2/5 Mother Russia births another serfer with two left feet
  by J. Faulk (New York NY USA)
In pre-Revolutionary Russia, Linda Darnell is a voluptuous peasant girl determined to rise thanks to her natural endowments. She does attract foolish Count Edward Everett Horton and magistrate (he can investigate crimes) George Sanders, who is engaged to Anna Lee. But Linda's father marries her off to a thick peasant, who unfortunately loves her dearly. The outcome is a fatal stabbing, a trial, and the real perpetrator self-condemned only years later.

The film is an adaptation of a minor novel, The Shooting Party, written by Anton Chekhov when he was 24. The 1944 print has been pretty well refurbished. But from first minute to last, I was painfully, restlessly aware that every aspect is burdened by the cliches of Hollywood square moviemaking. I am a set, I am a costume, I am makeup, I am tired awkward words from a dumbed-down script, I am a Kodak camera, I am editing playing listlessly with its alphabet blocks.

Hey, don't all of Douglas Sirk's movies suffer from his conventional approach? Can I, having seen the lifelike, intelligent, emotionally and psychologically sophisticated film dramas of recent decades, any longer endure the drear and dreck of the bygone Hollywood studio system? It's a rhetorical question because I know you young whippersnappers don't give a dreck about what Ye Olde Reviewer can endure. Pass the popcorn.

FOOTNOTES

1 The supplement contains an audio-only interview with author/film buff Bernard Dick, who admires Sirk of course, and probably everything else from Tinseltown.
2 It also includes a trailer of Uncle Vanya, the 1957 Broadway production transferred to the screen with cast intact: Franchot Tone, Dolores Dorn, Gerald Hiken, George Voskovec. Apparently it's heavy handed on the humor. Is Kit-Parker-Films also going to give us this Chekhovian corpse as embalmed by the American undertaker?
3 The DVD case says the Summer Storm music score was an Oscar nominee in 1945. Bah! Hollywood dreck.
4 One of the stills to promote the film shows Miss Darnell supersultry, as if auditioning for The Outlaw. Well, let me give the girl a break. She certainly would have outperformed amateur Jane Russell on the screen, and would have outboobed her too after Howard Hughes personally fitted her with his Flying Fortress brassierre.

2/5 Summer Schlock
  by C.A. Arthur (Tacoma, Washington)
This is a genuinely bad movie. The casting is atrocious (e.g. Edward Everett Horton as a Russian Count), and the directing is awful. Oh, did I mention the script? It is the worst part of the film by far. In fact, Summer Storm may become a cult film. I felt especially sorry for Linda Darnell, hopelessly out of her depth in the role of a Russian peasant (flashy makeup and all). How George Sanders must have been amused when receiving his check.

Why on earth would this film come out on DVD while so many classics are still unavailable? In any case, stay clear of Summer Smoke. The two stars are for the music and Sanders. Otherwise, this 1944 movie would be included it many lists of the worst films ever made.

4/5 CONSIDER THE FILM NOT THE DIRECTOR
  by Olivier Comte (Neuilly FRANCE)
Literary adaptations are a dangerous thing. Fortunately, the action takes place in 1918, then 1911.
A drama needs a strong photography, here provided by the great Eugene Schuftan, uncredited because he was not an union member
(Archie Stout not a cinematographer to forget is credited. Now we need a good transfer and VCI is usually to be trusted.
SIRK had escaped the indignity of such shooting titles as STRANGE CONFESSION and GOODBYE MY LOVE.
This is really his film, he wrote the dialogue, with twin credit under the pseudonym of MICHAEL O'HARA, but we are not in a classroom and must forget about the other films because that early (12/1943-1/1944) second US film stands on its own legs.
In 1918, Kharkov, an impoverished aristocrat, EDWARD EVERETT HORTON, tries to have a manuscript published by the newspaper now owned by
ANNA LEE,and confesses that the manuscript was written by GEORGE SANDERS seven years earlier.
Back to 1911 SANDERS, local magistrate, engaged to LEE, desires the ambitious LINDA DARNELL, equally loved by the rich HORTON. DARNELL is soon murdered, after some romantic interludes.
CHARLES HAAS ,overseer of HORTON's estate is sent to Siberia.
And the murderer is: I won't tell you. LEE reads it and takes measures.
It's a brilliantly written and directed drama. Not a flamboyant melodrama which would be inappropriate and would weaken he characters.It only lacks more money.
DARNELL and SANDERS are very good.
We are still waiting for the 3 great SIRK pictures: SHOCKPROOF (Columbia), THE FIRST LEGION (U-A) and THUNDER ON THE HILL (Universal).
SIRK has become a dead idol (better than a living idol, nobody expects the French Inquisition) and it blurs the pleasure of his films.
Everything is now sacred: you can't put down any of his films without getting insulted.
He was a true professional who wouldn't have approved of that cultural fanaticism.