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Fiddler on the Roof - 35th Anniversary (1 Viewer)

TheBat

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which version is enhanced for widescreen?
I remember I got my dvd a version of the movie that was not enhanced for widescreen.. that was before he got an HDTV set.

Jacob
 

JohnRice

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The original version, from about 1998, was not enhanced. Since then there have been two Special Editions, a single disc released about 3 years ago, and the 2 disc (35th Anniversary) released a month or so ago. Both of these are anamorphic (enhanced).
 

Jon Lidolt

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I don't know if this newest release really looks that much better than the previous one, but I wouldn't trade my disc for anything. Norman Jewison autographed it for me when a park was named after him not far from where I live in Toronto. He commented that he felt some of the picture looked a little old-fashioned now - I respectfully disagreed.
 

MatthewA

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It was a direct rebuke to anything "Old Hollywood". Technicolor's dye-transfer printing process died out because few films were shot using the Technicolor "look" (brightly-lit scenes, saturated colors, and deep depth-of-field). I prefer this look to the one that has been standardized since the 1970s.
 

Stephen_J_H

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I have the old SE. It's a DVD-14 with the special features on the flip side of the disc. I looked at this new version and didn't see anything really worth the upgrade, but if the transfer is truly that much better, I might have to spring for it @ some point. Did they retain the Easter Egg from the old SE?
 

Tim Glover

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John, all 3 editions of Fiddler were anamorphic widescreen. I've owned the previous 2 editions before this one. :)
 

Chuck Pennington

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Remember hat MGM did for the "special edition" 2-DVD reissue of THE PRODUCERS. All they did was put the bonus features that were on side B on a second disc and changed some trailers. They even dropped the original trailer of the movie from that reissue! No new transfer - no new NOTHING except bonus trailers for other movies.
 

Paul Linfesty

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For clarification, the vast majority of original release prints were 35mm mono for the non-roadshows. I saw it this way even though the theatre was equipped with 4-track magnetic. (There were some 35mm 4-track mag prints along with the 70mm 6-track mag prints). While the surrounds may have been tampered with a bit, the front channels certainly sound like a mix that would have been used in that era.

AFAIK, this was not an authentic 6-channel mix in theatres. The final mixed source was 4-track mag with the so-called spread used while sounding the 70mm mag prints (creating left-center and right-center channels by combining left-center and right-center for the extra channels while cutting the volume by 50 percent). THis wasn't just employed for 35 to 70mm blow-ups, either. Many films originating in 65mm used this approach.

Fiddler was obviously shot in 35mm, since it exhibits the usual anamorphic artifacts. I think Fiddler was shot using the older, much larger Panavision cameras that would be replaced soon by the new smaller, lightweight Panaflexes.

As far as the Intermission card is concerned, why this got left off, I don't know. It was on the VHS tape!
 

JohnRice

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I've owned all three as well, and I thought the first was 4:3 widescreen. However, I gave it to someone who still has it, so I will check to make absolutely sure.
 

JohnRice

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BTW, Paul, thanks for the feedback on the soundtrack.

I looked at the two previous discs, and here are some of the details.

There is a ton of stuff on these, so I'm just going to say what is added to the 35th Anniversary Edition, which also contains everything from the previous SE.

John Williams: Crating a Musical Tradition 11:33
Tevye's Daughters 16:29
Set in Reality: Production Design 9:51
Songs of Fiddler on the Roof 14:44

The extras side of the SE is 3.75 GB and the extras disc from the 35th is 7.6 GB

I also looked at some specific scenes on both discs and can say without doubt that this is not the same transfer. I am rather certain about this because not only is the color on the 35th Anniversary more accurate (and significantly different), as far as I'm concerned, but the framing is slightly different.

Also, something the bitrate freaks won't like is, the 35th Anniversary disc is basically full, with nearly 200MB more space taken up, however, it has 750 MB of additional soundtracks, so the video bitrate is actually slightly lower. I really doubt this is actually a problem. The picture of the 35th Anniversary is clearly superior, and the difference in total space used for video is only about 500 MB. A packed DL disc is just fine to store a 3 hour movie, even with a couple extra 2 channel soundtracks.
 

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