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Every once in a while a movie studio would ruin what might have been a masterpiece — and Preston Sturges’ last-released Paramount comedy suffered exactly that. “Triumph Over Pain” was supposed to be something new, a daring blend of comedy and tragedy. Studio politics intervened and tried to turn it into a straight comedy. Disc producer Constantine Nasr oversees two extras that explain what happened in full detail; it’s a fascinating story of a brillant and successful writer-director at odds with his studio bosses. Joel McCrea, Betty Field and William Demarest star — and the show is still entertaining despite its problems.

The Great Moment

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1944 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 83 min. / Great without Glory, Immortal Secret, Morton the Magnificent, Triumph over Pain / Street Date February 1, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Joel McCrea, Betty Field, Harry Carey, William Demarest, Louis Jean Heydt, Julius Tannen, Edwin Maxwell, Porter Hall, Franklin Pangborn,...

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“Pratfalls And A Zoom Supplement”

By Raymond Benson

The brilliance of Preston Sturges’ brilliant screwball comedy aside, what is striking about the new Blu-ray edition of the filmmaker’s 1941 The Lady Eve from The Criterion Collection is the supplement that is a Zoom conversation between Tom Sturges (Preston’s son), filmmakers Peter Bogdanovich, James L. Brooks, and Ron Shelton, and critics Leonard Maltin, Kenneth Turan, and Susan King. While it’s unclear if this is the first acknowledgment of the Covid-19 pandemic in the production of home video supplementary features, this reviewer found the inclusion to be revelatory. How amazing it is to see these personages in the Brady Bunch-style squares all discussing Sturges and the film, and mirroring what many of us are doing while working at home. At one point, Brooks’ internet connection fails and his image freezes. All the others...

“It’S The Bunk!”

By Raymond Benson

In the year 1940, Hollywood screenwriter Preston Sturges elevated his career to become one of the first writer/director double threats since the silent days of Chaplin and Keaton. For a brief five years in the early 40s, his flame burned brightly as he churned out sophisticated screwball comedies that had great wit, intelligence, and a stock company of iconic supporting comic actors—the guys you always recognize but never know their names.

After winning an Oscar for writing The Great McGinty (1940), Sturges presented superb material through 1945. Short, smart, and hilarious, Christmas in July was his second directorial effort from a script based on his own unproduced stage play. Like most of Sturges’ works, the story concerns the Everyman who wants nothing more than to better himself—and if he must challenge authority and make some waves while he does it, then so be it.

Rex Harrison hat on TCM: ‘My Fair Lady,’ ‘Anna and the King of Siam’ Rex Harrison is Turner Classic Movies’ final "Summer Under the Stars" star today, August 31, 2013. TCM is currently showing George Cukor’s lavish My Fair Lady (1964), an Academy Award-winning musical that has (in my humble opinion) unfairly lost quite a bit of its prestige in the last several decades. Rex Harrison, invariably a major ham whether playing Saladin, the King of Siam, Julius Caesar, the ghost of a dead sea captain, or Richard Burton’s lover, is for once flawlessly cast as Professor Henry Higgins, who on stage transformed Julie Andrews from cockney duckling to diction-master swan and who in the movie version does the same for Audrey Hepburn. Harrison, by the way, was the year’s Best Actor Oscar winner. (See also: "Audrey Hepburn vs. Julie Andrews: Biggest Oscar Snubs.") Following My Fair Lady, Rex Harrison...