The Golden Year

Filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich said over 50 years ago that 1939 was the greatest year for Hollywood movies, a claim that has since been accepted as an article of faith. Whether one agrees or not, it was definitely an exceptional movie year. Five classics are collected in this Blu-ray set, four of them making high-def debuts. Directed by Edmund Goulding, Dark Victory featured Bette Davis in one of her defining roles as a spoiled heiress who discovers that she has a brain tumor and chooses to live her last months to the fullest, transforming from selfish socialite to the caring, loving wife of her doctor (George Brent). Michael Curtiz's Dodge City is both Errol Flynn's first Western and the first Western to be shot in the new three-strip Technicolor process. Charles Laughton stars in William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a lavish remake of the grand silent film based on Victor Hugo's classic novel, featuring a superb supporting cast: Maureen O'Hara (in her American film debut), Cedric Hardwicke, Thomas Mitchell, and Edmond O'Brien (in his first film). Ninotchka, the sparkling, witty, elegant romantic comedy from Ernst Lubitsch, gave Greta Garbo her first comic role, and she's magnificent as a humorless Russian bureaucrat who is sent to Paris, where she is romanced by a frivolous but debonair playboy lawyer (Melvyn Douglas). The only film here previously available on Blu-ray is Victor Fleming's classic Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, which features an audio commentary by film historian Rudy Behlmer, but none of the other supplements from previous releases. Other extras spread across the set include vintage shorts and cartoons, as well as a bonus disc with the documentary “WBHE Presents 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year,” narrated by Kenneth Branagh. A wonderful collection of five undisputed Hollywood classics, this is highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)