The Shop Around the Corner, The Mortal Storm, The Naked Spur, and How the West Was Won, together in one collected edition

Equally capable of being warm and gentle or a razor sharp firebrand, James Stewart is one of classic Hollywood’s most endearing and enduring actors.

Warner Archive has collected four of his catalogue favorites into a new collection that shows off his range in a variety of performances and genres pulled from three decades.

We gratefully acknowledge distributor Movie Zyng/AV Entertainment, who provided the product for this review.

The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

These days this romantic comedy is perhaps best known as the inspiration for the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan hit You’ve Got Mail, which explored the same idea of a pen-pal romance, updated for the early days of the Internet. Similarly gentle, Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 version is set in Budapest, and pits its protagonists (Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) not as competing store owners, but as two employees in the employ of Matuschek and Company, an purveyor of handbags and leather goods. Kralik (Stewart), one of the company’s most tenured employees and a favorite of the boss (Frank Morgan), often finds himself qurarrelling with their newest employee, his subordinate Klara (Sullavan), who often has different opinions and approaches which contradict his own.

Unbeknownst to them, while bickering at work, the pair have also fallen in love with each other as secret pen pals who discuss literature together but ended up finding a romantic connection. But with Christmas approaching, Kralik is suddenly and unexpectedly fired, casting a shadow over the shop and changing his relationship dynamics with his coworkers.

The Shop Around the Corner is a delightful and enjoyable film. Stewart and Sullavan have a fun chemistry, and the ping-ponging of argumentative and playful tones is a lot of fun, as are the humorous antics of the shop’s other employees who populate the cast.

The Mortal Storm (1940)

The least known of this set of films is perhaps the most appallingly relevant. James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan team up again after Shop as the protagonists for another, more serious story, directed by Frank Borzage. Beloved professor Viktor Roth (Morgan) is celebrated by the community and beloved by his students, and enjoys the company of his family circle: his wife Amelie (Irene Rich), daughter Freya (Sullavan), her fiancé Fritz (Robert Young) stepsons Erich and Otto (William Orr and Robert Stack), and close family friend Martin Breitner (Stewart).

But against this happiness unfolds a new German order: the rise of Adolf Hitler. Young patriots Fritz, Erich, and Otto, who are Aryan by blood, are excited and quickly radicalized by Germany’s powerful new direction, joining the Nazi ranks, and soon the persecution of Jews (who are referred in the film only as “non-Aryan”), including the good professor, begins in earnest.

Thematically terrifying and historically important (the film was early to condemn Nazism and decry the persecution of Jews), The Mortal Storm shows not only the evil of fascism but the personal impact of families and friends being torn apart by radicalized and hate-fueled politics.

The Naked Spur (1953)

This colorful western is the third of eight films that Stewart made with director Anthony Mann in their expansive but short-lived collaborative run in the 50s. Stewart plays Howard Kemp, a vengeful bounty hunter tracking an old acquaintance of his, Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan); a robber now wanted for the murder of a marshal in Kansas.

In securing his quarry, Kemp finds himself in collaboration and competition with two other men (Ralph Meeker and Jesse Tate), leading to a shaky triumvirate to turn in their captive and split the bounty. Traveling with Vandergroat is a younger woman, Lina (Janet Leigh), the daughter of a deceased companion who sees him as a father figure.

It’s a long way back, and a lot can happen, with the manipulative Vandergroat pitting everyone against each other, and Lina in the middle, unsure of where to place her trust. It’s an action packed character study with a small but fascinating cast of characters, each with their own distinct personalities and weaknesses.

How the West Was Won (1962)

One of the most technically challenging and impressive films ever made, How the West Was Won is a rare feature developed in and for the highly immersive and ultra-widescreen, multi-camera, triple-projection system known as Cinerama. The film is suitably epic in meeting its format: a sprawling, nearly three-hour, star-studded, multi-generational saga following a family’s journey west. The film has three credited directors, Henry Hathaway, John Ford, and George Marshall.

Featuring an unbelievably stacked cast, the film is somewhat episodic in nature rather than following a specific plot, with chapters following different characters and adventures in one family’s history that covers periods of westward expansion, the Gold Rush, the Civil War, and the rise of the railroad.

Stewart’s role in this film is not particularly lengthy but it looms large as the most interesting part of the movie despite being a couple decades years past his peak as a romantic lead. A mountain man, he encounters the Prescott family early in their travels as they navigate the Ohio River. The chance meeting proves disruptive, as he and the eldest daughter Eve (Carroll Baker) are immediately and intensely attracted to each other. It’s a weird match, he a roaming free spirit and wild man of action, and she the conservative daughter of a God-fearing religious family. He takes his leave in the opposite direction, but fate keeps intervening for their paths to cross.

Unfortunately the film’s most absorbing chapter is its first, and none of the film’s other segments quite live up to its charm (though the action-packed train robbery finale closes things out with a bang).

The Package:

Warner Archive’s new “James Stewart Collection” packs up four great films which have previously been released on Blu-ray, together in an affordable 4-disc set.

Special Features and Extras: The Shop Around the Corner

Features a trailer and pre-show extras which might’ve accompanied the film as it was theatrically exhibited in 1940.

• The Miracle of Sound (1940) (10:57) – vintage short film exploring how sound is captured and used in films. Closes with a three minute montage of film and trailer clips. (A lower quality SD with uncorrected interlacing).
• Radio Play Adaptations:
  • Screen Guild Players (9/29/40) (29:46) – a half hour adaptation featuring Stewart, Sullavan, and Morgan
  • Lux Radio Theater (6/23/41) (59:53) – an hourlong adaptation featuring Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert
• Trailer (4:05) – A uniquely cut trailer narrated by actor Frank Morgan in character as Mr. Matuschek, introducing his employees – the film’s cast – before breaking the fourth wall to include the director.

Special Features and Extras: The Mortal Storm

Features a trailer and contemporary pre-show extras that you might’ve seen watching the film in 1940.

• Meet the Fleet (1940) (20:20) – a strangely comedic Naval short film/recruitment ad starring Robert Armstrong as a CPO breaking in a wave of new recruits. It’s distractingly jaunty, with some playful hijinks that seem like they’d be completely out of step in the actual military standards.

• Peace on Earth (1938) (8:49) – a bizarre but compelling anti-war animated short that imagines a post-apocalyptic world in which humans, having rendered themselves extinct with World Wars, are replaced by anthropomorphic critters who rebuild from their ruins.
• Trailer (2:46) – In a lower quality SD with uncorrected interlacing.

Special Features and Extras: The Naked Spur

Pre-show materials include a cartoon and short film that might’ve preceded the film as seen in theaters. Compared to the extras on the other discs these feel pretty disposable.

• Things We Can Do Without (1953) (8:50) – Dave O’Brien stars in a comedic short about modern home “conveniences” that prove inconvenient, from uncomfortable chairs to fictional contraptions. In SD with mild chroma issues and uncorrected interlacing.

• Little Johnny Jet (1952) (7:04) – A Tex Avery cartoon featuring a family of anthropomorphic airplanes. A retired B-29 finds himself jobless as a new Dad, while his son Johnny, a little modern Jet, is poised to pave the way for the future of aviation. It’s cute and has a slightly mixed message about technology leaving people behind, or putting them out to pasture – while also embracing the future.

Special Features and Extras: How the West Was Won

This version of How the West Was Won merits some explanation – it’s been released in a few different editions on Blu-ray and DVD, the most complete of which include a second disc with the bizarre “Smilebox” version of the film that more faithfully recreates the curved screen experience of Cinerama. The disc even retains the “Disc 1” artwork, though there is no Disc 2. This edition features only the letterboxed version of the film, painstakingly reshaped to a more traditional widescreen format. The composition of the three-camera image is almost completely invisible, and the distortion almost completely mitigated for a natural presentation. It looks stunning.

The disc includes a feature length documentary on the Cinerama format which I enjoyed as much as the main feature.

• Cinerama Adventure (2002) (1:36:54) – An incredible documentary looking back on the history of the unique Cinerama format, as both a film medium and as an immersive experience: the technology, the novelty, the knockoffs, and the eventual application in a major feature film, How the West Was Won. With insights into the documentarian filmmakers, adventurers, and pilots who crafted the experiences (including harrowing accounts of men who nearly died, were injured, and in one case lost his life, while making Cinerama productions). This is a terrific watch. Unfortunately, and ironically for a film about immersive widescreen experiences, its presentation, at least as seen on this disc, likely from an old video master, is authored incorrectly, horizontally compressing what’s clearly intended to be a 16:9 film into a 4:3 space.
• Audio Commentary – by Filmmaker David Strohmaier, Director of Cinerama, Inc. John Sittig, Film Historian Rudy Behlmer, Music Historian John Burlingame and Stuntman Loren James
• Trailer (3:02)

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