Director Anthony Mann’s
1949 film, The Black Book (aka: Reign of Terror), is the latest film
to get a full restoration from Film Chest.
Street date selected for
the DVD release is June 24.
This is the second film
to be worked on by Film Chest this year that features Oscar-winner John Alton’s
(An
American in Paris) camera work … Hollow Triumph was restored and
released on DVD this past Mar. 11.
Noted for such film noir thrillers as T-Men,
Raw
Deal, He Walked by Night and Border Incident — all, by the way, collaborations
with Anthony Mann — points very much to The Black Book as being filmed in
the style of film noir. Although the film itself is a fairly
detailed (obviously events had to be condensed for a film that runs 89 minutes)
account of Maximilian Robespierre’s (played here by Richard Basehart) use of
the Committee of Public Safety and his deliberate “reign of terror” in 1794
during the French Revolution.
The names of the players
are generally accurate and Robespierre’s own demise (although still debated to this
day as to whether it was a failed suicide attempt or an assassination gone
awry) by being shot in the face, left bloody — but alive — only to meet the
same fate on the guillotine that he had dealt out to thousands of his enemies
the following morning.
Mann, working with a
script provided by noted film noir
writer and Oscar-winner Philip Yordan (Broken Lance in 1954, plus
nominations for Dillinger and Detective Story), in collaboration
with Aeneas MacKenzie (noted for his history-related action films), overlays a
tale of mystery and suspense in the context of these actual historical events.
At the core of it is
Charles D’Aubigny (played by Robert Cummings), an undercover agent sent by
Lafayette to infiltrate Robespierre’s inner circle by posing as Duval, one of
the Committee of Public Safety’s henchmen from the provinces. Summoned to Paris, D’Aubigny/Duval soon
learns that Robespierre is in search of a “black book” listing the enemies of
Revolution … it has gone missing. Duval
is put in charge of the search, with unlimited powers, but he soon suspects
that the document is either a fiction created by Robespierre to ferret-out
those who are beginning to question his deity-complex and unquenchable thirst
for blood or not missing at all.
The trick is to stay
alive, solve the mystery of the black book and avoid being unmasked in the
process. Throw in a love interest
(played by Arlene Dahl), who is caught and tortured (but rescued in the film’s
denouncement), and you have all the elements of a first-class thriller.
Indeed, you could take
the entire French Revolution out of the equation and substitute the Nazis,
torture and the dreaded SS and they
too would be right at home here.
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complete edition of the DVD and Blu-ray Release Report: DVD & Blu-ray Release Report
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