Young Lions, The

Released by: Twilight Time
Released on: June 9, 2015
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Dean Martin, Hope Lange, Barbara Rush, Maximilian Schell, Lee Van Cleef, Arthur Franz
Year: 1958
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The Movie:

Three men—German ski instructor Christian Diestl, Jewish-American department store clerk Noah Ackerman, and Broadway producer Michael Whiteacre—are pulled into the armed services during WW II, the first to spread Nazi ideals, the latter two to defend the world against them. Diestl is an idealist who slowly comes to realize that what he's fighting for may not be all it's cracked up to be, while Ackerman, his pregnant wife at home alone, endures discrimination and abuse at the hands of his fellow soldiers. Whiteacre provides some protection for his smaller, younger buddy until he's transferred elsewhere, leaving Ackerman vulnerable to further harassment and attack. Eventually, all three men are stationed overseas, where a chance encounter leads to a tragic ending for one of them.

Director Edward Dmytryk was born to Ukrainian immigrants in Canada before moving to San Francisco, California as a boy. He developed an interest in cinema and, in 1935, directed his first film, The Hawk. Among his early efforts was the Boris Karloff chiller The Devil Commands (1941) and the second-rate Universal horror thriller Captive Wild Woman (1943), but by the mid-1940s he had established himself as a filmmaker capable of style and grace on the lowest of budgets. Murder, My Sweet (1944) and Back to Bataan (1945) marked a one-two turning point in his career and moved him into the big leagues. It wasn't long before he found himself being nominated for an Academy Award for Crossfire in 1947, the same year he was called before The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to testify about his brief involvement with the Communist Party. His initial refusal to humor the committee resulted in his blacklisting as a member of the "Hollywood Ten."

Dmytryk fled to England and worked there for a time but was forced back to the United States when his passport expired and there quickly arrested and imprisoned. Then, in 1951, he testified before HUAC and named names, after which his own name was cleared and he was freed. He went on to become one of Hollywood's most popular directors. The year 1954 saw the release of what may be his most famous picture, The Caine Mutiny, starring Humphrey Bogart; he followed that film up with several others, including Raintree County (1957), before tackling an adaptation of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions.

The Young Lions is a subversive film in some respects. While it acts as a slice of pro-Americana on the one hand, it treats some of its Nazi characters sympathetically on the other. The result is a war film that is both three-dimensional and less jingoistic than most from its era, with a rare sense of realism brought home by its use of location shooting. Direction, writing, cinematography, music, and acting combine to form a masterwork as literary and mythic as it is filmic. It may not be Dmytryk's best film, but it's certainly in the running.

The performances are excellent, even if two of the leads are miscast age-wise (more about that below). Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift were both reliable method actors who had achieved a degree of success by performing naturalistically; Dean Martin, on the other hand, was of the old school, with a style akin to actors twenty years his senior. Given that this was Martin's first serious dramatic role (he had, for years, played the straight man to rubber-faced sidekick Jerry Lewis), it would be easy to assume that he would be ill-at-ease next to his world-class costars, yet Martin surprises by pulling off a performance every bit as 'real' as Brando and Clift. That's not to say that he's the best actor in the film—he isn't—but neither is he shown up or outclassed by his more resilient costars.

Both Martin (in a role originally intended for Tony Randall) and Clift are too old for their parts, particularly Clift, but both give their roles their all, which proves to be enough. After leaving a dinner party at the home of Elizabeth Taylor, Clift had fallen asleep behind the wheel of his car and crashed. He suffered severe injuries, including lacerations to his face that forever destroyed his youthful good looks, ensuring, at least physically, that he would never again pull off the role of boyish hero. This, his first full film after the accident, asks him to do precisely that, and though he can't quite fulfill the role's expectations, his performance is far from the embarrassment it could have been (though his occasional manic irritability and lack of complete control over his right arm betray his addiction to alcohol and pain killers).

Brando has no such problems. An actor in his prime, he relishes the role of the German soldier, convincingly sporting a thick Eastern European accent and essaying control over every aspect of his portrayal, ably stealing scenes from his costars even when his dialogue doesn't warrant it. In many ways, Brando is the real star, charged with bringing to life the film's anti-hero, one through whom the audience sees an alien political landscape. Brando plays the part sympathetically and presents a powerful counterbalance to the American soldiers played by Martin and Clift.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Twilight Time's winning streak of major-studio catalog releases on Blu-ray continues. The boutique label brings The Young Lions to BD in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.35:1 with an MPEG-4 AVC encode in 1080p resolution. The image couldn't look much better, thanks to a new 4K transfer from 20th Century Fox. From the start, the film is a knockout on Blu. Joe (Joseph) MacDonald's Oscar-nominated black-and-white cinematography is crisp and clean, and Fox's stellar transfer reveals every blemish on every face, every crystal of ice in the snow or grain of sand in the desert, every strand of hair on every head. Innumerable locations that span the globe provide the perfect showcase to what may be one of the best transfers of a classic film yet. City sequences are just as detailed as forest scenes: From the crowded, dungy spectacle of the opening New Year's Eve party to the magnificent splendors of Parisian architecture, the image is revelatory, sharp and clear, with excessive grain held in check yet providing an underlying organic appeal. Who knew there could be so many degrees to monochromatic imagery? There's no speckling, dirt, or debris and only a few moments of softness, mostly located in the center of the film, while transition shots largely remain free of the drop in quality so often associated with them in the BD format. In short, The Young Lions is a visual slice of perfection.

There are 24 chapter breaks with a 25th that returns the viewer to the menu screen.

As is so often the case with its releases, Twilight Time offers The Young Lions with three audio tracks: the film's original soundtrack, an isolated score, and an audio commentary featuring film historians Lem Dobbs, Julie Kirgo, and Nick Redman. The original soundtrack is presented in English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. The sound is nicely mixed and decently directional, if a little too low, with a bias toward the front and center channels. Given that there are plenty of German accents to be heard, some viewers may find the subtitles for the deaf and hearing impaired a godsend. Hugo Friedhofer's original score (also nominated for an Academy Award) is well served in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 by the isolated track, where it can be enjoyed without the distraction of dialogue or sound effects. And finally, there's the commentary, which runs the entire length of the film (a whopping two hours and forty seven minutes). Despite that length, the commentary is vivid and fresh, and the commentators have clearly done their homework, especially Kirgo, who is as interesting and informative as ever. (She also wrote the terrific liner notes for the release, which are included as an eight-page booklet.) The group hosts a number of subjects related to the film, from the actors to the director (and his politics), to the military man who wrote the novel upon which the film was based.

Extras are sparse. Included is an original theatrical trailer, which runs two minutes and forty-eight seconds. It features little dialogue from the film, along with narration that focuses on its production, and is presented in anamorphic widescreen. There's also Twilight Time's standard catalogue of currently available and upcoming titles. It should be noted that, given the length of the film and despite the fact that it has been placed on a 50GB disc, too many extras would have threatened the video quality, possibly introducing compression noise and artifacting, so this is one instance in which a studio's restraint no doubt worked in favor of a quality release rather than against it.

The Final Word:

The Young Lions is a terrific film that should have received the kind of attention and acclaim awarded to the lesser post-World War II hit From Here to Eternity (1953). The performances are the primary draw, even if two of the three major players were a little too old for their parts. Twilight Time has given the film the kind of attention it deserves, offering a pristine transfer in high definition, strong sound, and a few extras, most importantly an informative audio commentary.

Note: The Young Lions has been released in a limited edition of 3,000 units.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!