From Shoah: Four Sisters
Recently released on Blu-ray and DVD: Woody Guthrie: All-Star Tribute Concert 1970, Shoah: Four Sisters and RKO Classics.
Woody Guthrie: All-Star Tribute Concert 1970
The performers at this concert were multi-generational and multi-ethnic, numbering Pete Seeger and Odetta in their ranks. Most of the lineup’s musicians, however, came from the circa 1960 generation of folk revivalists that surfaced in New York, including Joan Baez and Arlo Guthrie. They gathered to sing the songs of Arlo’s dad, which eloquently set oral history and advocacy journalism to music. Peter Fonda and Will Greer read passages from Guthrie’s memoir between songs.
Shoah: Four Sisters
French director Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) was a landmark in documentary filmmaking for its austere accumulation of memories of the Holocaust. With Shoah: Four Sisters (2018), his last completed film, Lanzmann assembled interviews conducted in the ’70s with Jewish women from Eastern Europe. What surfaces from their accounts was the complexity of their ordeal and how Nazi control of information was a weapon. Knowledge of the death camps dawned slowly, even for those at their gates.
“RKO Classic Romances”
In 1934, the studios imposed a regime of strict self-censorship called the Hollywood Production Code. But in the early years of talking pictures, topics that couldn’t be broached for decades were common. “RKO Classic Romances” collects five risqué “pre-Code” movies. In The Lady Refuses, a penniless woman choses prostitution over suicide (but finds help from a wealthy gentleman). Millie frankly addresses the cooling of sexual ardor in married couples. Gigolos, gold-diggers and wild oats abound.
“RKO Classic Adventures”
Years before the emergence of John Wayne and the westerns recognized as classics, the genre proliferated in Hollywood and made the transition to sound. “RKO Classic Adventures” collects three early talking westerns, starting with The Painted Desert (1931). The stock elements are already well established, including cattle drives, range wars and characters who “reckon” and “aim to keep ridin’.” Clark Gable has a supporting role, stubble-faced without the mustache yet familiar from his self-assured voice.
