Arch of Triumph

"Bless your eyes"
Erich Maria Remarque wrote characters worldly enough to attract directors as sophisticated as G.W. Pabst, André De Toth, Douglas Sirk and James Whale to their stories. Here we are in the hands of Lewis Milestone, who earlier adapted Remarque's classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" into an Oscar-winning Hollywood triumph.

"Arch of Triumph" drops us into a refugee underworld in 1938 Paris. Europe is on the brink of another war, and people fleeing the fascists are evading deportation, internment, or worse. Charles Boyer plays a torture survivor, a German surgeon practicing medicine on the black market, an illegal alien one step away from being sent back to the Nazis who tortured his lover to death. His life is reduced to basic survival and an ambition for revenge upon the Gestapo officer (Charles Laughton) who prowls Paris looking for information on resistance networks.

Late one rainy night, Boyer's doctor performs a reluctant act of kindness, and...

Unforgettable Flotsam
ARCH OF TRIUMPH has generated a faithful following in the years since its initial failed release, and with good reason. Director Lewis Milestone's film of Erich Maria Remarque's novel, FLOTSAM, didn't achieve the success of his earlier Remarque adaptation, ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT; the downbeat subject matter, coupled with the offbeat casting of Bergman in the kind of role her fans couldn't accept, doomed the project. But this picture boasts many strengths, starting with Milestone's intelligent screenplay. The usual Hollywood euphemisms for promiscuous heroines fail to prevent Bergman from creating an unusually frank, complex portrait of female sexuality, deeper and more moving than many of her performances from this period. She's matched by Boyer, whose cynicism breaks in the film's last scene, to shattering effect. Kudos, too, to Louis Calhern and Charles Laughton in incisive work in supporting roles, Russell Metty's striking black-and-white photography, and William...

Great Film - Poor Quality Film to DVD Transfer
It's surprising that this film comes from the UCLA film archives and this DVD is NOT a restored version. In fact the print it came from was dirty and not well transferred. You see white and black spots all over the place, in one point you see a hair that got stuck in the projector thats just hovering on an area until it dislodged. You occasionally see streak lines going through the whole frame during segments. Also I noticed some flickering (picture jumping up and down) inherent to poor film projector alignment. The source film that must have been used for transferring this to digital (DVD) looks like reels that were played many times in theaters and also there are many signs of splicing as there are some abrupt cuts.
I have seen better quality of this film shown on cable where TCM plays it often. The film was shot with very high contrast(very common in European films of the day to use exaggerated contrast levels) very black blacks and very bright whites, (US made films of the...

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