their musicals. Horton has a style his own that you can never forget.

For the anecdote, Capra says he chose an old stage actor for the part of the High Lama and that when his maid announced the tests were good and he had the part, the old man died.


A musical remake was made in 1973, and was instantly panned by critics.

After seeing Lost Horizon, I don't know if I should hope that you find the missing scenes in your attic or if you should find your own Shangri-la.
It is now unthinkable that a good part of the speech of the High Lama was cut when it resonates today just as much as it probably did back in 1937). Run out and buy the restored DVD version if you wish to listen to it. I'm copying a part of it.
Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. A time must come my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time, is why I avoided death, and am here. And why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music, and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind!

That's all for today folks!

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