Another brief night of respite (from a job I’m beginning to become disenchanted with—but that’s a rant saved for another day) provided me with an opportunity to watch a couple of DVDs in the wee a.m. hours. This will also give me a chance to critically laud a couple of nifty places online to locate hard-to-find DVDs.

My friend Laura told me about efilmic.com, which specializes in a lot of foreign (particularly Hong Kong and Taiwan) DVDs containing classic films not yet obtainable here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. I placed an order with them sometime back and one of the movies I purchased was the 1946 film Humoresque, starring my man John Garfield as a would-be violin virtuoso and Joan Crawford as the wealthy patron who helps him become a concert sensation. Garfield is one of my very favorite actors (witness my enthusiasm for Force of Evil) and it’s a shame that more of his films aren’t available yet on DVD. There are a few: Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), Body and Soul (1947) and The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)—and Destination Tokyo (1943) is due to be released soon as part of Cary Grant collection—but until The Fallen Sparrow (1943), Nobody Lives Forever (1946) and The Breaking Point (1950, a remake of—and far superior to—To Have and Have Not) see the light of day on DVD I will still consider it a crime that you can buy more Olsen Twins crap on DVD than films spotlighting the one-and-only Garfield.

Humoresque is a great movie—though I’ve always felt that Joanie was a bit miscast, so her romance with Garfy here is a little hard to swallow. My favorite Crawford films are the ones in which she plays tough, take-no-guff women, like Mildred Pierce (1945, and available on DVD) and Johnny Guitar (1954), and her character here is that of a vulnerable woman who has an attraction to strong drink. Still, she has one of the movies’ most memorable death scenes, plus as an added bonus you get Oscar Levant as Garfield’s cynical piano-player pal—a role that I think is Levant’s finest hour on screen, superior to even An American in Paris (1951) and The Band Wagon (1953). (I have a feeling I’m going to hear from my friend Pam about that opinion.) Levant gets the lion’s share of the great lines in this picture, with my favorite being the Groucho-like “Hey, you just spoiled the beginnings of an odious relationship.” OTR fans know that Levant was no stranger to radio; he was one of the three regular panelists on Information, Please and played sidekick to Al Jolson during Jolson’s two-year stint as the host of The Kraft Music Hall.

The best thing about Humoresque is its music—played not by Garfield, natch, but the immortal Isaac Stern. (One scene that always cracks me up is when a party guest refuses to believe that Garfield is a violinist, remarking that he “looks more like a prizefighter.” I guess she saw They Made Me a Criminal, too.) With a great supporting cast including J. Carrol Naish (radio’s Life With Luigi), Joan Chandler, Tom D’Andrea, Peggy Knudsen, Ruth Nelson, Craig Stevens and a young Robert Blake playing the tadpole version of Garfield’s character, it’s definitely the walking, talking and breathing definition of classic film.

I was feeling a bit logy this morning (the family and I went out and got a great dinner at a local eatery; I had what I could swear was a 20 lb. butt steak) so I just managed to squeeze in one more flick, also available from efilmic.com—the 1932 original version of Scarface. Of the big “gangster three” (the other two being Little Caesar and The Public Enemy), I think this entry is the better-made film—I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Howard Hawks effort so stylish (I love the recurring “X” symbolism when someone snuffs it in the film) and it’s got a wonderful cast: Paul Muni (in the title role), Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Osgood Perkins (Tony’s dad) and Boris Karloff doing his damnedest to hide his cultured British accent by playing a small but pivotal role as a gangster. I had read in an article somewhere that the Deluxe Gift Set DVD version of the 1983 remake (the one with Al “Say hello to my little fren’” Pacino) also contains the Muni version, but that mutha is $35-and-change and I’m not a big fan of Pacino’s movie anyway. Efilmic.com has the 1932 movie for $7.99—though I will warn you, the company that released the DVD sticks their annoying logo in the top-left part of the screen in-and-out of the film’s proceedings.

You can find some pretty good deals at efilmic.com; case in point, they carry a 6 DVD box set of the MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons—this set spans the years 1940-1953, with 92 cartoons in all. You’d be wise—if you’re a fan—to snap these up while you can; the cartoons will probably not be given a release here in the States due to some racial stereotyping prominent in many of these shorts. (You can also get the same set a little bit cheaper at HKFlix.com.)
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