"Rio Bravo" and "The Cowboys" in HD (1 Viewer)

[Robert Crawford]

Well, "The Searchers" was criticized last year for having the same brownish tone to it.




Crawdaddy

 

[Phil Iturralde]

IMHO - having the HD DVD version is just whip-cream on top of the Howard Hawks movie classic that stars John Wayne, Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson and Walter Brennan. . Rio Bravo has action, humor and outnumbered good-guys vs. numerous bad guys plot (the Star Wars plot of the late '50s), ... which makes this a special catalog HD DVD for me.

Phil

 

[Cees Alons]

The disc is still coming my way, but I have seen Rio Bravo in the theater. Twice in fact.

I think I still remember how several of the scenes looked (Wayne and Martin, making their round through the town, the three men inside the sheriff's office, the final shootout).

I don't remember a "brownish" look, except perhaps during that scene at the barn. I also know how you can be deceived by your mind, certainly after 47 years ( ). The VHS version I have doesn't look brownish and in fact looked rather truthfull to the movie to me, colour wise.
Strange enough, I don't remember anything special about the DVD. Not even seeing it.

But as soon as this HD DVD arrives, I will tell you my impression about this.


Cees

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

Viewed the Blu-ray version of Rio Bravo last night and I was very satisfied with the look of the film.

My Brother and I would go to the show every Saturday in the late 50's and we were bombarded with "Westerns" and I remember the look-of-the-western, on the big screen. Was 8 years old when I saw "Rio Bravo".

The tint, the color and the fidelity (the way it looked on the big screen) including the film grain, seems to be all there, thanks to HD. (Viewed on a 110" screen via 1080P FP)

The disc has the best reproduction of Rio Bravo I've seen to date and it feels great to own this bit of history in such a fine condition.

Having the years behind me and looking at the young Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson was a thrill! Didn't remember them singing in the movie.

I didn't notice it when I was younger, but Dean Martin's acting as a withdrawing alcoholic was spot-on. If there was an Oscar for believability, he should have won it for that aspect alone.

Paul

 

[Neil Middlemiss]

I should receive my copies to review today or tomorrow and hope to have the reviews posted by Sunday night/Monday. I am interested, given the discussion in this thread, to see how they both look. I am a little young to have seen them in the theater to provide a good comparison there, however.

Neil

 

[ppltd]

The Duke has arrived in my mail box today. It looks like it will be a John Wayne at the mvies night tonight.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Yes but the Searchers was also suffering from serious yellow layer problems with the negative. There was some talk of the skies not looking the same color of blue as in the Technicolor prints. But that had more to do with the condition of the negative and what could be done with it, than any mistakes made by Warner.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

I went back and looked at Rio Bravo a little bit last night. I'm seeing grain structure changes just before each dissolve. This makes me suspect that this is NOT the original camera negative. If it were those dissolves would have to be recreated either making a new print via an A/B of the negative, or be doing them digitally. Ether way you wouldn't see that kind of change in the grain structure. So my guess is this is ether an internegative, or a mint Technicolor print made at some point along the way.

Just a guess of course.

Doug

 

[ScottJH]

Another way to compare, the documentary on the disc "Commemoration: Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo" features the old color.

 

[Robert Crawford]

That may be true, but there are still some people that think Warner is somehow screwing up the color.




Crawdaddy

 

[Chris S]

Not having been around when these films were released theatrically I can only comment on how I've seen them in previous incarnations and to my eyes they haven't looked better. I do recall noticing the lack of film grain in the dissolves that Douglas mentioned above but I didn't think too much of it at the time.

 

[Douglas Monce]

I suppose its possible, but with out having seen an original print from the era I don't know how anyone could make that judgment.

 

[Member 323668]

Yes, there is some grain here and there, sometimes nice grain, sometimes almost completely filtered out.

IMHO, the only scene where there is natural "untempered" grain is the sky in the opening credits. The other extreme where there is almost no grain at all is the "night scene" beginning at 36 min 50 s. Can anybody see the slightest grain structure here?

The color is not much of an issue for me. I noticed Warner's tendency to "create" warm, "yellowish-brownish" colors. I can live with that. (see "The Searchers" for example.)

Peter M. Bracke of the "highdefdigest" says: "After the rather gritty, dirty opening credit sequence, this 1.85:1 widescreen 1080p/VC-1 encode picks up quite nicely."

The opening credit sequence is not gritty or dirty. It is wonderful and natural. When "the encode picks up quite nicely" the transfer is tempered with massive digital filtering.

Another Peter M. Bracke quote on "The Cowboys": "There's also a consistent veil of light grain throughout the film, but I didn't find it all distracting."

Peter M. Bracke, I totally disagree with you. That "veil of light grain" is the poor filtered rest of a once wonderful grain structure. This filtering makes the transfer look flat. A lot of details are filtered out, too. (look at the closeups of Wayne's face in the indoor scene of the school - you must be blind if you can't see how filtered it looks) I find that rudimentary "veil of grain" massively DISTRACTING, because I don't want to see a "veil", I WANT TO SEE ALL THE NATURAL FILM GRAIN. NO GRAIN FILTERING! Period!

 

[Douglas Monce]

The title sequence of Rio Bravo is VERY grainy which is normal for an optical of this time period. All of the optical in this film, ie fades and dissolves exhibit this level of grain. The scene you are talking about starting at 36m 50s looks exactly right to me for a film of this vintage. Again I don't see anything that would suggest any kind of noise reduction or "filtering". The film to me appears to be perfectly rendered in this respect. Again as to color I can't speak to what this film looked like in 1959.

I don't have The Cowboys yet so I can't talk about that film on HD.

Doug

 

[Member 323668]

Agreed as concerns the opticals.

On the filtering/grain issue we agree to disagree diametrically.

 

[Michel_Hafner]

Time for Mr. Harris to chime in...

 

[Member 323668]

Yes, I really would like to hear Robert Harris' opinion on that issue.

A major contributing factor how the image/grain structure is perceived, is the display device, of course.

I am using the Panasonic G8 Plasma TH-50PV500 and the new full HD G10 Panasonic TH-50PZ700. The new full HD -although it has great resolution- pronounces grain even less than the older Panasonic G8 plasma.

Also checked both (Rio Bravo and Cowboys) on my neighbors' Sony Ruby. (wish I had one myself )

 

[Paul Hillenbrand]

I was only 8 (or 9 if the movie came out after August 1959).

IMHO:

From the comparison pictures of "Rio Bravo" from this Link (scroll down to the comparisons) The Warner Region 1-NTSC on top and the latest Warner (2-disc SE) DVD on the bottom of each sample;
In every example, I would choose the bottom picture as to what I remember was the classic "look-of-the-western" that I would see week after week in the late 50's.

They were dark and they were colorful. Every top picture of (The Warner's first region 1 DVD), looks like brightness was added to the entire picture, changing the atmosphere of the scenes, by revealing more background detail. (This seems logical to me, as people were becoming accustomed to the look of a picture that was "televised" on TV.) The color is toned down and the tinting adjusted, offsetting the darker look with a side affect of giving the skin an unnatural pink glow to it.

IMHO, people have gotten so used to looking at the "technical video look" of the revisions made from the VHS tapes and then the first region 1 DVD, that it's very difficult to get accustomed back to the "original film look", where I think technology is headed for a truer rendition that can be captured from an original film source. Doubt is compounded by chemical changes of the film's age, technical manufacturing structure and improper storage. "The Searchers"?

Paul

 

[Cees Alons]

Paul,

You're absolutely right. The bottom ones are not just better in several aspects, but they certainly look a lot more like the images I saw theatrical, colour wise.


Cees

 

[Edwin-S]

You guys must be seeing something I don't, because the top pictures in the comparison look darker to me than the bottom ones. The shadows in the bottom pictures look "washed out" and the lighting looks harsher to me. The bottom picture in the very last group does look much better than the top one. The skin tones look more natural in the bottom picture. Dean Martin looks sunburned in the top pic.