Nuestro Cine Clasico: Ansiedad/Escuela de Musica [DVD]

Double feature

Father Knows Best (1954-1960) was not one of this reviewer's favorite sitcoms -- even in its own time, it seemed hopelessly dated in its vision of family life, and when it was in syndicated reruns in the early 1970's, it came off as grotesque. But looking at this four-DVD set from Shout Factory, this writer began to appreciate its virtues and appeal -- this is due, in part, to the fact that the new transfers, apparently from pristine 35mm sources, look sensational. It doesn't get us away from the fact that a lot of the early scripts come off as filmed radio, with the visuals almost incidental to the dialogue humor, but it does make everything more watchable. With one exception -- one of the bonus features -- the 24 black-and-white episodes all look fresher and newer than they probably looked in 1954, given the broadcast standards of the period. Each episode gets four chapter-markers placed at the breaks where the commercials originally went. Each disc opens automatically to a Shout Factory trailer reel (of other sitcoms) that can be skipped over. The actual menu is a simple two-layer selection, offering both "play all" and individual episode selections, and access to the bonus features. The latter should prove especially pleasing to those who are fans of the program -- the first disc includes the featurette "Daddy's Girls," consisting of interviews with Elinor Donahue and Lauren Chapin, who played the two daughters of the series, and are filled with warm and sometimes very funny reminiscences of the program and the cast and crew, especially adult stars Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. Disc Two is appended with a biographical portrait of Robert Young by the latter's grandson, Bill Proffitt, made up of home movies with narration, and a selection of behind-the-scenes color home movies from the series itself. Disc Three offers the strangest bonus feature of all, a special episode done on behalf of the Treasury Department (to sell Savings Bonds) called "24 Hours In Tyrantland", in which Young's family patriarch tries to teach his children the value of freedom by daring them to live for 24 hours in a totalitarian household -- the latter episode was never shown on the air, but it was presented to churches, school groups, and other audiences that might be receptive to buying bonds; it's also the only episode that doesn't look 100% perfect, though it is 85% of what it ought to be in crispness. The full-screen (1.33-to-1) image throughout is just about beyond reproach, as is the sound quality -- indeed, this reviewer might well have liked the series better if it had looked this good in syndication in the early 1970's. Disc Four has the most interesting supplement, the pilot episode for the all-but-forgotten followup series that Young did with producer Eugene B. Rodney, called Window On Main Street. The latter is nicely done, with an interesting cast (including Ford Rainey), and is a curiously autumnal program -- Young plays a successful writer who returns to the place of his birth, a small town, after decades of living in places such as New York and Paris (and following the death of his wife and daughter) to find himself. It's got the kind of seriousness that most television avoids today, and after watching it, this writer was interested in seeing more of the show to see where the writers and producers took it for the season that it aired. The show comes complete with its original sponsor commercials, which look just as good as the episode itself -- which is to say, perfect.