Search - Unpublished Story on DVD

Content Advisory: Suitable for Children Movie Release: 1942 DVD Release: 04/06/2004 Format: DVD - Black and White Edition: Special Collection SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 1 hrs 31 mins Studio: Shanachie Members Wishing: 0 Genres: Drama, War, War Drama

Bob Randall (Richard Greene) is a reporter who gets to witness first-hand the British retreat from Dunkirk in May of 1940. He returns to his job in a London now facing nightly German bombing raids, and finds himself saddled with Carol Bennett (Valerie Hobson), a neophyte reporter. Bob is eager to take on the Nazis and, in the absence of any on the ground that he can fight, he turns to the leaders of a pacifist movement, The People for Peace. But no sooner does he start to look into who they are than he finds himself being shadowed by mysterious men and stirring up a hornet's nest of activity in his wake. While Carol tries to keep up and do her bit, and Bob tries to look out for her and find out just what he's stepped into -- which soon involves kidnappings and murder -- the German bombers keep coming and the newspaper's survival is threatened. Bob and Carol are drawn together romantically in the midst of these overlapping crises, and manage to find some time for each other while helping their long-suffering editor (Brefni O'Rourke) save the newspaper and the British secret service save the country. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide

Richard Greene - Bob Randall
Valerie Hobson - Carol Bennett
Basil Radford - Lamb
Roland Culver - Stannard

Harold French's Unpublished Story (1942) used to be a regular feature on New York television, but sometimes after the 1960s it disappeared from distribution. This DVD release, courtesy of Carlton Entertainment and Shanachie Entertainment, restores the movie to distribution, although not in an ideal form. The source for this release -- which promises a running time of 91 minutes but actually clocks in at around 86 minutes -- is a clean 35 mm print that may be a fine-grain. Although there are some moments where the contrasts flair and fade, mostly there's a good amount of detail, even in the shots convincingly set in the blacked-out streets of London; most of the other material (apart from a few edit points) shows deep contrasts and rich detail, with excellent sound as well. The movie itself is a briskly paced spy drama, a kind of home-grown cousin to Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent with the added verisimilitude of having been shot in England. Parts of it, depicting the courage and fortitude of the Londoners, will recall (or, actually, anticipate) William Wyler's Mrs. Miniver, except that French's movie has a reality that the overly melodramatic Hollywood depiction misses entirely. Part of the movie's impact derived from its makers' ability to intercut studio-generated scenes with actual footage of the London blitz and the rescue crews and firefighters at work, giving it a startling immediacy even 60-some years later. Indeed, one of the best scenes here (and there are many good ones) takes place in the London Underground among the residents of the East End who were driven there by the German air raids; that scene has an honesty that is far greater in impact than the whole of Wyler's movie, well intentioned though the latter was.

The DVD's dozen chapters cover the action reasonably well, though there are so many intricate plot developments here that another four or five chapters would not have hurt. There are no bonus features, and the disc opens automatically on a simple single-layer menu offering "Play" and "Chapter Selection" choices, with the former in the default position. Having said all of that, however, one must add that the use of the short print is disconcerting -- what is mostly missing, if memory serves, is a montage that came immediately after Richard Greene's Bob Campbell is urged to leave France and return to England to tell of what he's seen of troops in action, with Winston Churchill's speech about the Dunkirk evacuation ("This was their finest hour") heard over the footage. There may be other gaps, but that one is rather glaring, especially as one hears an abrupt break in the music where the edit heralding the montage is cut off. One is glad to see this movie back in circulation in any form, but Carlton, Shanachie, et al. should have found a complete edition. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide