A few words about...™ Gone with the Wind -- in Blu-ray - Page 3

Jon, the framing was a source of concern for me for years. I remember the shot of the letter that Rhett sends to Melanie when he returns her wedding ring. When I first bought the vhs in early 1989, the letters were cropped off. I got to see the 50th Anniversary release later that year and was shocked when not only were all of the letters visible, but that the heading informed us that the letter was written from the Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. Only now can all of that info be seen! Another shot is when Ashley returns home for Christmas. You can now read all of the letters on the Atlanta depot.

Apologies if this has been dealt with already, but has anyone else noticed that there seems to be frames missing or cut at around the 12:40 mark (the scene directly after Scarlett and her father gaze on Tara in almost-silhouette; a carriage is seen jumping a bit in the frame). I notice that it is in my SD version as well. In no way does it spoil my enjoyment - what a fantastic blu-ray! - but I just wondered if they was a story attached...

I believe that the frame jumps were an issue with the original special effects. I have always seen that scene jump and I knew even before this was released that someone would notice it! Another one occurs during the paddock scene between Scarlett and Ashley.

Thanks Eric. I have to say that for years I was a bit of a snob about GWTW; it was merely Hollywood being all shallow and entertaining ("and stuff"). Up until 5 years ago the only time I had seen it was on the big screen when I was 10 (sans parents, would you believe - I went with 3 friends). To this day, I still remember the elderly woman who turned around to us in the queue and told us we were in for a treat. She wasn't wrong - I loved it! Then I really started to get into cinema: the Kubricks, the Kurosawas, the - God help us! - Godards...I turned my back on Gone With the Wind. Snubbed Casablanca too. But I'm glad to say I'm one of the - all too rare - lucky ones; I came back to Hollywood's Golden Age and recognised its brilliance. Anyway, seeing Selznick's baby on a 46" screen - and on blu-ray - is the best 4 hours I've spent all year (I don't get out much...).

Robert, I grabbed Haver's book last year and concur. The frames are also priceless.

It's on my Santa list... I read Brownlow's book years ago (and then sold it - it was a bad time for me...).

I have owned the book since it was first published.  It is indispensable concerning Selznick's contributions and the information on GWTW is the best.  I can still read it and learn something new that I somehow passed over during other readings.

Finally saw that box set in person at J&R yesterday, and it does look impressive(!).  I might've felt compelled to take the plunge right there if J&R didn't want to charge an arm and a leg for it (at >$60).

Under the circumstance, I just might see about making an exception, shop around for a solid deal, and not limit myself on the price as much as I normally do...

_Man_

I went and snapped up a quartet of the Target copies last night while they were on sale for $13 (Christmas gifts, not ebay items :)). I couldn't believe how much Target's price was for the single-disc set: $40! Are they serious?? 

Does anyone know if a 2-disc might be released sometime down the road here in the States? I saw that the 3-disc Wizard of Oz was coming out this week, wondered if they plan on doing the same for this. Thanks! 

We ended up picking up the 1-disc version from Target as well.  And what a treat it was to finally watch this film on this Blu-ray for my very first complete viewing of it (after only seeing bits and pieces of maybe an hour or two of it over the years) -- and my 10-yo son liked it enough to not take a break at intermission too even though I wanted a short break.

Kudos to Warner for this excellent release.

And kudos too for WoOz, which we also picked up from Target.  BTW, the Target exclusive version was already 3-disc.  No idea if the eventual wide release of non-boxed GwtW will be 1-disc or more.  The boxset does look impressive though.  If I were a big fan, I'd probably spring for that at ~$45.  If a 3-disc version becomes widely available at a great price, I may doubledip and maybe pass our 1-disc along to my mother-in-law or something since she loves this film -- they don't have plans to get a BD player anytime soon, so we're only passing along our old DVD to them for now.

_Man_

 My wife picked this up the 1-disc blu for $12.99 on Black Friday.  I was disappointed to see that unlike Target's Wizard of Oz set, it was only one disc.

I pondered returning it, and getting the two-disc UK version.  Then I looked on my shelves and pulled down the 4-disc DVD.  Most of the supplementals on the 2-disc blu-ray are already on that previous set, and they're all in SD anyway.  And I don't think I'd watched any of them!

Sometimes you have to curb those collector's impulses.  I think I'll just open the Target blu and keep the DVD for the supplements.

The two-disc edition is presently only available in the UK. I got mine for about $26 shipped from AmazonUK - which generally (at least for me) only takes an extra 3-4 days longer than AmazonUS to have items delivered stateside. I am fairly sure that a scaled down release will be forthcoming at some point, but there's really no reason to overlook the UK edition if you want the film now with all the supplements. It's region free and comes in a slipcase with nice cover art and all of the special feature are NTSC encoded. The only thing it doesn't contain (when compared to the swag edition offered stateside) is the "When the Lion Roared" doc - which many of us here already own in one form or another, and the CD sampler of the Steiner soundtrack.

The UK edition comes highly recommened.

Indeed - When the Lion Roars was available on Target's 3-disc blu-ray "Emerald Edition" of the Wizard of Oz, which many of us bought on Black Friday for $12.99.

I wonder if Mr. Harris would be able to answer a technical question for me. What is the correct color temperature to watch a 3-strip Technicolor film in, the standard 6500 K, or the 5500 K that some experts say is preferable for black and white films made during the Golden Age of Hollywood? Thank you. :)

Depends on what the print is timed for.  Original dye-transfer prints would have been timed for Carbon arc lamp houses (about 5500° Kelvin), a little more yellow.  Newer prints would be timed significantly lower for Xenon arc lamp houses and would look colder if projected with Carbon arc.

Gotcha. Thanks, Jack!

So what is the verdict about cropped shots being restored for this release? 

Doing an A/B comparision, I see there is a significant amount of picture information on the left side of the screen in the train station shot, plus a bit on the right (at 1:16:55) that is not present in either of the previous DVD releases.  On my 42-inch set, there are nearly two inches of extra picture on the left in the blu-ray version of that shot as compared to the 1998 DVD and about an inch on the right.  There's an entire upper level to the building on the left in that shot that is not even visible in any previous DVD incarnation. 

However, looking futher through the disc, I find this is true throughout the film -- quite a bit of additional information on the sides of the picture.

Surprisingly, the 2004 four-disc set was cropped quite a bit closer on the sides than the 1998 DVD was.  For example, in the aforementioned train station shot, there are only three arches visible in the building on the left in the 2004 edition.  The 1998 edition shows three, plus half of a fourth.  The blu-ray, however, shows five arches, with the flag pole reaching all the way to the bottom of the screen, something it does not do in the DVD versions. 

And, if nobody's noticed, for the first time on home video we can see the full word "Atlanta" at the train station when Ashley comes home on his leave.

I don't know if the previous problem shots are "fixed" or if we're just getting more info in all shots.

I haven't had a chance to spin up this disc yet, Brian.  But based on what you describe, it sounds like a very good thing. 

I bought both the new BluRay and latest standard DVD.  The BluRay shows more information on both sides.  For the first time on video, there's plenty of breathing room on the sides during the opening cast crawl.  The DVD is much closer to the earlier versions in framing, but is slightly improved.

On my HD set, the BluRay image is noticeably wider than the standard DVD.  The DVD looks like 1.33:1.  The BluRay looks like it's well in excess of 1:37.

The top and bottom of the frame look fine.  You can't see things you weren't supposed to see at the top of the frame as you could in the 1998 theatrical prints.  The old, old laserdisc's opening shot dollying in on Scarlett and the twins has more information at the bottom of the frame, which indicates to me that they haven't found the original opening establishing shot of Tara but are still zooming in through it and the following dissolve shot.  Still, it's a magnificent transfer and the dupe shots don't look as nearly drab as they have in the past, although they still aren't as vibrant as the rest of the film.

The difference on the sides is almost assuredly due to the fact that the BD is encoded within a 16x9 frame while the DVD is encoded within a 4x3 frame.

Hmmm...  Perhaps, the TV (or DVD player) is somehow applying overscan to the 4x3 DVD presentation even though the image is being framed (w/ side bars) for a 16x9 display.  My previous 16x9 RPTV added some serious overscan (w/ its side bars) to its 4x3 presentation of whatever SD input while my Denon DVD player's 4x3 pillarbox mode yielded neglegible overscan, if any at all.

_Man_

Here's a fascinating vintage news segment about the first home video release of "Gone With the Wind" from 1985.  It also confirms my recollection (posted back in 2004!) that the source for that original video release was a previously undiscovered negative that had never been used for printing because the canister had been mislabeled.

How strange to look back and remember, now that every major American classic has been available on home video for years, what big news this was at the time:

www.youtube.com/watch

I checked out Ronald Haver's big picture book, "David O. Selznick's 'Gone With the Wind'," from the library today.  There are a few frame stills in the book showing some of the "black bar on the bottom" shots.  The ones they show are the first shot of the carriages going into Twelve Oaks (which another poster may have confused with the shot of the Twelve Oaks sign), the pullback with Scarlett and her father on the horizon, and the long overhead shot of the train station with the soldiers that I described above.

One thing I (finally) realized when looking at these stills that I had misundertsood before: for the shots where there is a black bar at the bottom of the screen on the negative, the black bar isn't obcuring any information... the missing information is at the TOP of the screen.  The bar represents the bottom edge of the original shot, a result of it being printed "up" one sprocket.  It's the upper portion of the shot that's being cut off.  And you can tell in these frame blowups, because there is a curve upward at the edges of the black bar... the bottom corners of the original frame. 

At any rate, judging from the shot of the train station in the book... No, I don't think it's been restored.  We're still missing some information at the edges of the frames.  Where I noted above that there are four arches visible in the building on the left in the new disc, there are five visibible in the actual frame blowup, as well as two additional vertical windows in the building on the right. 

So, though we're closer than ever to the original with this new disc, it doesn't appear it's quite the full shot.  And while they've lost the really obvious pan downwards in the dissolve to the next shot of Prissy coming down the stairs, what they do is VERY SLOWLY pan down AFTER the dissolve has completed.  It's less obvious, but there is no pan down at all after the dissolve in previous home video versions.

Brian, I've got a Panasonic Viera Plasma which, oddly, has two image settings - Size 1 is 95% of the picture and Size 2 is 100% of the picture (idiotically, that should be reversed, Size 1 should be 100% because who in their right mind would want 5% of the image cropped??). Anyway, the default is of course Size 1, which for a 1.33:1 image will crop the top and bottom a bit (and I must admit, GWTW is a little more attractive in this false mini widescreen mode), but with Size 2 I see the entire boxy 1.33.

So I don't know if you can adjust your monitor's image like that, but I have mine set to Size 2 so I can see 100% of the intended image. Not sure that's what you're seeing, but it was just a thought!

I can see the whole image, Sean... I'm already viewing it unscaled.  I'm talking about information that is missing on the sides of the picture.  Since it's a 1.33 picture, there are black bars on the sides anyway... viewing it at "100% picture" wouldn't make a difference.

I wish they could find the original shots in some mismarked canister. They didn't want to use a 1939 print because of the lack of detail and the fact that it would be too dark. I would rather they do what they did here than the zooming on the 2004 edition. On that edition you lost a lot at the top and both sides. On this one you lose the top and very little of the sides.

I can't say 100 percent, but I read on another website (by doing a google search) that someone asked Ned Price and that is what they decided to do. You can also do a google search where the technicians mention how they did reposition some of the shots. This has to go down as one of the stupidest moves in the history of cinema...forever altering a work of art for a brief re-release. (The 1954 decision, not the 2009 decision.)
Edited by eric scott richard - 12/9/09 at 8:50pm

No, Brian, I meant the top and bottom would be cropped, the sides would obviously not be cropped. The 1954 crop, which resulted in that black bar in certain shots along the bottom of the frame, was an idiotic move but as far as I know the original negative would never have been touched for that. In fact, there would be no way to crop the original (three strip) negatives to create that image, another dupe negative would have to be made. And Warners scanned the original three strips AGAIN for this blu ray release at 8k. The frames that had been cropped in '54 look to be solid again. You're right, most of the image was removed from the top of the frame because there is a lot of headroom in GWTW. Knowing film and negative, I just don't see how the original negs could have been altered; unless dupe negs were created of the altered shots, then cut into the original negs, but then you'd lose two frames, one on each end of the cut, and the sound would be out.

Anyway, I'm pretty certain the film on blu ray, since it came from the original negs, is untouched.