In the digital age, "lost" films are being found. Two important titles, both conjured from obscurity, just arrived on DVD. They are: What Makes Sammy Run? and Johnny Got His Gun.

Half of What Makes Sammy Run? -- broadcast in 1959 as a two-part play on the CBS anthology series Sunday Showcase -- was considered truly lost. Finding it in the vaults of New York's Museum of Television & Radio was like opening a treasure chest from the golden era of American television. That 2004 discovery helped lead to a 2006 stage revival and eventually to this DVD. It debuted in Canada April 21, following a Feb. 10 release in the U.S.

The 1959 production starred Larry Blyden as Sammy Glick, the prototypical ruthless hustler of Hollywood infamy. John Forsythe played his disapproving pal while Dina Merrill and Barbara Rush played his two women. Because the show was preserved only in a B&W kinescope, the image is raw. But the material, and performances, are so exhilarating that it still sings.

The DVD is a treasure, too, because Merrill and Rush collaborate on a commentary and novelist-screenwriter Budd Schulberg is preserved in an insightful interview.

Johnny Got His Gun dates from 1971. It was never "lost" but was certainly ignored. The DVD, which debuted this week, offers the truncated 106-minute version of writer Dalton Trumbo's only film as a director.

It is based on his 1939 novel, the Bible for anti-war sentiment in the U.S. for decades.

The film is haunting, sometimes awkward and certainly problematic. But it is also poetic as it tells the story of a patriotic young man (Timothy Bottoms) trapped in his own shattered body after being hit by a shell in the First World War. Among compelling dream sequences, he talks to Christ (Donald Sutherland).

Trumbo was one of the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. The DVD, among many excellent extras, includes a documentary on his controversial life and career.

There is context here: America is examining its shameful political past.