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Peter Yates’ excellent war-movie follow-up to Bullitt landed in the wrong year: the beautifully produced and directed action thriller was barely seen in America. Royal Navy mechanic Peter O’Toole swears vengeance on the U-Boat commander who sunk his ship and murdered its entire crew. Locals in a Caribbean backwater help him to strike back: he must first teach himself to fly an airplane. With support from Horst Janson, Sian Phillips and the great Philippe Noiret, it’s a wartime suspense nail-biter with a little manic obsession thrown in as well. Indicator’s extras feature the great editor-director John Glen, who relates the exciting story of the filming on location in Venezuela.

Murphy’s War

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1971 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 107 min. / Limited Edition / Street Date May 30, 2022 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £19.99

Starring: Peter O’Toole, Sian Phillips, Philippe Noiret, Horst Janson, John Hallam, Ingo Mogendorf.

Cinematography: Douglas Slocombe...

Top stars Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida earn their keep in Carol Reed’s powerful tale of ambition and excellence performing forty feet above a circus arena. The best circus movie ever is also among Reed’s most exciting, best directed movies, a solid show all around.

Trapeze

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 106 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Gina Lollobrigida, Katy Jurado, Thomas Gomez, Sidney James, Johnny Puleo.

Cinematography: Robert Krasker

Costume Design: Veniero Colasanti

Editorial Supervisor: Bert Batt

Production Design: Rino Mondelli

Dialogue Coach: Harriet White Medin

Original Music: Malcolm Arnold

Written by James R. Webb & Liam O’Brien from a novel by Max Catto

Produced by James Hill, Harold Hecht, Burt Lancaster

Directed by Carol Reed

For a long time it seemed that Carol Reed had been canonized for The Third Man, Odd Man Out and...

Looking back at the early days of cinema allows us not only the opportunity to see the development of our favourite medium but also discover the hidden gems which may have been forgotten.

Network Releasing are shining their own particular light on some of the lesser-known films from one of the most important studios in British cinema history. The Ealing Studios Rarities Collection Vol. 1 (out on the 8th of April) contains early works from directors such as Carol Reed and Basil Dean and we’ve got a clip and a couple of rare production images from the wonderfully named Cheer Up! for you today.

A struggling playwright hopes to market a musical comedy that he has written in collaboration with another equally penurious composer. Anxious to secure the backing of a millionaire, the two composers only succeed in making him angry — until, following a chain of misunderstandings, they finally emerge triumphant.

I’ve always been a war film buff, maybe because I grew up with them at a time when they were a regular part of the cinema landscape. That’s why I read, with particular interest, my Sound on Sight colleague Edgar Chaput’s recent pieces on The Flowers of War (“The Flowers of War Is an Uneven but Interesting Chinese Ww II Film” – posted 2/20/12) and The Front Line (The Front Line Rises to the Occasion to Overcome Its Familiarity” – 2/16/12) with such interest. An even more fun read was the back-and-forth between Edgar and Sos’s Michael Ryan over the latter (“The Sound on Sight Debate on Korea’s The Front Line” – 2/12/12), with Michael unimpressed because the movie had “…nothing new to add to the war genre,” and Edgar coming back with “…‘new’ is not always what a film must strive for. So long as it does well what it set out to do…...