Frank Borzage

Discussion and info on people in film, ranging from directors to actors to cinematographers to writers.
Message
Author
User avatar
Finch
Joined: Mon Jul 07, 2008 5:09 pm
Location: Edinburgh, UK

Re: Frank Borzage

#76 Post by Finch » Fri Aug 20, 2010 2:03 pm

Man's Castle can be bought on DVD here but I can't vouch for the quality and I can't find any reviews of it online.

User avatar
ambrose
Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2010 2:16 pm
Location: Durham United-kingdom

Re: Frank Borzage

#77 Post by ambrose » Mon Dec 20, 2010 8:55 am

This article filters the films of Frank Borzage through a suitably Roman Catholic perspective!.

User avatar
ambrose
Joined: Wed Sep 08, 2010 2:16 pm
Location: Durham United-kingdom

Re: Frank Borzage

#78 Post by ambrose » Tue Dec 21, 2010 10:31 am

Glenn Kenny on two of the Carlotta Blu-ray releases!.

User avatar
knives
Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#79 Post by knives » Thu Mar 31, 2011 5:59 pm

I finally got to watching Lucky Star and it's convinced me that Borzage is the best the US ever produced. If just for their second meeting here this has immediately become a favorite. Gaynor really amazed me too. She's really different from from her usual performances. I don't know why, but the egg bathing scene is the one that stood out the most for me on her performance. she's not really doing anything, yet her face produced such a strong response from me. Farrell was unbelievable too in an other totally different role. Story wise this might not be entirely true, but personality wise it seems they have switched from their typical roles in the Borzage films.

I also loved how much more mellow the film is. It doesn't make it better or worse than the two more popular films, but I really was rocking how turned down the melodrama was. Everything is still explicitly poetic, but there's a nonchalance to the events that's lovely and rare. Nothing really happens(on screen at least) but it still cuts like a knife. I could hang out with these two forever.

User avatar
rohmerin
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:36 am
Location: Spain

Re: Frank Borzage

#80 Post by rohmerin » Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:39 am

Nothing really happens(on screen at least) but it still cuts like a knife
That sentence works for all Borzage's films I've seen. Definetely my film buff life is marked by Borzage, Dumont's book and first by the retrospective in San Sebastian festival and Madrid cinemateque (2001), second by the Spaniards that have worked his cinema, putting him at the top of Highbrow ilegal downloads in the classic cinema forums.

Borzage is an AUTEUR in capital letters. Both in Lucky star Bad girl nothing really happens, but they thrilled me, I was impressed by both of them. Imagine their plots, specially Bad girl in the hands of other director. It will be nothing and boring, but with Borzage's touch, oh God, Bad girl take me breath away and I broke all my nails suffering with the man protagonist. What a film !

I re-watched 7th heaven and it's beautiful. For 1st time I saw the films mentioned on firts paragraph and Street angel (beautiful film, excellent the BFI booklet), Moonrise (amazing, it starts as a film noir but goes on with a a 100% Borzage's love and redeption subjetcs with unhappy people who deserves happiness) and Humoresque. I loved the Negulesco version with Joan Crawford but Borzage's is totally different. As Dumont says, they are two fifferent films. Borzage talks us about poverty in a Jewish ghetto and it's excellent. It's like 7th heaven low Paris districts, with their love, dignity and very dark subjets off screen. The trouble is that the rest hour of the film is very B class when the fiddler and the girl re-meet in Europe after being rich and succesful. The Jewish portion is a masterpiece.

I've gotten new Borzage's films thank to Spaniards piratas and I'm going to enjoy them this spring. I'm going to buy the 2nd BFI volume because I don't know Lilliom. And I'll pray for a miracle. I want somebody to find the mising reels from The river.

User avatar
ArchCarrier
Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 3:08 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: Frank Borzage

#81 Post by ArchCarrier » Wed May 11, 2011 3:43 am

Earlier this month, the Brussels Cinematek kicked off a two-month Borzage retrospective. For whoever's in the neighbourhood:

May 1 & May 5 Billy Jim (1922)
May 2 & May 4 Secrets (1924)
May 3 & May 7 Lazybones (1925)
May 6 Seventh Heaven (1927)
May 8 & May 11 Street Angel (1928)
May 10 A Farewell to Arms (1932)
May 11 Man's Castle (1933)
May 18 No Greater Glory (1934)
May 19 & May 22 Little Man, What Now? (1934)
May 21 & May 26 Flirtation Walk (1934)
May 25 & May 29 Living on Velvet (1935)
June 2 Desire (1936)
June 3 History Is Made at Night (1937)
June 5 Mannequin (1937)
June 7 & June 8 Three Comrades (1938)
June 9 The Shining Hour (1938)
June 10 & June 12 Disputed Passage (1939)
June 11 Strange Cargo (1940)
June 17 & June 19 His Butler's Sister (1943)
June 23 The Spanish Main (1945)
June 26 & June 28 China Doll (1958)

User avatar
rohmerin
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:36 am
Location: Spain

Re: Frank Borzage

#82 Post by rohmerin » Fri Sep 09, 2011 6:03 am


User avatar
perkizitore
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:29 pm
Location: OOP is the only answer

Re: Frank Borzage

#83 Post by perkizitore » Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:35 pm


User avatar
rohmerin
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:36 am
Location: Spain

Re: Frank Borzage

#84 Post by rohmerin » Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:18 pm

Borzage could made the miracle of 7th heaven in many parts of I've always loved you. I've just watched it for 1st time and it has thrilled me. Sublime amour you. Love in capital letters with the best, big, one, pure and unfinished adultery I've seen in my life. Sadly the sets are very Republic, chic and naff at the same time. This film deserves to be rediscovered: Scorsese, criterion or someone.

Heart's divided is an awful film with horrible cast (except Napoleon played by Claude Rains, he's brilliant). I didn't like Flirtation walk and Living on velvet (I can not stand Kay Frances except with Lubitsch).

The Spanish main was a good one. I did enjoy it all. This film was banned in Spain, of course, I'm talking about Franco and the Hollywood "wrong" vision of Spaniards and how US insult "our race" (The sea hawk -among others- was banned too for the same reason).

User avatar
George Kaplan
Joined: Mon Jan 31, 2005 7:42 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#85 Post by George Kaplan » Wed May 23, 2012 12:51 am

The magnificent MAN'S CASTLE (1933) is finally published on DVD from Sony Spain.
It's one in a series of titles, called "Columbia Essential Classics", apparently published in April 2012, and also including:
John Ford's THE WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING;
Frank Capra's THE BITTER TEA OF GENERAL YEN;
Nicholas Ray's HOT BLOOD;
among others such as THEODORA GOES WILD, LADIES IN RETIREMENT, IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU, THE STRANGER WORE A GUN, A GOOD DAY FOR A HANGING, MR. SARDONICUS, WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, STRAIT-JACKET, MAROONED, I WALK THE LINE, HARDCORE, and SHEENA QUEEN OF THE JUNGLE.

User avatar
lubitsch
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:20 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#86 Post by lubitsch » Wed May 23, 2012 5:03 am

Yikes, I'm just today doing the screenshots for my Borzage book, thanks for the post! Even more interesting is the 80 min running time which would indicate that we get the uncensored version. Anyone already has the disc and can confirm?

User avatar
rohmerin
Joined: Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:36 am
Location: Spain

Re: Frank Borzage

#87 Post by rohmerin » Wed May 23, 2012 5:57 am

Nope, nobody owns it yet but be aware of Spanish DVDs. Read what I wrote in DVDs released in Spain.

Wellcome to Spain, I mean, be aware.
They are not 100% sony DVDs. It's a Canary Island sub company (impulso) that make the DVDs using SONY licenses. After destroying too much WB and Fox films in cropped, VHS, pan / scan, pixeled prints, DIVX quality, now Impulso works with and for Sony.

Some Impulso DVDs are good (like some Fox if these films are in USA), some are not (WB classics were mostly massacred).

User avatar
lubitsch
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:20 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#88 Post by lubitsch » Wed May 23, 2012 6:24 am

Well, it's worth a try and I already ordered it, it would be hard to release a worse DVD than the best copy of Man's Castle that's floating around. If it's complete rubbish, then it's probably also not the full length version and I'll send it back due to the wrong advertisement. I hope the running time isn't just copied from some database.

User avatar
Ann Harding
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:26 am
Contact:

Re: Frank Borzage

#89 Post by Ann Harding » Sat May 26, 2012 11:58 am

I very much doubt you'll get a 80-min uncut version of Man's Castle. I have seen the film many times: in a cinema, at the Cinémathèque, and I also have recordings from recent TV broadcasts (in France and USA). They all showed the 69-min edited version for the good reason that nobody has ever restored the cut scenes. (If ever the cut sequences have been preserved...) As for the image quality, it is always rather grainy, even in the very good recording I did on French TV. The negative has probably been lost (or destroyed) long ago.

User avatar
whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Frank Borzage

#90 Post by whaleallright » Sat May 26, 2012 1:12 pm

From what I recall, Grover Crisp at Sony has stated that they do have elements for the missing scenes and are working to integrate them into the best existing copies of the film to prepare for a restoration and, one imagines, video release. But this may not be very far up the corporate priority list.

User avatar
Ann Harding
Joined: Tue Dec 09, 2008 6:26 am
Contact:

Re: Frank Borzage

#91 Post by Ann Harding » Sun May 27, 2012 9:23 am

Thanks Jonah for the information. I'm glad some elements have survived. Let's hope Sony will do something about it!

User avatar
whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Frank Borzage

#92 Post by whaleallright » Sun May 27, 2012 2:21 pm

My guess is you would first start seeing restored 35mm prints, but that it would take a third-party licensee to release it on video.

User avatar
lubitsch
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2005 4:20 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#93 Post by lubitsch » Sun May 27, 2012 6:56 pm

jonah.77 wrote:From what I recall, Grover Crisp at Sony has stated that they do have elements for the missing scenes and are working to integrate them into the best existing copies of the film to prepare for a restoration and, one imagines, video release.
That's however not what Mike Schlesinger is saying at http://www.davekehr.com/?p=47" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, according to him "The version of MAN’S CASTLE that currently exists is the edited post-Code reissue, and Grover is still searching for the cut footage."
Herve Dumont describes the cut scenes and quote extensively dialogue, intriguing that he also mentions that the cut parts seem to be missing from most of the prints. One gets the impression he has seen a full copy.

The Spanish DVD has a slight greenish tingue and is a bit grainy, but also a tad sharper than the best copy floating on the net. It's the short version (66 minutes) though strangely I had to jump to a later timecode in the PAL DVD for a screenshot comparison. I'll run them side by side and report.

User avatar
whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Frank Borzage

#94 Post by whaleallright » Mon May 28, 2012 7:38 pm

I'm surely misremembering -- Crisp probably said that they were actively looking for those scenes, not that they'd found them. Sorry to get anyone's hopes up too high!

We've talked elsewhere on this site about this film. My guess is that the missing footage relates to the subplot with Tracy and Glenda Farrell, which seems severely truncated in the 66-minute version. It would make sense that this subplot in particular would be cut to avoid running afoul of the censors.

User avatar
Sloper
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 10:06 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#95 Post by Sloper » Tue May 29, 2012 6:13 am

Dumont's filmography states that Man's Castle is 79 minutes long - but the extra bits he describes wouldn't amount to more than a minute or so of screen time. As lubitsch says, they're scraps of dialogue (like Tracy reading from the Song of Songs, or references to domestic abuse and abortions) which Dumont couldn't know about without having seen an un-censored print, unless he managed to access the original screenplay... Sadly, although his book is an invaluable resource, it's a bit lax when it comes to details, and does contain a number of inaccuracies, including mis-descriptions of this film and others. And just to ramp up the ingratitude in this post, Jonathan Kaplansky's English translation also seems like a bit of a rush-job (understandably, I guess).

One of Dumont's endnotes quotes from Michael Henry Wilson's article, 'Le Fra Angelico du melodrame' in the 1976 issue of Positif (which I haven't been able to get hold of), which describes an extra scene in which Bragg rails against Wall Street; Dumont comments that the scene 'disappeared during editing or at the time of release', but doesn't say whether this is Wilson's speculation or his own. If anyone can get hold of that article, it might offer more information.

User avatar
Sloper
Joined: Tue May 29, 2007 10:06 pm

Re: Frank Borzage

#96 Post by Sloper » Wed May 30, 2012 3:43 am

The version I've seen is recorded off TCM, and it doesn't have any of the bits Dumont describes as having been censored. For instance, it has the nude bathing scene, but when Loretta Young says 'I don't have a bathing suit', there's an awkward pause; Dumont claims that in the un-censored version, Tracy responds, 'You've got a bathing suit, the one you were born in. That's the one I'm using.' Later, apparently, Tracy recites from the Song of Songs while Young is preparing dinner - 'Your breasts are like clusters of grapes. How fair, how pleasant thou art, O loveful delights.' This is just before his complaint about how skinny she is. David, do you have a version where he recites this passage to Glenda Farrell while in the clown costume?

Certainly that later scene where he's in Farrell's apartment (sans clown costume) and she tries to persuade him to work for her as a bodyguard feels truncated, but I don't see any need for this sub-plot to extend further - it's just another example of the hero vaguely rebelling against his commitments, and I'm not sure how further scenes with Farrell would add anything. I may be wrong, of course.

There's also supposed to be a bit of dialogue between Young and Marjorie Rambeau later where the former admits to being covered in bruises (inflicted by Tracy); towards the end Young is supposed to discuss the possibility of having an abortion. I'd be very interested to know if anyone has a version of the film that includes any of this material...


User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Frank Borzage

#98 Post by hearthesilence » Sun Feb 17, 2013 1:54 am

Another heads up in New York, A Man's Castle is screening at Film Forum on Wednesday.

FWIW, I'm kind of stunned how many places have screened this film in 35mm in the past year or two. MoMA, University of Wisconsin (for free to boot), the UCLA Film Archive last month, etc., etc. Not bad for a film that's never been issued in the U.S. on DVD.

User avatar
kingofthejungle
Joined: Wed Feb 29, 2012 11:25 am

Re: Frank Borzage

#99 Post by kingofthejungle » Sun Jun 26, 2016 7:50 pm

Just in case anyone here might be interested, I'm working with some friends at reddit's TrueFilm to attempt to make a rare Borzage silent film, 1922's The Pride of Palomar, available on DVD via a Kickstarter campaign.

User avatar
whaleallright
Joined: Sun Sep 25, 2005 12:56 am

Re: Frank Borzage

#100 Post by whaleallright » Mon Jun 27, 2016 4:27 am

I really like this idea, but I have a few questions: A complete print of The Pride of Palomar exists in the Library of Congress, and they want funds to pay the LoC to make a SD transfer? Do you know what the quality (and gauge) of the print is?

FWIW I think this sort of info should be in the Kickstarter description. Otherwise it's not entirely clear what the money is going to.

Post Reply