Watch Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 Online
Samedi, juillet 10th, 2010 |
Watch Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 Online.
Movie Title: Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 is available for streaming or downloading. Click Here to Stream or Download Charlie Chan Collection, Vol. 2 |
Volume 2 in Fox’s Charlie Chan DVD Collection seems not to have been released as worthy as it escaped. Volume 1 was widely heralded but this installment, which contains the best of the films when the series reached its peak, sort of snuck up on us. Frankly, I can’t hold I’m the first one here to review it.
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Full disclosure: I possess Volume 1 and honest purchased Volume 2 through Amazon. So my review at this point is based on my (repeated) TV viewings dating aid to the mid 1960s through unbiased a few years ago before the Fox Movie Channel banned the CC films. I noticed that Fox skipped one film in this site, CHARLIE CHAN’S SECRET (1936) that preceeded the four films in Volume 2. Why? I can only guess except that SECRET is a steady letdown compared to the quality of the films before it - CHARLIE CHAN IN… LONDON, PARIS, EGYPT, and SHANGHAI. And the films that followed that are represented in Volume 2. But tranquil why was it dropped? I guess that’s Fox’s secret.
As with Volume 1, Warner Oland simply IS Charlie Chan. Oland continues to play Chan with his usual level-headed authority and splendid charisma. Although he was not Asian (athough he believed his mother was allotment Mongolian), his winning characterization of Chan forever changed the design Asians would be portrayed in Hollywood films.
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As for the Fab Four in this set: CC AT THE CIRCUS is the closest Charlie came to film noir, thanks to German director Harry Lachman. His films tended to be dusky and fretful and CIRCUS is no exception. Powerful of the film takes area at night and even indoor scenes have a sombre edge to them. Lachman would allege a few more Chans in the Sidney Toler era during the early 40s when the series changed direction and became compact limited assassinate mysteries such as Uninteresting MEN Disclose (1941) . These later Chans are luscious on their gain terms but totally different in style from the Olands of the mid-30s. CIRCUS features the entire CHAN clan including his wife. Mystery-wise, if you can’t residence the trusty killer in CIRCUS, you should resign your membership in the Charlie Chan club! I reflect even Charlie knows early on but has nothing to pin on the culprit.
CHARLIE CHAN AT THE Accelerate TRACK marks a staunch jazzing up of the series stylistically. Director Bruce Humberstone, who was ambitious for more primary projects at Fox, wanted to indicate Zanuck what he could do and pulled out all the stops in Speed TRACK. Legal from the opening music tedious the main credits, you know this one is different. The pacing is faster and optical wipes give each scene a sense of urgency. Charlie’s relationship with son Lee also progresses with Lee being given increasingly well-known assignments by his Pop.
Unlike the earlier drawing room style of the films, in Rush TRACK Charlie takes on a whole gambling syndicate in addition to the murders in a wide ranging series of locales from Honolulu, to Melbourne, to Los Angeles, plus an ocean voyage in between. He’s shot too! High tech is employed here as Chan learns about the “fresh” scheme of timing the races with photo-electric cells and photographing the photo attain. What I particularly like in Rush TRACK is that the film “language” gives an alert viewer a spacious clue at one point to attach you on the track of the killer. Even at the climax, the killer slips up but nobody notices (momentarily), giving the viewer another chance to solve this one.
AT THE OPERA is generally considered to be the best of the Chans and its reputation is well deserved. Oland for once is co-starred, with Boris Karloff, and the two work well together although they only fraction one scene. The film might more accurately be titled CHARLIE CHAN MEETS THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA because that really describes the storyline. Since Karloff is so obviously the killer you honest know somebody else has to be doing the dirty work and making it peruse like Karloff’s to blame. But Charlie ain’t fooled (nor are we because this is supposed to be a kill MYSTERY) . High tech again is obsolete to abet solve the mystery as we (and Charlie) are treated to a demonstration of the process enthusiastic in wire photos.
Son Lee again proves indispensible and Director Humberstone delivers the goods once again. A special faux-opera was written for the film by Oscar Levant called “Carnival” and I dislike to admit it but I wish Levant had turned it into a true plump length work - the music is that great. I don’t know who sang for Karloff but in case viewers wonder how his character could manage to negate so well after being a patient in an insane asylum for ten years, the opening scene shows him practicing every night. A bigoted detective comically played by William Demerest finally has to admit that “Charlie is OK” at the extinguish. A exact gem of a film.
The last one in this status, 1937’s CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OLYMPICS (fair cherish that title!), is the most globe-trotting of all the Chans and the most ambitious production-wise. The film starts with Oland in his undershirt jogging in station! The, uh, partial nudity shows that Oland had lost weight around his mid-section when compared with his appearance circa 1934-35. The film starts in Honolulu and has a scene eirily prophetic of the Pacific sea search for Amelia Earhart’s lost plane that took space a few months after the film’s release. Then Chan is off to intercept the ocean liner Manhattan that is in mid-Atlantic on its scheme to the Olympic games in Germany (son Lee is on the U.S. swimming team in case you’re wondering how he gets worked into the anecdote) . Being 1936, the only scheme Charlie can fetch the ship is to glide from Hawaii to L.A., then grab a transcontinental plane to Fresh York, then grab the ill-fated German zepplin Hindenburg from Lake Hurst, NJ. And travelers today assume they have it rough!
The area actually has nothing to do with the Olympics but the film is so inspiring, who really cares? The games are archaic as a backdrop for meetings by the spies with Chan, and there is some footage of the events including Jesse Owens’s spectacular speed for a gold medal. High tech is employed once more as Charlie pulls a accurate switcheroo by substituting a radio transmitter in the aircraft draw the spies are after. Son Lee is kidnapped from outside the Olympic Stadium, and even Charlie thinks he has met his match.
Actor C. Henry Gordon, an alumnus from earlier Chans, almost steals the film as a most orderly villian. Things are so unsafe for Charlie that Mr. Gordon, one of the silver screen’s silkiest villians, actually saves Chan from death TWICE, and Gordon is one of the unpleasant guys! As in OPERA, the killer is well hidden although the series of clues that Chan puts together to unmask the culprit at the finale is less than convincing. It doesn’t matter because the killer can’t define away a simple clue: spilt ink on his shoe and that seals his fate (no, not a spoiler - by the time the ink-on-shoe comes up, the killer is already unmasked - I unprejudiced believe it’s the best clue!) .
By the time OLYMPICS was made, Warner Oland was really “into” the Chan character so remarkable so that he continued speaking like Chan offscreen and even signed his name, “Charlie Chan.” As one interviewrer wrote in mid-1937, “I came to interview Warner Oland about Charlie Chan but ended up interviewing Charlie Chan about Warner Oland.” So what was going on? I’m stunned that’s a record to be told in Volume 3. I only hope that the Fox people prefer this DVD project seriously enough to scour their vaults for ANY materials - film footage but most likely photos - from Oland’s final and uncompleted film, CHARLIE CHAN AT THE RINGSIDE, that he worked on during the first week of January 1938.
Many critics feel the Charlie Chan films did not truly hit their shuffle until 1936 and 1937, when the release of four particularly enthralling titles station a current standard for the series. THE CHARLIE CHAN COLLECTION, VOL. 2 not only presents those four films, it restores them as well; after years of neglect, Warner Oland, Keye Luke, and company discover better than ever.
Charlie was novel created by novelist Earl Derr Biggers (1884-1933), who very loosely based the character on Hawaii’s legendary police officer Chang Apana (1887-1933.) Biggers wrote six novels in all, and after several spurious starts 20th Century Fox (then simply known as Fox) hit on the true combination of actors, mystery, and comedy, and the result was perhaps the single most current film series Hollywood ever created. Although contemporary audiences tend to plan the films as politically unsuitable, the fact remains that Chan and his family–most often personified by Keye Luke as son Jimmy–were among the very few clear Asian characters on American movie screens at the time; as such they were particularly common with Asian-American audiences of the day.
The four Chan films in this collection are actually the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th releases in the series, all starring Warner Oland as Chan, all featuring Keye Luke as son Jimmy Chan, and all but one directed by the respectable and exacting H. Bruce Humberstone. The most well-known title is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE OPERA, which co-stars Oland with Boris Karloff in what many reflect to be the single finest film in the series. Featuring an operatic earn written by Oscar Levant, the account finds Chan called upon to protect diva Lilli Rochelle (Margaret Irving), who has received a death threat. It soon transpires, however, that Madame Rochelle is no blushing innocent: she has a past that includes “an escaped maniac” in the gain of Boris Karloff, and no sooner does the overture commence than cancel is afoot. The film is unexpectedly stylish; the great cast includes William Demarest and Nedda Harrigan; and the script very distinctly works to undercut racist notions of the day, with Demarest at first offensively derrisive but ultimately impressed with Chan’s skill.
Although not as highly budgeted as OPERA, AT THE Accelerate TRACK and AT THE OLYMPICS also possess Humberstone’s certain touch. Bustle TRACK finds Chan matching wits with a gambling ring sure to turn otherwise unprejudiced horse races to their advantage. John Henry Allen’s portrayal of “Streamline,” a Stepin Fetchit-like character, is perhaps most charitably viewed as a measure of how far African-American actors have near since the 1930s; this aside, however, the cast is solid and the account animated. AT THE OLYMPICS is remarkably disconcerting from a historic point of belief. Opening in Hawaii and making references to Pearl Harbor, the film concerns the theft of an aircraft plot which has military application. Chan is soon on his intention to Berlin via The Hindenberg, no less, and finds himself confronting a host of spies and counterspies at the 1936 Olympics. Interestingly, the film makers work hard to avoid mention of the Nazis; although stock footage abounds–including footage of Jessie Owens–the inevitable swatiskas are kept out of focus or more obviously simply blotted out.
While the three Humberstone films in this area tend to receive the bulk of vital favor, my enjoy current in this collection is CHARLIE CHAN AT THE CIRCUS. Directed by Harry Lachman, who would go on to grunt other Chan films somewhat later, the film is long on charm in its epic of destroy under the vast top, complete with sultry trapeze artists (Maxine Reiner), dancing exiguous people (George and Olive Brasno), slinky contortionists (Shai Jung), and even one of those terrible 1930s ape costumes. Chan films seldom effort themselves too mighty with area detail, and AT THE CIRCUS is a particularly flyweight entry; even so, it is tremendously funny, unexpectedly atmospheric, and George and Olive Brasno are standouts among the supporting cast.
The remasters are not flawless, but they are very genuine indeed. I must, however, sound a slightly sour notice re the bonus features, which are spicy in themselves but which shrimp in comparison with what might have been done if the studio had really save its heart into it. Quiet, the Keye Luke biography is particularly welcome (moderns tend to overlook the truly groundbreaking nature of his career) and the “Charlie Chan at the Movies” featurette is quite nice. Overall, I strongly recommend this collection to Chan fans everywhere.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
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