[78-L] Say goodbye to big screen classics..was Re: Blockbuster dying??

[David Lennick]

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/08/06/say-goodbye-to-big-screen-classics/#idc-container

Say goodbye to big screen classics
Not many great old movies are being released on DVD now. It’s partly Joan 
Collins’ fault.

by Jaime Weinman on Thursday, August 6, 2009 8:40am - 2 Comments
Though DVD sales are down, current movies are still guaranteed a DVD release. 
But for anything made earlier, collectors may be out of luck. Most of the 
studios have trimmed their schedule of classic movies on DVD to almost nothing; 
20th Century Fox recently eliminated its Fox Classics website after cancelling 
plans for unreleased classics like A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. Even the 
prestigious Criterion Collection has cut back the number of classic foreign 
movies it releases, and brought out a much-derided current film, The Curious 
Case of Benjamin Button, to make extra money. George Feltenstein, a senior 
vice-president at Warner Home Video (which still has some classics scheduled), 
says that “most of the studios have pretty much said ‘Screw it, we’re out of 
here, we’re not going to do this.’ ”

Even before the recession, studios had to cut back due to the closing of many 
retail chains that used to stock their products; Feltenstein says, “If the 
economy of the world had not deteriorated, our release schedule would still be 
less than it was.” But older movies are particularly vulnerable because the 
cost of restoration is growing, and their fan base is shrinking. It used to be 
that TV broadcasting built a market for old movies; Humphrey Bogart became a 
cult figure after his death, thanks to TV. But today, the only station that 
shows old films is Turner Classic Movies. And DVDs can’t sell based on the 
purchasing power of TCM viewers alone.

Because classics are a niche market, they were the first to go when chain 
stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy decided which movies they wouldn’t stock; 
Feltenstein says that many chain-store buyers “think an old classic movie is 
The Silence of the Lambs.” And though the high-definition DVD format, Blu-Ray, 
is seen by some observers as a possible saviour of home video, it actually is 
making things worse for classics. Warner released a few popular titles in the 
format (including Casablanca) and found that, according to Feltenstein, 
“classics are having a tough time on Blu-Ray. New films do great, but people 
don’t know how great old movies can look in this format.” Warner will try again 
later this year with Blu-Rays of titles like Gone With the Wind and North By 
Northwest, but for now, Blu-Ray is another thing to squeeze old movies off the 
limited shelf space in stores.

It’s not as if studios have simply run out of movies worth releasing. Many of 
the greatest movies of the ’30s through the ’50s are unavailable on North 
American DVD, like Leo McCarey’s comedy Ruggles of Red Gap starring Charles 
Laughton, or Douglas Sirk’s The Tarnished Angels with Rock Hudson, often 
considered the best adaptation of a William Faulkner novel. But such titles 
don’t have the name recognition that would win them a spot on Best Buy shelves. 
And during the DVD boom years, some studios may have made matters worse by 
spending lots of money to release movies that were old, but not classic. A 
“Joan Collins Collection” featured several movies the Dynasty star had made for 
Fox in the ’50s, offering mostly mediocre films for a high price. Feltenstein 
thinks that “irresponsible releases” contributed to the collapse of the market: 
such discs “did terribly and caused the retailers to return the product.”

With stores turning them away, old movies may need to find a home online. 
Warner Brothers recently unveiled the “Warner Archive,” an Internet catalogue 
allowing U.S. movie fans (not Canadians, yet) to order burn-on-demand DVDs of 
obscure titles starring the likes of Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and Cary Grant. 
The discs and transfers are not always up to the highest standards, but they 
offer important films that stores wouldn’t stock, like The Shopworn Angel and 
Three Comrades, two romantic dramas by cult director Frank Borzage and 
almost-forgotten movie star Margaret Sullavan.

If this idea is imitated by other studios, classic movie releases won’t be as 
great-looking as they used to be; Feltenstein says that while the response to 
the archive “has been extraordinarily positive,” there are some complaints from 
fans who have been trained by DVD to “want everything now, and everything in 
the best possible quality.” Still, most movie lovers seem like they’ll be happy 
to get these films in any form. The writer of the popular movie blog 
Self-Styled Siren approves of the archive idea, because the most important 
thing is to keep old films in circulation. “These movies can’t live for a 
general audience,” she says, “if they’re circulating like rare baseball cards.”




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