Blu-ray Review HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: A Star Is Born (1954) (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

"When I was born in a trunk at the Princess Theatre
In Pocatello, Idaho."


So today was my first viewing of A Star Is Born.


Never had seen this film prior to today. I suppose

I'm slowly easing into Judy Garland films.


Thought the film was very good, though a little

too long. I am surprised how good the film actually

turned out after reading about the turbulent history

behind the shoot and supposed backlash.


Thank Goodness the restoration of this film was

done through Warner Bros. It was very interesting

to see the attempt to reconstruct destroyed scenes

using photography stills. It worked out very, very well.

Had most any other studio attempted to restore this film
it would most likely have been a half-hearted effort.


Image quality is quite good. I think the most impressive

part of the disc is the "Swanee" number done against a

red backdrop which is just jaw-dropping in its technicolor

splendor. I sat watching that sequence thinking to myself,

"this is really how film is supposed to look," and it can

only look that good on the higher resolution format.


Overall, I enjoyed the film. I am happy that after all

these years I had the opportunity to watch it. Kudos

to Warner Bros. for putting so much care into that
restoration.

BTW, when I go out to California I always try to

walk the Warner Studios backlot. It's one of my

favorite studios and I never tire of walking past

all its huge sound stages to see what is in production.

It's kind of cool to see some familiarity 50 years

later in what is depicted in this film. The long

building where Judy gets her make-up done and

is later confronted by a laughing James Mason is

still there as are other areas of the lot shown in the film.

 

[Robert Harris]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ronald Epstein


Image quality is quite good. I think the most impressive

part of the disc is the "Swanee" number done against a

red backdrop which is just jaw-dropping in its technicolor

splendor. I sat watching that sequence thinking to myself,

"this is really how film is supposed to look," and it can

only look that good on the higher resolution format.

Ron,


What you're enjoying is actually Eastman Color splendor.


RAH

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

Originally Posted by Robert Harris /forum/thread/301564/htf-blu-ray-review-a-star-is-born-1954#post_3705188

 

[WilliamMcK]

A friend of mine just pointed out that the blu-ray of A Star Is Born comes out to an AR of 2.40:1 rather than 2.55:1. I checked my copy and got the same ratio. The screen caps I've seen all have the proper 2.55 AR. To check for a cropped frame, I queued up my disc and matched up a couple of still frames with screen-caps on-line. There is significant cropping on the sides between what my monitor is showing and what is seen in the capture.


Obviously I'm dealing with an over-scan issue, but my question is this--which part of my system is at fault?


1) The monitor (a humble 32" 3 year old LG LCD) which has always been painfully NOT over-scanned when it comes to Criterion's window-boxed sd-dvds


2) The player (a Samsung BD-C6500) which I suspect is my problem since it also tends to vertically stretch (just a hair) my sd-dvds


3) WHV's disc -- my friend thinks it's possible that WHV coded the disc so that the image expands slightly in playback, but wouldn't effect computer captured screen shots (is this possible?)


If it's the player or monitor are there ways I can correct this problem? Any help or ideas would be appreciated!

 

[John Skoda]

I just noticed the same thing and did some checking. I also have a blu-ray drive on my PC. When playing on the PC, the blu-ray shows the whole frame.


But I wasn't seeing the edges on my TV. It turns out that my TV has a "dot-to-dot" view mode (which is somehow NOT the default). When I switched to that mode, I see everything as I should. Not all TVs have that mode, however. So you may be stuck with the overscanning, depending on your make/model.


Also keep in mind that each different input on your TV may have different default settings--check them all.

 

[TonyD]

I think I saw that this movie is going "in the vault" for years to come back out on an anniversary. maybe for the 50th in 4 years.

 

[battlebeast]

Ok. So I just read a story from 1983 about the restoration of this film. It seems they found about 20 min+ of excised footage and restored it to the film. IMDB list the run time at 2:34, while this review says 2:56. I’ve also seen 181 and 196 min listed. What is the actual run time?

I understand this isn’t the full film restored; there are some missing scenes still... but how much is still Missing and how much has been restored?

 

[Will Krupp]

Ok. So I just read a story from 1983 about the restoration of this film. It seems they found about 20 min+ of excised footage and restored it to the film. IMDB list the run time at 2:34, while this review says 2:56. I’ve also seen 181 and 196 min listed. What is the actual run time?

I understand this isn’t the full film restored; there are some missing scenes still... but how much is still Missing and how much has been restored?

I believe the original run time upon release was 181 minutes and the cut down version is 154 minutes. I want to say that the restoration runs something like 176 minutes and is shorter than the original by five minutes because they couldn't find enough stills to cover all of the still-missing dialogue scenes. Haver and crew felt that there was no way to shuffle the existing stills around enough to make the soundtrack only scenes interesting so they trimmed them down. The full soundtrack of the missing five minutes can be heard as an audio only extra on the blu-ray.

I have no idea where that 196 minute run time comes from.

 

[battlebeast]

Are the missing scenes important?

I want to see this film, but, like
Metropolis, I want to see it COMPLETE. Is this the best we’ll get?

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Yes, watch it now.

You could wait the rest of your life hoping for a "complete" version.

 

[Jimbo64]

Unless an uncut print shows up my guess is yes

 

[mop]

I just noticed the same thing and did some checking. I also have a blu-ray drive on my PC. When playing on the PC, the blu-ray shows the whole frame.
But I wasn't seeing the edges on my TV. It turns out that my TV has a "dot-to-dot" view mode (which is somehow NOT the default). When I switched to that mode, I see everything as I should. Not all TVs have that mode, however. So you may be stuck with the overscanning, depending on your make/model.

Can someone tell me where that "mode switch" ("dot to dot view mode?) is found? I have an older Panasonic 50" 720 unit.

When this Blu-ray was released, I could only see it as 2.40, not 2.55 but a number of people said I was "nuts" and they were seeing 2.55. I switched the image ration to 4x5 (as opposed to 16, but *still* saw 2.40. I could see the difference between the DVD's 2.55 and the Blu-ray's 2.40, but *nobody* could explain to me *why* I was seeing 2.40.

Thank you.

 

[TJPC]

Apparently there were rather unimportant scenes in Esther’s apartment with Norman which would not make sense at all without visuals, but which could be removed without missing anything.

 

[PMF]

[...]I want to say that the restoration runs something like 176 minutes and is shorter than the original by five minutes because they couldn't find enough stills to cover all of the still-missing dialogue scenes.[...]

I am reminded of a line from "Scent of a Woman", when Lt. Col. Frank Slade had said, "Schlitz. No Schlitz? Blatz. No Blatz? Improvise." That same idea should also be applied to those 5 minutes. Sally forth, I say. No stills? Okay, then use storyboards. No storyboards? Then bring in a court-room sketch artist. After all, if the soundtrack was the key to this specific restoration, then why not keep that audio going wherever possible?

 

[Will Krupp]

After all, if the soundtrack was the key to this specific restoration, then why not keep that audio going wherever possible?

I think they would have if this was prepped solely as a home video release at the time. Their concern, I think, was that, since this was going to be a theatrical re-release, they had to keep audiences engaged and that meant enough footage to go along with the visuals as possible.

 

[MDS]

Apparently there were rather unimportant scenes in Esther’s apartment with Norman which would not make sense at all without visuals, but which could be removed without missing anything.

There is another scene of the roof of Esther's apartment that Nancy Kulp was in. Ronald Have wrote a book about the making of the film and the restoration of the film.

 

[PMF]

I think they would have if this was prepped solely as a home video release at the time. Their concern, I think, was that, since this was going to be a theatrical re-release, they had to keep audiences engaged and that meant enough footage to go along with the visuals as possible.

If it's Judy on the soundtrack, then the audience will remain engaged.

 

[Will Krupp]

If it's Judy on the soundtrack, then the audience will remain engaged.

Well...true, but only portion of the 'soundtrack only' bits are Judy. All I can think off the top of my head is a longer version of their sunset car ride and the aforementioned rooftop scene (with a lot of different voices that would confuse audiences.) The rest, if I'm remembering correctly. is Tommy Noonan in a telephone booth and Olver Niles (if that's even his name in this version, lol) in his office talking about sending Norman away on location.

 

[John Skoda]

I've never used a Panasonic, but looking at a manual I saw online it might the FORMAT button you want to experiment with.

What I always want is the picture to be as big as it can be WITHOUT any stretching/distorting or any cropping. Finding that setting is sometimes hard.

 

[JoeDoakes]

I think that there may be another thread around here where someone claims that a person he knows has an uncut print of this, but could not reach a deal with Warner to allow them to use it.