The Golden Year Collection (1939) Blu-ray

Warner Brothers Home Entertainment has announced and detailed the Blu-ray release of the 5-film, 6-disc Golden Year Collection, which features the newly restored Blu-ray debut of director William Dieterle's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), along with the Blu-ray debuts of Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, Michael Curtiz's Dodge City and Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka. 1939's Best Picture Oscar winner, Gone with the Wind, is also included. The Golden Year Collection and singles of the four films making their North American Blu-ray debut street on June 9th and are already available for pre-order.

The Golden Year Collection contains a sixth disc as well, with the re-release of the fascinating documentary, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Presents 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year, narrated by Kenneth Branagh and containing film clips and insights about this unprecedented and unequalled year in films. 1939 was noteworthy in America and Europe for many reasons. World War II had begun with Hitler's invasion of Poland. The Great Depression dwindled as President Roosevelt and the United States prepared to fight. NBC demonstrated the new medium of television at the World's Fair. Batman, a new superhero, was born. Frank Sinatra made his recording debut. And nylon stockings went on sale for the first time.

Most significant for American culture that year was the sheer number of remarkable film releases. 365 films were released in 1939, many of which are considered the most enduring classics in film history and three of the 10 Best Picture Oscar nominees for the year, Gone with the Wind, Dark Victory and Ninotchka.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her. With huge sets, rousing action scenes and a versatile throng portraying a medieval Paris of cutthroats, clergy, beggars and nobles, The Hunchback of Notre Dame remains one of Hollywood's all-time grandest spectacles.

Charles Laughton endured a daily five-and-a-half hour makeup session to become Quasimodo, Victor Hugo's mocked and vilified anti-hero. The result was one of his best performances -- outsized yet nuanced, heartrending yet inspiring. Maureen O'Hara is the gypsy Esmeralda, whose simple act of pity frees the emotions within Quasimodo. When she is wrongly condemned, he rescues her from hanging, sweeping all of Paris into a fight for justice.

Audio specs are not yet available. Special features include:


• The Lone Stranger and Porky: Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
• Drunk Driving: Oscar-nominated Vintage 1939 MGM Short
• Interview with Maureen O'Hara
• Theatrical Trailer


Dark Victory

A young socialite is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor and must decide whether she'll meet her final days with dignity. Bette Davis' bravura, moving but never morbid performance as Judith Traherne, a dying heiress determined to find happiness in her few remaining months, turns the film into a three-hankie classic. But that success would never have happened if Davis hadn't pestered studio brass to buy Dark Victory's story rights. Jack Warner finally did so skeptically. "Who wants to see a dame go blind?" he asked. Almost everyone was the answer: Dark Victory was Davis' biggest box-office hit yet and garnered three Academy Award nominations for 1939's Best Picture, Best Actress (Davis) and Best Music, Original Score (Max Steiner).

Audio specs are not yet available. Special features include:


• Commentary by film historian James Ursini and CNN film critic Paul Clinton
• "Warner Night at the Movies"
  
  • Old Hickory: Vintage 1939 WB Short
  • Robin Hood Makes Good: Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
  • Vintage Newsreel
  • The Roaring Twenties Trailer
• 1939: Tough Competition for Dark Victory (Featurette)
• 1/8/40 Lux Radio Theater Broadcast (Audio Only)
• Theatrical Trailer


Dodge City

Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn), a Texas cattle agent, witnesses firsthand the brutal lawlessness of Dodge City and takes the job of sheriff to clean the town up. In his first of eight Westerns, Flynn is as able with a six-shooter as he was with a swashbuckler's sword. He confronts lynch mobs, slams outlaws into jail and escapes (along with co-star Olivia de Havilland) from a fiery, locked railroad car. Cheered for Flynn's sagebrush debut, its vivid Technicolor look and spectacular saloon brawl that may have employed every available Hollywood stunt person, Dodge City later gained another distinction when it inspired Mel Brooks' cowboy parody Blazing Saddles.

Audio specs are not yet available. Special features include:


• "Warner Night at the Movies"
  
  • Introduction by Leonard Maltin (Featurette)
  • Vintage Newsreel
  • Sons of Liberty: Vintage WB 1939 Academy Award-Winning Short
  • Dangerous Dan McFoo: Vintage1939 WB Cartoon
  • Dodge City: Go West, Errol Flynn (Featurette)
  • The Oklahoma Kid Trailer
• Theatrical Trailer


Ninotchka

A stern Russian woman (Greta Garbo) sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man (Melvyn Douglas) who represents everything she is supposed to detest. "Garbo Talks!" proclaimed ads when silent star Greta Garbo debuted in talkies. Nine years and 12 classic screen dramas later, the gifted movie legend was ready for another change. Garbo Laughs! cheered the publicity for her first comedy, a frothy tale of a dour Russian envoy sublimating her womanhood for Soviet brotherhood until she falls for a suave Parisian man-about-town (Melvyn Douglas).

Working from a cleverly barbed script written in part by Billy Wilder, director Ernst Lubitsch knew better than anyone how to marry refinement with sublime wit. "At least twice a day the most dignified human being is ridiculous," he explained about his acclaimed Lubitsch Touch, That's how we see Garbo's love struck Ninotchka: serenely dignified yet endearingly ridiculous. Garbo laughs. So will you. Ninotchka received four 1939 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress in a Leading Role (Garbo), Best Writing: Original Story (Melchior Lengyel), and Best Writing: Screenplay (Charles Brackett Walter Reisch, Billy Wilder).

Audio specs are not yet available. Special features include:


• Prophet Without Honor: Vintage 1939 Academy Award® nominated[5] MGM Short
• The Blue Danube: Vintage 1939 MGM Cartoon
• Theatrical Trailer


Gone with the Wind Lauded as one of the American cinema's grandest, most ambitious and spectacular pieces of filmmaking, Gone with the Wind was helmed by Victor Fleming in 1939, the same year as the director's The Wizard of Oz. Producer David O. Selznick's mammoth achievement and still history's all-time domestic box-office champion ($1.6 billion) captured ten 1939 Academy Awards including: Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress for Hattie McDaniel, the first Oscar awarded to an African-American actor. Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer prize-winning novel, on which the film is based, has been translated into 16 languages, has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide, and even now continues to sell 50,000 copies a year.

Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel star in this classic epic of the American South. On the eve of the Civil War, rich, beautiful and self-centered Scarlett O'Hara (Leigh) has everything she could want -- except Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). As the war devastates the South, Scarlett discovers the strength within herself to protect her family and rebuild her life. Through everything, she longs for Ashley, unaware that she is already married to the man she really loves (Gable), and who truly loves her, until she finally drives him away. Only then does Scarlett realize what she has lost and tries to win him back.

The film is presented with Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. Exact special features have yet to be confirmed.


Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Presents 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year

Narrated by Kenneth Branagh this informative documentary contains film clips and insights about this unprecedented and unequalled year in films. Additional special features on this bonus disc include:


• Breakdowns of 1939: Vintage 1939 WB Short
• Sword Fishing: Vintage 1939 WB Short
• Detouring America: Vintage 1939 WB Cartoon
• Peace on Earth: Vintage 1939 MGM Cartoon
• Trailers