Showing posts with label park row. Show all posts
Showing posts with label park row. Show all posts

18 October 2012

Park Row (Masters Of Cinema) DVD Review

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Park Row is a key film in Samuel Fuller’s always captivating and idiosyncratic career. It’s always one of his very best up they’re with such classics as Shock Corridor, The Big Red One and The Naked Kiss. It’s one of his earliest films which was made after a succession of War films and a couple westerns such as his extremely successful The Steel Helmet and it’s companion film Fixed Bayonets! and the still radical interpretation of the Jesse James story I Shot Jesse James.

Sam said his favourite of all of films he made was Park Row. It was a passion project and a very nostalgic look at the time of headline grabbing journalism. Sam was a journalist himself in the 1920s and 1930s (a copyboy at the age of 12) till he joined the army during WW2. It was a truly independent film which Sam financed sorely by himself, it was roughly $200,000 + his $1000 fee which was for liquor and fine cigars. He was offered a big budget film, which Gregory Peck after the success of The Steel Helmet but turned it down in favour of his own project.

The film is set in 1886 and it’s about a reporter Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans) who is fired from his job at newspaper The Star. He goes to a bar to drown his sorrows but a man called Steve Brodie rushes in claiming to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. Phineas tells him he has lost his job. A friend of Phineas called Charles A. Leach (Forrest Taylor) also in the bar tells him his dreams of starting his own newspaper.

They decided to start the newspaper that night and Charles has the printing press, offices and money necessary to do so. They hire all their newspaper pals in the bar on the spot. A policeman comes into the bar to find Steve Brodie for jumping off the bridge and now they have a FRONT PAGE STORY for the first issue of their paper The Globe. The Globe becomes a sensation, which it’s headlines and it’s multiple daily copies with only the front page changed! Phineas’ ex boss (of newspaper The Star) the femme fatale like Charity Hackett (Mary Welch) is getting jealous of the success of the paper and her superior decide to kill The Globe with many tactics including stopping supplies of ink and paper and later violence.

The film has wonderful cast full of bit players who only got their due in this probably due to the film’s budgetary constraints. It’s was all filmed on one set for similar reasons. It’s wonderfully written almost screwbally at times which reminds me of the legendary script of His Girl Friday. However it’s not a comedy but more in the way of the dialogue in spoken, it’s stylistic. It is also a very contemporary film a way cause it’s partly about the corporate money coming into journalism, which diminished the type of journalism Fuller loved. It’s a remarkable 8 reeler, which should be rediscovered over and over again.

Ian Schultz 

★★★★★

Rating:12A
UK Re-Release Date: 22nd October 2012
Directed By: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Gene Evans, Mary Welch , Bela Kovacs
Buy:PARK ROW (Masters of Cinema) (DVD) [1952]

7 September 2012

'Greatest Love in Film' Park Row To Get October Masters

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One of the best ever cinematic depictions of the world of journalism, PARK ROW (A film by Samuel Fuller) is to be released in the UK on DVD as part of Eureka Entertainment’s MASTERS OF CINEMA Series on 22 October 2012.

"Park Row is one of the greatest love letters in the history of film, and it's a love letter to journalism." – Quentin Tarantino

"Brimming with passion and conviction – just like its hero, and its creator." – Leonard Maltin

"Park Row continues to stun through its outrageousness, which at inspired moments becomes a worship of pure energy." – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Film Comment

conic American filmmaker Samuel Fuller began his career as a tabloid reporter, and thrillingly drew on those skills and experiences in his extraordinary labour-of-love Park Row. An exhilarating tribute to the ideals of the free press and noble popular journalism, this two-fisted tale of battles on and off the printed page in 1880s New York is a major American rediscovery.

When Phineas Mitchell (Gene Evans), a visionary newspaperman, launches his own title The Globe, his eye-catching headlines and approach quickly catch fire with the New York readership. But less impressed is Charity Hackett (Mary Welch), proprietor of long-established rival The Star, and attempts to undercut The Globe soon escalate into all-out war.

Packing more dynamite into eight reels than most directors unleash over a career, Fuller's self-financed Park Row is a passionate, idiosyncratic work of gritty myth-making. The Masters of Cinema Series is proud to present Park Row for the first time for home viewing in the UK, released in the UK on DVD on 22 October 2012.



SPECIAL FEATURES:

• New digital progressive transfer in the film's original aspect ratio
• Isolated music and effects track
• Original theatrical trailer
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hearing-impaired
• Illustrated booklet featuring the words of Fuller, rare archival imagery, and more
• Further details to be announced nearer the release date!

Pre-Order: PARK ROW (Masters of Cinema) (DVD) [1952]