New to DVD: Salute to the Marines (1943) and Music for Millions (1944)

Salute to the Marines, starring Wallace Beery in Technicolor and Margaret O'Brien and Jimmy Durante in Music for Millions are being released to DVD-R for the first, by Warner Archives.

Check the Warner Archives site for details: 
http://www.wbshop.com/category/wbshop_brands/warner+archive.do

Chasing Rainbows (1930)

If only films had been preserved as well as literature. Imagine, for example, some of S.J. Perelman or Robert Benchley's earliest books not surviving. Seems preposterous, but here we have MGM's second full-length musical, Chasing Rainbows, and the biggest music segments (in early Technicolor, yet) are missing. This is the movie that presented the song "Happy Days Are Here Again" to the world - and that song is missing.

Because of this, it's difficult to determine how good of a musical Chasing Rainbows is. What we have left seems, to my mind, not as focused or driven as MGM's earlier The Broadway Melody, but also not without charms.

A very young Jack Benny plays the ringmaster, the stage manager of a touring road show. Bessie Love is teamed again, as in The Broadway Melody, with Charles King. Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are the comic relief.

Jack Benny is fine for his role, but the problem is it isn't much of a role: the stage manager tries to keep the company on an even keel - and that's about as interesting as his character gets.

Bessie Love plays virtually the same role as in The Broadway Melody, jilted through most ofthe film by the clueless and weak Terry (Charles King), whose seduction by Nina Marten provides the movie's conflict. Love's big emotional scene is so acute, it's practically dropped in from a different movie.

You either find Marie Dressler and Polly Moran funny or not. I do - guilty as charged. Dressler was capable of both serious work and comedy (and singing, which she does in this film and which she did on stage years before she enteredthe movies) and Moran, with her expressive face and body language, had unexploited dramatic potential as well.

The version of Chasing Rainbows showing on TCM inserts explanatory title cards in the spots which have been lost to time. Still, several songs remain, all enjoyable.

This film has been released on Warner Archives DVD.

The Mysterious Island (1929)

The Mysterious Island has to be one of the biggest sc-fi extravagances I hadn't seen before. The film was a huge project and gamble for MGM (and it also may be the first sound sci-fi film): four million dollars, shot in Technicolor, a change in directors, changes in actors, sound added toward the end of production....

Like another MGM extravaganza beset by troubles, Ben-Hur (1925), The Mysterious Island was released with great fanfare. Unlike Ben-Hur, The Mysterious Island was a huge financial failure, and a setback for sci-fi films for years to come.

Using concepts from several of Jules Verne's novels, The Mysterious Island stars Lionel Barrymore as a scientist who's built two submarines designed to travel to the bottom of the sea, where he has reason to believe exist creatures related to mankind in the distant past.

His plans are interrupted by a revolutionary coup straight out of Sergei Eisenstein, headed by Montagu Love. It isn't explained how a scientist as clever as Barrymore would confide his secrets to a "friend" diametrically opposed to his goals and beliefs.

After plot complications, the two subs make their way to the sea's bottom, where a race of midgets, all vaguely resembling ducks, explore and eventually attack the group of sea explorers. It's here that the film really comes alive. The special effects, though primitive, have a surreal, dreamlike quality, and one has to marvel at the ambitious audacity of it all: seemingly hundreds of little creatures pulling a submarine with ropes; a set that seems a mile wide; midgets propelling an octopus forward to attack; the bizarre creatures going into a feeding frenzy at their first exposure to human blood... It would have been good to be on the set that day. The effects work on their own level, and one can see many echoes of Melies' films (especially A Trip to the Moon) in the set design. The Technicolor print of this film, unfortunately, seems to be lost.

The Mysterious Island is only partly sound; the rest is silent with orchestral background or stock library crowd sounds (yelling, people running, etc.). The early dialogue scenes featuring Barrymore are some of the most static I've seen; in some endless, maddening shots, I would have paid cash money for a close-up.

Don't see The Mysterious Island expecting a coherent, intelligent story, good acting, or a sci-fi film with great special effects. View it instead if you're interested in an historical curiosity or an early American attempt at sci-fi spectacle which remains compelling despite its clumsy methods.

Not available on DVD; has been shown on Turner Classic Movies.