Journey Into Fear, Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre’s third – and final – completed project for RKO Pictures, has arrived in a modest Blu-ray from the Warner Archive Collection.
The factory-pressed Blu-ray contains the 68-minute edit of the wartime thriller that was released theatrically February 1943.
Warner Archive is to be commended for getting this title out in such exceptionally fine quality. It offers a 4K scan of the safety master positives from the Library of Congress. The mono sound is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 with optional English SDH captioning. Bonus material is limited to three outstanding Mercury Theatre On the Air radio shows from 1938: Dracula, Treasure Island and A Tale of Two Cities. The cover art reproduces the original theatrical poster.
Sadly, the Blu-ray does not include the 71-minute European version with alternate scenes, which was shown at the Locarno Film Festival in 2005 and considered superior in many ways to the U.S. release. A detailed description by Roger Ryan of the European cut can be found on the Wellesnet Message Board at bit.ly/4gZm35N. It would have been too much to also hope for the inclusion of the assembly created by the Munich Film Museum using all available footage and shown at the Museum of Modern Art in 2015.
Norman Foster, who would later play Billy Boyle in The Other Side of the Wind, directed Journey Into Fear, a slight and sometimes confusing thriller. Based on the Eric Ambler book with a screenplay by Welles and Joseph Cotten, it stars Cotten as an American armaments engineer in Turkey pursued by Nazis who seek the information he possesses. Smuggled on board a steamer, Cotten meets a strange assortment of individuals, including a beautiful dancer played by Dolores Del Rio. Jack Moss, the Mercury’s business manager, was cast as a hitman and Welles played Colonel Haki of the Turkish police.
Welles tapped Foster, who had helmed the My Friend Bonito segment of It’s All True, to direct Journey Into Fear. Welles was unable to direct Journey Into Fear because of post-production work on Ambersons and the need to travel to Brazil to shoot Carnaval for It’s All True. Welles was dismissed by RKO upon his return from Brazil and did not supervise the editing of Journey Into Fear.
The film was first available on home video in the early 1980s on VHS videotape from Nostalgia Merchant, and later on laserdisc from Turner Home Entertainment. However, it never had a DVD or Blu-ray release in the U.S. until now. It can be purchased online from Amazon and other retailers for less than $25.
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