International EUROPEAN BLU-RAY REVIEW: GILDA (1946) (1 Viewer)

This review is made possible with the help of www.DaaVeeDee.com


Notes on my reviews: I do not offer plot summaries in most cases, as these can be found on a million other sites, but rather focus instead on what people want to know: the image and sound presentation, default playback settings, subtitles, audio choices, etc. My equipment: Panasonic TC-P55UT50 Plasma monitor (3-D capable); Panasonic DMP-BDT220 3-D Blu-ray player; LG BD-360 all-region Blu-ray player; Denon AVE-E200 5.1 Surround receiver. All aspect ratios are physically measured on the Panasonic screen, which has been set to eliminate overscan.




LABEL: Sony COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Italy REGION: All-Region, confirmed. ASPECT RATIO: 1.37:1 C/BW: BW SOUND: English Mono Running Time: 110 m Subtitles: None. HD Interviews with Martin Scorcese and Baz Luuhrman. CHAPTERS: 16


One of the enduring noirs from the 1940's gets a typically fine transfer from Sony. Too bad that it is so far only available from overseas, but at least this is an all-region disc.


Natural grain is quite evident. The image is sharp, and exhibits terrific gray scale/contrast. The mono sound is clear and

without distortion.


Sony is once again amazingly supportive of language and subtitle options, Audio choices include English, French, German, Japanese, Portugese, Spanish.


Subtitles - well, too many to list, but includes all major languages worldwide.


Highly recommended.




This review was made possible with the help of www.DaaVeeDee.com

I have one minor caveat and that is the print source, while very good has not gone through any further cleanup or physical restoration since early 2000's. Tramlines and other minor emulsion damage are evident. Bitrate is always sufficiently high to maintain fine grain resolution and gray scale however, and I would guess the scan was done at 2K. Anyway these sorts of film artefacts are not unwelcome to me as part of the viewing experience, but they might be to others.

Extras: I could happily die without ever hearing Baz Lurhmann again (or ever having to endure one of his movies again.) Whoever chose him for this should be slapped.

Re Baz .. I quite enjoyed Strictly Ballroom at the time. But his best work (and really fantastic) was on stage, not on film. His 'La Boheme' and his 'Midsumer Night's Dream' for The Australian Opera were really sublime .. though much of the credit had to go to Catherine!