DVD from Warner Archives 11/9/10

Warner Archives has released Plymouth Adventure on DVD (actually, MOD DVD-R), as of November 9, 2010. No extras, as usual, but the Archives' discs have generally been of excellent quality. Price is $19.95 direct from Warner; several dollars more if ordered elsewhere.

Many of the performers in this film are badly miscast (especially Spencer Tracy), and in general it's not convincingly acted, despite the talent on screen. It's cliched, preachy and virtually without humor. It's heavy-handed and portentous, pious and reverential in a blatantly self-satisfied manner. It takes itself way too seriously, and is certainly not good history. (The only relaxed touch is the funny scene where the men try to master the art of firing muskets.) Its Oscar-winning special effects are very limited and not particularly good (1952 was a weak year for effects films). Its filming marked an odd confluence of political opposites: on the one hand, MGM studio chief and the film's producer, Dore Schary, an unabashed liberal making another of his so-called message pictures and trying to demonstrate his "Americanism" by producing patriotic flag-wavers such as this and 1951's It's a Big Country; on the other, director Clarence Brown, an extreme right-winger, a supporter of both HUAC's publicity-grabbing "investigations" into Hollywood and of the industry's blacklist. Both these men were greatly talented cinematically, but their pairing on such a film is curious.

Yet for some reason, it's watchable and kind of interesting, if for no other reason than its being very much an artifact of its era. So I'll be getting the DVD.