Nothing Sacred

It's always interesting to watch DVD versions of films from the Golden Age of Hollywood to see how the transfer holds up and to see how creative the producers of the DVD can be in providing extras when most if not all of the original players are no longer with us. With Nothing Sacred, very competent job is done here to provide interest features, although they are decidedly slanted to focusing on Carole Lombard as opposed to her co-star Fredric March. The film itself holds up very well. As one of the very first Technicolor films ever made, it's astonishing to realize that the primary hues of the original three-strip color process are sometimes visible due to the clarity of the digital image. It doesn't take anything away from the film, an acknowledged classic, but with it's brief running length of just over an hour, the DVD certainly requires some padding to make it worthwhile. In addition to the original theatrical trailer, which is always fun to compare from the early stages of the form to today's movie-in-a-minute versions, the DVD includes two Mack Sennett produced silent comedies featuring Lombard as a stock player. These shorts, Campus Vamp and Matchmaking Mama, are pleasant enough and good examples of Lombard's work in silent films before she became a star as a featured comedienne. The shorts also feature new scores by Lee Erwin. The other extra is the inclusion of some home movies shot by Lombard and her husband Clark Gable. These are innocuous enough but don't really provide any interesting insight into the stars themselves. One could suppose that the circumstances surrounding their marriage and the well-known tragic end of Lombard's life lend a certain poignancy to them but they are merely curiosities. Regardless, it's clear the DVD producers had an appreciation for the talent that was Carole Lombard.