Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Big Magilla
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Big Magilla »

The Blue Veil is involved in a copyright dispute. Occasionally someone will post it on YouTube, but as soon as YouTube discovers it, they take it down, so you have to keep checking. Currently, there's a four minute clip featuring Wyman with Everett Sloane, Harry Morgan and Audrey Totter that you can watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtd25vKPHzc
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

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The copies of When My Baby Smiles at Me and Valiant Is the Word for Carrie are fairly decent. The copies of The Blue Veil are all from a decades old L.A. TV broadcast - is far from pristine, but decent enough, although I do wish someone would do a restoration of this fascinating film.

Jane Wyman won a Golden Globe for this over Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire and Katharine Hepburn in The African Queen. Although the performance is hardly as iconic as those two, it is a good one, arguably the best of Wyman's career. The only comparable character in film history is probably Marie Dressler's Emma, although the ending is more closely related to Helen Hayes' situation at the end of The Sin of Madelon Claudet. Wyman is surrounded by a terrific supporting cast, including Charles Laughton, Joan Blondell in her only Oscar nominated role and Natalie Wood as Blondell's daughter.
The Original BJ
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by The Original BJ »

Various second-hand sites are selling DVDs of The Blue Veil, When My Baby Smiles at Me, and Valiant is the Word for Carrie, but I've never purchased from any of them so I don't know how reliable they are. (The previously discussed Zeus DVD has Valiant, though Precious suggests that company is hit-or-miss.)

I'm pretty sure The Barker is archive-only (although I know it has publicly screened in LA as well, so it's possible it might show up in another major city at some point.)
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Mister Tee »

Also: as of right now, The Patent Leather Kid is on YouTube.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Mister Tee »

Many thanks for the direct to Private Worlds, which hadn't been on YouTube the last time I looked. (Quick reaction: with all the wonderful performances Colbert gave that weren't nominated -- Midnight, Smiling Lieutenant, The Palm Beach Story -- they nominated her for this drivel?)

Can I assume from its absence from this list that others have no problem tracking down The Blue Veil? Because I've gone 50 years without finding that.

YouTube has a link to a site that purports to have Valiant is the Word for Carrie, When My Baby Smiles at Me and The Barker, other long-soughts on my list. Does anyone know if this site is legit, or if it'll entail surrendering my first-born?
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Precious Doll »

This thread has reminded me that I haven't seen a single film that I am missing from my list of 58 nominated feature films (not including the documentary category) this year.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Heksagon »

By coincidence, I have been looking for some of these very same films on Youtube recently...

Thunderbolt, The Big Pond, Escape Me Never and Private Worlds are also available on Youtube, or at least were there recently.

Mister 880 is on DailyMotion.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Okri »

Filmstruck is streaming Placido.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by CalWilliam »

Both Volver a empezar and My Dearest Señorita are available on Bluray Region B in Spanish editions, the former with English subtitles and the latter without any of them. I guess it must be difficult to find some ''old'' Spanish films in the United States, even if they won the Foreign Language Oscar or were nominated. Have any of you guys seen Volver a empezar? It won the Foreign Language Film Oscar and I feel it must be the obscurest movie to have achieved that distinction, from the American point of view, of course. It's not a bad film by any means, but for me it is a very surprising Oscar, being the first one Spain won. I mean, from our perspective, it's a very melancholic, sometimes sappy remembrance of a storyline, somewhat an old fashioned tale that doesn't reach the heights or the significance a winner should. It hasn't aged very well. Nevertheless, my affection for it comes from its location: it was shot in Gijón, my town's nearest city, a beautiful place just 15 miles away from where I live.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Precious Doll »

Please let us know the A Case of Nightingales has English subtitles as I'd buy that myself if they do.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Big Magilla »

Movielover wrote:http://www.zeusdvds.com/

Since reading your responses, I found that the above website has copies of The Leatherneck and A Cage of Nightingales.
Zeus is a mixed bag. They cull from several different providers, some of whom deliver pristine copies, others whose submissions are murky at best. That may explain why Precious was able to get some of his selections right away, while he had to wait for others.

Movie Detective, as Precious advises, is the better choice if they have what you're looking for.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Big Magilla »

Movielover wrote:Big Magilla,

If The Dark at the Top of the Stairs is on YouTube, I surely cannot find it there. Would you mind posting it in a link below?

Also, does TCM play this one?

Thanks!
Bing images has several on-line options including YouTube

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=th ... &FORM=VDRE

I don't think it's been on TV in years. I can't recall if it was TCM of ACM that showed it a while back. It's one of the most frequently requested films on TCM, but I had read something somewhere about the Inge estate wanting too much money for Warner Bros. to put it out on video. The TCM blog mentions Queensbury DVD as having a good copy for sale. I checked their site - the cost is just $10.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Precious Doll »

They Knew What They Wanted can be purchased from DaaVeeDee. It's a Spanish dish or poor but watchable quality. Cannot remember if the Spanish subtitles are burnt in or not.

The Bold and the Brave & Seven Days to Noon have both been released in the UK. Nice prints for both of them.

For foreign language films the best place to search for titles is Movie Detective. They are very reliable.

I have purchased Hungarians, Immortal Love and Live for Life from them. Hungarians looked to have been sourced from a video master but most of their film are from good prints (i.e. Foreign DVDs that don't have English subtitles). Best to search titles via director name or just troll through the lists of countries. However, to the best of my knowledge they do not have these titles:

The Truce (Argentina)
Paix sur les Champs (Belgium)
Arms and the Man (Germany)
Paw (Denmark)
The Important Man (Mexico)
Tlayucan (Mexico)
Hoa-Binh (France)
Twin Sisters of Kyoto (Japan)
Portrait of Chieko (Japan)
The Road a Year Long (Yugoslavia)
The Ninth Circle (Yugoslavia)
Los Tarantos (Spain)
El amor brujo (Spain)
My Dearest Senorita (Spain)
Double Feature (Spain)
Course Completed (Spain)

Three was released on DVD in it's home country and you may find a copy on eBay. Placido is out on DVD & Blu Ray in Spain with English subtitles. Sometimes DaaVeeDee have it in stock.

The Village in the River with English subtitles was released in The Netherlands on DVD years ago. Copies might be floating about the internet for sale.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by Precious Doll »

I can't believe it! I posted a detailed response to this post only for it to not appear.

I'll post something detailed again later. But be weary of Zeus. I purchased from them once and only received half of the films. The other half turned up out of the blue about 6 months later. I'd never made and enquiry into the non-arrival of all the films.
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Re: Rare Films - Can anyone help me?

Post by The Original BJ »

Movielover wrote:http://www.zeusdvds.com/

Since reading your responses, I found that the above website has copies of The Leatherneck and A Cage of Nightingales.
Thanks! Cage of Nightingales is listed only under its French title, so it's no surprise that didn't come up when I Googled it some months back for the Screenplay polls.
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