The Pride Of The Yankees: Collector's Edition / Eight Men Out: 20th Anniversary Edition
Somewhere between "Say it
ain't so, Joe," and "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of
the Earth," there's America's game: mythologized and demythologized, full of
dreams and optimism and heroics, but dogged by the scandals that persistently
tarnish its image. No other sport obsesses so much about the state of the game,
or goes to such lengths to preserve its great moments in amber while shuffling
its embarrassments under the table. The release of 1942's The Pride Of The
Yankees
and 1988's Eight Men Out is a case in point: Made shortly after Lou Gehrig's death,
the first film was rushed into production to honor one of baseball's good guys,
but the latter, about the 1919 "Black Sox" scandal, was stonewalled as a book
and a movie, and barely made it out in either form.
Nominated for 11 Oscars
(it won one, for best editing), The Pride Of The Yankees has a vaunted reputation
as a sports-movie classic, perhaps because the only scene anyone remembers is
Gary Cooper humbly, affectingly delivering Gehrig's famed farewell address at
Yankee Stadium. The film that surrounds that speech, however, is surprisingly
dreary and lifeless, a slapped-together piece of studio hackwork that's thick
with sentiment and short on illuminating details about Gehrig's life and
career. Oddly enough, the story places an inordinate emphasis on the Oedipal
tug of war between Gehrig's "best girls": His domineering working-class mother
(Elsa Janssen) and his good-hearted wife (Teresa Wright). The wife wins out
eventually, but while the two women scrap over wallpaper, the film nearly
forgets to mention that Gehrig was part of the Yankees' famed "Murderer's Row,"
or that he was baseball's famed Iron Man before ALS got the better of him.
By contrast, John Sayles' Eight
Men Out
is rich in specificity and purpose, sorting through the murky backroom deals,
mixed motivations, and emotional tumult behind the blackest mark in
pre-Steroids Era baseball history. The White Sox conspiracy to throw the 1919
World Series against the Cincinnati Reds is one of those "end of innocence"
moments, but Sayles, working from Eliot Asinof's book, extends sympathy to many
of the players, who weren't getting a living wage from tight-fisted owner
Charles Comiskey. Sayles' expertise in writing for ensembles pays off in an
exceptionally fair, nuanced look at everyone involved and not involved, and the
toxic mood of a clubhouse where winners are cajoled into losing. The film's
love for baseball isn't blindness.
Key features: A clutter of
mini-featurettes and a tribute by Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling on Yankees. A much better package on Eight Men Out,
including a two-part, hourlong documentary, a book-to-film short feature, and
an excellent Sayles audio commentary.