In Which Dave Kehr Saves Me Money

I was all set to rush out and buy Fox's deluxe and (finally!) restored-to-widescreen DVD of Carousel today (my absolute favorite musical, though I'll freely admit the film is far from classic), mostly because I had heard that Frank Borzage's Liliom was included as an extra.  Turns out, Fox did what comes so naturally to them:  they fucked up spectacularly.

As per Kehr:

But the oddest gaffe is on the “Carousel” box, which promises an earlier version of the film. The informed DVD consumer would naturally assume this to be Frank Borzage’s rare and beautiful “Liliom” of 1930, based on the Molnar play and starring Charles Farrell as the abusive carnival barker. On the disc, however, a card appears expressing Fox’s profound regrets that the only print that could be found was a dubbed French-language one — at which point up pops Fritz Lang’s brilliant 1934 “Liliom,” made in France, as Lang was moving his base from Berlin to Hollywood, and starring Charles Boyer (whose French certainly had no need to be dubbed) as Molnar’s regretful thug, in what may be his finest performance.

The good news is that the Lang film is presented in an excellent print, far better than the one recently issued by Kino (which seemed to be derived from a smeary tape source). The bad news is that Borzage’s film, which exists not only in excellent English but also in a fine restoration from the University of California, Los Angeles, remains (along with virtually all of the early Fox talkies) unobtainable. How hard would it have been to clear up this silly blunder? Film scholarship, or even basic familiarity with the Internet Movie Database, seems in disturbingly short supply at Twentieth Century Fox.

Bravo, clods. 

I'm also not terribly enthused by the idea of Fox 2000's newfangled Carousel, which is being developed as a vehicle for Hugh Jackman.  Though Jackman will make a fine Billy Bigelow, the fashion of late has been to downplay or elide completely the spousal abuse element.  Only Nicholas Hytner's glorious 1992 West End revival - which transferred to Broadway in 1994 - has bucked this trend, retaining the show's most troubling, but absolutely essential, line, "It's possible for someone to hit you, hit you hard and not hurt you at all".  It's too bad Hytner can't be bothered to mount his revival for film, since it's kind of the most perfect interpretation of the show, but maybe Jackman will exert his influence and embrace the show's dark side.  Unfortunately for him, he's going up against Tom Rothman and the imbecile brigade at Fox, who only make good films by accident.  Here's hoping Rothman unleashes a racist tirade of this magnitude, and gets his ass good and fired sooner rather than later.

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[Eric Stratton, Rush Chairman. Damn glad to meet ya.]

That's all well and good, but new Rockey trailer!