Rocket09 Reviews

Contempt (1963)

TCM version is a pan & scan horror, beware

[14 April 2008]

I have not seen the Criterion DVD of this film, but after reading many positive reviews I was looking forward to seeing the film on Turner Classic Movies' Sunday night import series. I've seen a few of Godard's early movies, but CONTEMPT was new to me. On TCM every movie always looks so pristine, but I was shocked by the horrible quality of the print. Another user posted here claiming the screwy colors and poor dubbing was some sort of arty inside joke by Godard, but other reviews indicate otherwise. Let me tell you what I saw that made me give up seven minutes into the film.

Pan and scan. CONTEMPT is constantly referred to as an excellent widescreen movie with great cinematography, but this was the worst pan and scan job I've ever seen. The opening credits sequence was stretched vertically to fit the screen, causing that "tall skinny" effect. If the whole film had been this way, I could have corrected it by switching the TV to 16x9 enhanced mode. But the following scene--of Bardot's butt--switches from stretched to cropped. And poorly cropped at that. The next scene is worse. As the characters move across the widescreen, instead of the usual "panning" effect, we get a splice every time someone steps out of the frame--then bang! they're back in the frame. If a cropped-off character speaks, we suddenly get a clumsy splice to fit them in the frame. Surely Godard didn't intend to have his film edited this way.

The picture. People keep describing the rich colors and picturesque camera work. All I got was washed-out images, grainy, suddenly switching to bright and clear, then going dark and murky. The picture is full of holes and scratches.

Poor dubbing. This film should be subtitled. The dubbing of foreign characters is nearly incomprehensible. Also, it's clear that while Jack Palance speaks English the other characters are supposed to be speaking French. The dubbing makes everything English and destroys the whole point of the language barrier.

All of these aspects made the film uniquely unwatchable. It looked like the work of a disreputable distributor, the kind that makes those DVDs you see for three dollars at K-mart. I know that poor film-to-video transfers have survived the switch from VHS to DVD, but I didn't expect to see such a mess on TCM. Be warned.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

Cyrano is finally on DVD

[9/10 · 7 October 2005]

The 1990 French film version of Cyrano de Bergerac has always left audiences craving more, and the DVD is no exception--in fact, it leaves something to be desired. Cyrano was one of several early 90s films (Raise the Red Lantern, La Femme Nikita) that introduced foreign cinema to a new younger audience, making foreign language films popular for the first time since the 1960s. Before there was an IFC or Sundance Channel, Cinemax and Showtime were friendly to foreign films so that even in the Midwest viewers could see what was on the big screens in NYC or Cannes. This was a godsend for those living in small towns where these films never hit the big screen, but unfortunately these cable versions are often all we have for comparison when reviewing the quality of a DVD. This makes it all the more disturbing to see the Cyrano DVD from MGM World Films--it doesn't even equal the pan and scan cable version.

I first saw Cyrano at a junior college film fest where a video projector was used to show VHS formatted films on a large screen. This was my first taste of the unusual experience of seeing a movie on the big screen that has been "formatted to fit your TV." Nevertheless, I loved the film and taped it when it appeared on cable shortly thereafter. After seeing the DVD I have decided to keep the tape.

Let's get down to details.

After loving the film in "full-frame" I was looking forward to finally seeing a letterbox version--the full theatrical widescreen. I am still waiting. There is a trend today that I call "litterbox version." This is the common trend on cable to show a movie in a slightly wider format than regular pan and scan, but still not in its full cinematic width. The black bars are too small and the image is still being cropped off the sides. I won't pretend to understand the logic behind this--perhaps it's an attempt to play it both ways and satisfy everyone. But people who purchase DVDs with a "widescreen" label do not want to see a litterbox version. Cyrano is such a disc. A quick comparison between the feature and the trailer shows a significant difference in proportion, though neither is showing the entire Panavision image.

What about picture quality? Grainy in the darker scenes, unacceptably so in the final scene. Was the first shot of Vincent Perez always blurry for a few seconds?

Sound? I actually taped this movie twice from cable when I realized that one channel was broadcasting in stereo and one wasn't. The DVD's overall sound is superior to this, but there are numerous audio glitches. Occasionally, a single word of dialog will have an odd echo effect or sounds will briefly jitter into the opposite speaker. This happens often enough to be noticeable.

There is one more significant change that has been made for this DVD. The subtitles. Previous VHS and cable versions featured easy-to-read yellow titles. Here there are old-fashioned white ones. They are easy enough to read, but there is a further change. This is not the famous translation by English author Anthony Burgess. They have abandoned that for a similar version which still does a decent job of making the English rhyme but varies from Burgess's version in noticeable ways. This Burgess translation is cited as a plus in some reviews, but you won't find it on DVD.

Those seeing the movie for the first time will love it, but old fans will want to keep their tapes. From the list of other titles offered by MGM World Films I'd say it's only a matter of time before they release Raise the Red Lantern. Let's hope they don't ruin that one. In the meantime we can count ourselves lucky that at least this litterbox version is wide enough to see Cyrano's entire nose.

Bon Voyage (1944)

Viewer beware

[6/10 · 7 October 2005]

Disclaimer: This review is based on versions of Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache as seen on Turner Classic Movies. These versions were copyrighted 1993, and I'm assuming they are the same versions previously available on VHS and more recently on DVD. The following criticism is aimed at saving people much grief and money. If someone has seen the DVD and can disqualify any of my remarks, I welcome you to do so. There are so few accurate reviews of obscure DVDs.

Alfred Hitchcock made Bon Voyage and Aventure Malgache (Madagascar Adventure) in 1944 to help the war effort by encouraging the French Resistance. The only people who have ever heard of these short films are Hitchcock fanatics, but even the most die-hard fans need not waste any time looking for these rarities. There is little in Bon Voyage and nothing in Aventure Malgache to indicate the hand of Hitchcock. Both films are in French and suffer from boring framing stories hung with flashbacks and constant voice-over narration. It is unlike Hitch to use so much dialog and the subtitles are difficult to read. The white lettering is hard to read against lighter parts of the background and at least half of the subtitles in Bon Voyage are cropped off the bottom of the screen.

Aventure Malgache tells of the French Resistance smuggling people out of Nazi-controlled Madagascar and is a completely forgettable film. Bon Voyage is more interesting. It tells of a British flier who has escaped from a POW camp. He is traveling with another escaped POW and helped by the Resistance, but there are double-crosses and murder in their path. However, only the murder scenes look like Hitchcock while the other scenes are very static. There is minimal camera movement and when the actors aren't sitting around talking they are shuffling around like zombies. The cropped subtitles leave viewers guessing at many of the finer details. Many references to passwords, place-names, and other important details (something about a cigarette used as a signal) are completely illegible. Bon Voyage does include the "old Gestapo trick" that Martin Landau mentions near the end of North By Northwest, but this is the only connection I could see to Hitch's other films.

If the DVD is significantly better than what I have described (new subtitles in yellow, for instance), please write a review saying so. It is very hard to find detailed reviews of obscure foreign films on DVD. Now I'm going to go critique the 1990 version of Cyrano.

Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (1996)

Read the book first

[9/10 · 7 October 2005]

I am writing this because the Internet Movie Database/Amazon listing has a few inaccuracies. The film itself is fine if you've read Farrell's autobiography Holding On to the Air. The film hits most of the memorable moments of Farrell's career, but condensing it into a movie gives it all a speeded-up appearance, as if she became a star overnight just by wishing it. I thought the segment about "Ballerina Island" was too brief. And nothing is mentioned about Farrell's hip replacement surgery and the comeback which followed. Perhaps the directors wanted to stay focused on the Farrell/Balanchine relationship and found these things to be off-subject. But that doesn't explain why there is so little of Mr. B's Mozartiana ballet. Despite the Amazon reviewer's claim of "lengthy footage," there are only a few black and white stills of Mozartiana, plus recent footage of Farrell teaching the choreography to ballerina Susan Jaffe. Perhaps half of the ballet films here are black and white, and some of them are very blurry. Unfortunately, the all-important Don Q is one of these, and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue looks like it was filmed by an amateur. No wonder Farrell wishes she could keep her dance films under lock and key. However, the color clips of the feature film A Midsummer Night's Dream are excellent, and so is Tzigane.

The DVD menu doesn't list particular dance sequences, making it no easier to cue than a videotape. (I suppose you could make your own listing and stick it into the case, since there is also no booklet.) There are no extras here but web-links, some of which are now outdated. It would have been nice to see some extra dance footage or even Farrell's appearance on Sesame Street. But on the brighter side, the film runs 15 minutes longer than advertised, making it 105 minutes total.

The Wind in the Willows (1995 TV Movie)

This is not the "Monty Python" version.

[7/10 · 6 June 2000]

I am writing this review after seeing this movie on the STARZ! channel by accident. Hopefully, I can save other viewers some confusion. This was advertised as The Wind in the Willows, the live-action film directed by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame and starring Jones along with other former Python stars. This is not that film. This film is actually an animated made-for-TV version. The confusion arises from the fact that both versions were made in 1996 and both feature former Python Michael Palin. He is the voice of Rat in this version and he is the only Monty Python star associated with this production.

To further the confusion this cartoon does begin and end with brief live-action scenes. These scenes show Vanessa Redgrave boating along a river and reading to some children. She also serves as narrator throughout the cartoon.

The animation here is about what you'd expect. It looks like every other version of The Wind in the Willows. But the story is a slight mixture of Kenneth Grahame's original "Willows" and the more recent sequel "Willows in Winter" by William Horwood. Toad's obsession with motor cars is taken from the first book rather than his obsession with airplanes in the second book. A few scenes of winter in the Wild Wood and a brief subplot of Portly the otter being lost are all that is taken from Willows in Winter.

Overall it is a good cartoon. The language is very close to the books and I was glad to see that the animals still smoked pipes and cigars and carried pistols. It has not been "watered-down" for children and simpletons.

The Giant Claw (1957)

Bird-on-a-wire.

[15 March 2000]

A marionette less realistic than a Jim Henson muppet attacks NYC. The bird is blurred out in the first half of the film, but the wires are clearly visible in the second half. Scenes of mayhem and destruction are borrowed from other (better) movies. Future Playboy model Mara Corday plays a scientist again (see TARANTULA, it's better). Will mankind survive?

This movie floored me. Literally. It is the only movie that has made me fall off the couch laughing. Sitting through the first half of this movie is worth the enormous laugh you'll get when you finally see the monster. (That's not a spoiler is it?) It's too bad Mystery Science Theater 3000 never got to feature THE GIANT CLAW.