Product Description
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Errol Flynn: The Signature Collection Vol. 2 (DVD) (5-Pack)
ADVENTURES OF DON JUAN – Blade-flashing duels, devil-may-care
bravado – a glorious Flynn swashbuckler. THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT
BRIGADE – Flynn’s British Lancers take the reins for one of
film’s greatest action sequences. THE DAWN PATROL – Dogfights
above, challenges of command below: Flynn and David Niven team in
a landmark tale of World War 1 flyboys. DIVE BOMER – They go
first so that others may follow. A detailed and heroic tale of
U.S. Navy fight research stars Flynn and Fred MacMurray. GENTLE
JIM – Elegance in his style … thunder in his fists. James C.
Corbett (Flynn) revolutionizes boxing.
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The best-known of Errol Flynn's movies are already out there on
DVD, so surely there can't be much left over to keep the second
volume of the Errol Flynn Signature Collection from being an
anticlimax. Except it's not. The new boxed set includes a
splendid historical adventure, two aviation movies impressive in
different ways, and a late swashbuckler that operates as a droll
gloss on the star's persona. Plus (wait for it...) it also
contains the best movie Errol Flynn ever made, and very likely
his best performance as well.
Let's take that last one first. Raoul Walsh's Gentleman Jim
(1942) is a great, boisterous gift box of a movie, a
high-spirited biopic of late-19th-century prizefighter James J.
Corbett. The setting is San Francisco in the Gay '90s, with
Flynn/Corbett starting out as a b, egotistical bank teller
fast with his mouth and light on his feet. Given a chance to
c high society, he becomes a pugilist for the amusement of
the nabobs, then sets out on a boxing career that will bring him
glove-to-glove with the Great John L. ... Sullivan, that is, and
portrayed with Walshian gusto by Ward Bond. Gentleman Jim is
fragrant with period atmosphere, exhilarating in its feeling for
space and back-slapping human contact, and so big-hearted and
exuberant that it finally invites the audience right into the
film. Alexis Smith--as a socialite who ribs Corbett
mercilessly--and Flynn conduct a strikingly egalitarian mating
duel. The supporting cast includes Jack Carson, Alan Hale, and
the epically grumpy William Frawley, and the whirlwind montages
are by future director Don Siegel. This is great fun--and a
masterpiece to boot.
The adventure movie is The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936),
Flynn's second star vehicle in Hollywood. A step up in scale and
gloss from Captain Blood, this Michael Curtiz picture is
historical poppycock but thrilling spectacle, with exotic doings
in India and Asia Minor building to the horrendous siege of
Chukoti, then a lateral move to the Crimea for the big Tennyson
finish every perennial schoolboy in the audience has been waiting
for. The Flynn of this swashbuckler-one-step-removed isn't the
buoyant and boyish fellow we expect; he even comes in second to
fellow Bengal Lancer (and dull brother) Patric Knowles for the
heart of Olivia De Havilland. But he wears nobility well, and
there's genuine tenderness in his performance. The camerawork and
editing of the Charge will lift your heart rate, and the large
supporting cast includes Donald Crisp, Nigel Bruce, Spring
Byington, C. Henry Gordon, and Flynn pal David Niven.
Niven and Flynn are together again in The Dawn Patrol (1938), a
memorable WWI tale of British airmen flying perilous missions in
flimsy planes, and the flight commanders who have to send them
out to do it. Basil Rath (in a rare departure from villainy
in a Flynn movie) plays the tortured commandant whom hot
Flynn will be obliged to succeed. Although this is the Dawn
Patrol most people know, it's actually the remake of a 1930
Howard Hawks classic. The original has a starker feel
(inseparable from its early-talkie creakiness), as if its airbase
were at the edge of the known world. The more up-to-date Flynn
version, directed by Edmund Goulding, is smoother entertainment,
with a stronger supporting cast--but all the flying footage is
from Hawks's movie.
The other aviation drama is Dive Bomber (1941), a big hit just
before America's entry into WWII. Flynn plays it more sober than
usual (no pun intended) as a Navy flight surgeon helping to lick
the challenge of high-altitude ness. There's no good reason
for the movie to last 132 minutes, and both the macho griping of
aviator Fred MacMurray and the garish of the peripheral
females (including Alexis Smith in her first featured role) get
tiresome. But these are worth enduring for the breathtaking
flight scenes in vivid Technicolor--which looks every bit as
great as it must have in 1941. Director Michael Curtiz, in what
would be his last film with Flynn, even sets up the ground scenes
to include low-altitude flyovers.
The Adventures of Don Juan (1948), made near the end of Flynn's
Warner years, is a footnote to the star's swashbuckling legacy
and a not-very-inside joke on his reputation as real-life Don
Juan; the picture is at least as interested in eliciting chuckles
as serving up thrills. Director Vincent Sherman lacked the brio
of Curtiz and the gusto of Walsh, but he ably steers the actor
past self-parody to a reasonably graceful performance. Again, the
real excitement is the ultra-radiant Technicolor--a perhaps
inadvertent result of veteran film noir cameraman Woody Bredell
lighting the movie as though he were still working that
black-and-white territory. Viveca Lindfors supplies urbane love
interest as the Queen of Spain, and Robert Douglas stands in for
Basil Rath as villain-in-chief.
Consistent with previous Warner practice, all but one of the
features in Volume 2 come packaged with a "Warner Night at the
Movies" set of shorts: cartoons, comedy shorts, trailers for
contemporaneous WB movies, and sometimes newsreels. The disc of
Gentleman Jim also includes an audio-only bonus, a radio
reenactment featuring Flynn and costars Alexis Smith and Ward
Bond. Probably because of its two-hour-plus running time, Dive
Bomber is accompanied only by its trailer and a brief
documentary, in which historian Rudy Behlmer shares a choice
anecdote about Mike Curtiz attempting to direct airplanes.
Unfortunately, of Flynn and his various directors, only Vincent
Sherman was still available to do a commentary track (on
Adventures of Don Juan, which also includes Behlmer commentary);
Sherman passed away in 2006 at the age of 99. --Richard T.
Jameson