7.1 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
A charismatic peddler from the bayous finds his true calling in politics.
Starring: James Cagney, Barbara Hale, Anne Francis, Warner Anderson, John McIntireDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Nearly a decade after James Cagney reportedly paid $250,000 for the rights to Adria Langley's novel "A Lion is in the Streets", this big-screen adaptation arrived in theaters to retell the kinda-sorta story of Louisiana politician Huey Long. The only problem is that, four years earlier, Robert Rossen's film All the King's Men told a very similar tale -- though it was itself based on an entirely different novel -- and racked up three Academy Awards, including Best Picture. So to say A Lion is in the Streets was figuratively "late to the party" would be a gross understatement, but this long delay feels especially hard to overcome because, regardless of release date, it's just not a particularly great film.
But the forward momentum of A Lion is in the Streets only really gets going in small spurts, both from the patchwork way this book adaptation has been stitched together and, of course, a handful of scenes that are unintentionally funny. Perhaps the most infamous arrives shortly after the introduction of a young woman named Flamingo (Anne Francis), who has had feelings for Huey since childhood; when she finds out he's married to lovely Verity (Hale), she tries to kill Huey's wife with an alligator. Elsewhere, a third-act trial involving a man shot by the associate of crooked-ass Robert L. Castleberry IV (Larry Keating) takes place as the victim, acting as a witness, bleeds on the witness stand. It's moments like these that make A Lion is in the Streets morbidly watchable but, well, more than a little ridiculous.
An uncredited quote that ends A Lion is in the Streets -- "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time" -- has been attributed to Abraham Lincoln and (incorrectly) P.T. Barnum. That dichotomy basically describes this film's spirit, so take that for what it's worth.
Either way, A Lion is in the Streets gets plenty of support from Warner Archive, who has lavished excellent restorations on films as diverse
as Out of the Past and Corvette Summer. Case in
point: its stunning Technicolor cinematography by prolific DP Harry Stradling -- whose work can be seen in the likes of My Fair Lady, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and A Streetcar Named Desire --
shines like new here, bringing much-needed punch and clarity to a lukewarm film whose excellent technical merits and base-level entertainment
value beat its screenplay by a fairly wide margin.
Sourced from a recent 4K scan of its separate Technicolor negatives, Warner Archive's dazzling new 1080p transfer of A Lion is in the Streets is yet another five-star effort that almost sells the disc by itself. As seen in these screenshots, the film's wonderfully robust color really gets a chance to shine here, flanked by excellent fine detail and crisp textures that virtually leap off the screen in close-ups and wide shots alike. Tying it all together is the boutique label's rock-solid disc encoding, which keeps the natural film grain from devolving into a clumpy, noisy, macro-blocked mess, ensuring that even the most mundane locations -- including the modest one-room schoolhouse that opens the film -- look fantastic. Seeing as how the film's last home video release was WAC's own DVD from 2009, it's safe to say that this new Blu-ray easily beats it in every possible department and likely exceeds most original theatrical showings as well.
The DTS-HD 2.0 Master Audio likewise improves upon its lossy DVD counterpart, though more from its new 4K-sourced restoration than the bump in bit rate. Virtually no source damage remains aside from trace levels of hiss, leaving room for crisp dialogue and good mixing of background effects. Franz Waxman's score maintains a properly over-the-top tone at key moments and likewise sounds great -- perhaps a bit harsh on the high end, but that's absolutely understandable under the circumstances. Overall, it's a solid and possibly underrated effort that's deserving of high marks.
Optional English (SDH) are included during the main feature only, not the extras.
This one-disc release ships in a keepcase with poster-themed cover art and no inserts. The bonus features are ported over from previous home video releases dating all the way back to Warner Archives' own 2009 DVD.
Raoul Walsh's A Lion is in the Streets, much like the lead performance of James Cagney, is a fatally overconfident film whose baffling tonal shifts and patchwork screenplay all but neutralize any real sense of forward momentum. Yet it's still largely entertaining, whether for the right or wrong reasons, and if nothing else serves as a good example of the star's enduring charisma. Warner Archive's Blu-ray aims to tip the scales with another one of their outstanding A/V restorations, but this is essentially a movie-only disc and is thus recommended to established fans only.
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