- Joined
- Feb 8, 1999
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- Real Name
- Robert Harris
Battle of Britain is being released on Blu-Ray by MGM via Fox Home Entertainment.
With a budget upwards of ten million dollars, which was quite high for the time, and some of the greatest names in the history of the British cinema, (or acting in general for that matter), the film just barely stands the test of time.
Photographed by the incomparable Freddie Young, BSC, who liked to fully expose his negatives as much as possible, the resultant Blu DVD shows precisely how good an almost forty year old Eastman negative can look when its image is properly harvested and taken to high definition video. It also shows just how much a cinematographer's work can be affected by his or her director. For the best of Mr. Young's work, one will have to look elsewhere.
As an aside, and epics aside, one film that I hope arrives in the near future on Blu is Disney's Treasure Island (1950), a three-strip Technicolor production shot by Mr. Young, which can easily be a primer on shadow and light. Even in SD, take a look at the apple barrel scene with Bobby Driscoll, which is a wonderful example of Mr. Young's capabilities.
With generally beautiful and rich color, and an image that is sharp as a tack when taken from original, this is a great Blu release on every technical level.
The magnetic stereo audio has been captured and is in lossless form on the new DVD. Possibly because of the lossless nature of the playback, and the perfection of digital audio, we can now hear the roughness around the edges and the problems with occasional dialogue recordings, while the score shines through brilliantly. In magnetic playback on prints, this would have been naturally softened.
Battle of Britain is a Harry Salzman production, and while millions were spent on the location work, the air battles, and a myriad of model aircraft, which occasionally look to be just that, especially as they explode in mid air, the film never quite comes together.
What we have are:
A. air battles;
B. pilots lounging waiting to be called into action;
C. young, inexperience pilots... "seven hours in a spitfire..." who never have a chance against the ace Nazi pilots;
D. the relationship between Susannah York and Christopher Plummer, which tends to stop the film in its tracks;
E. airfields being hit by Nazi bombers;
F. senior officers fretting about the survival of England;
G. more air battles;
The film seems to lack cohesiveness, which we can blame on the script, which never seems to tie everything together. What we see are a host of vignettes, laced with smiling Nazis and determined British airmen.
This is a good and interesting film that was never a great film, brought to Blu-Ray in high quality fashion.
On a purely technical level, one can easily see the difference between original negative and dupes. This can almost be a lesson in film elements.
The Main Title sequence is, of necessity, a couple of generations down. It appears that shots with sub-titles are also dupes, although one would think that this would not have been the case.
Sharpness in dupes is noticeably down, as the high definition process leaves no hiding place for anything less than the highest quality element. This is actually an interesting anomaly, as original dye transfer prints of the film would have looked a bit better, with the added contrast of the printing system giving the dupes not more sharpness or clarity, but more apparent sharpness.
For me, as well as many others, the appearance together of Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard representing one generation, along with Kenneth More, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw and Edward Fox of the next, is worth the price of admission alone.
While not one of the great films of the 1960s, Battle of Britain is certainly worth viewing, and this new Blu incarnation makes it look wonderful and sound full and rich and quality systems via lossless audio. At least two databases list Battle of Britain as having screened in 70mm blow-up prints and magnetic stereo in Mexico and France. Whether this is correct or not, it would not be unusual for stereo tracks to have been created for the purpose.
MGM and Fox have done their homework on a technical level, and created a superior product.
Battle of Britain is Recommended.
RAH
With a budget upwards of ten million dollars, which was quite high for the time, and some of the greatest names in the history of the British cinema, (or acting in general for that matter), the film just barely stands the test of time.
Photographed by the incomparable Freddie Young, BSC, who liked to fully expose his negatives as much as possible, the resultant Blu DVD shows precisely how good an almost forty year old Eastman negative can look when its image is properly harvested and taken to high definition video. It also shows just how much a cinematographer's work can be affected by his or her director. For the best of Mr. Young's work, one will have to look elsewhere.
As an aside, and epics aside, one film that I hope arrives in the near future on Blu is Disney's Treasure Island (1950), a three-strip Technicolor production shot by Mr. Young, which can easily be a primer on shadow and light. Even in SD, take a look at the apple barrel scene with Bobby Driscoll, which is a wonderful example of Mr. Young's capabilities.
With generally beautiful and rich color, and an image that is sharp as a tack when taken from original, this is a great Blu release on every technical level.
The magnetic stereo audio has been captured and is in lossless form on the new DVD. Possibly because of the lossless nature of the playback, and the perfection of digital audio, we can now hear the roughness around the edges and the problems with occasional dialogue recordings, while the score shines through brilliantly. In magnetic playback on prints, this would have been naturally softened.
Battle of Britain is a Harry Salzman production, and while millions were spent on the location work, the air battles, and a myriad of model aircraft, which occasionally look to be just that, especially as they explode in mid air, the film never quite comes together.
What we have are:
A. air battles;
B. pilots lounging waiting to be called into action;
C. young, inexperience pilots... "seven hours in a spitfire..." who never have a chance against the ace Nazi pilots;
D. the relationship between Susannah York and Christopher Plummer, which tends to stop the film in its tracks;
E. airfields being hit by Nazi bombers;
F. senior officers fretting about the survival of England;
G. more air battles;
The film seems to lack cohesiveness, which we can blame on the script, which never seems to tie everything together. What we see are a host of vignettes, laced with smiling Nazis and determined British airmen.
This is a good and interesting film that was never a great film, brought to Blu-Ray in high quality fashion.
On a purely technical level, one can easily see the difference between original negative and dupes. This can almost be a lesson in film elements.
The Main Title sequence is, of necessity, a couple of generations down. It appears that shots with sub-titles are also dupes, although one would think that this would not have been the case.
Sharpness in dupes is noticeably down, as the high definition process leaves no hiding place for anything less than the highest quality element. This is actually an interesting anomaly, as original dye transfer prints of the film would have looked a bit better, with the added contrast of the printing system giving the dupes not more sharpness or clarity, but more apparent sharpness.
For me, as well as many others, the appearance together of Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson and Trevor Howard representing one generation, along with Kenneth More, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw and Edward Fox of the next, is worth the price of admission alone.
While not one of the great films of the 1960s, Battle of Britain is certainly worth viewing, and this new Blu incarnation makes it look wonderful and sound full and rich and quality systems via lossless audio. At least two databases list Battle of Britain as having screened in 70mm blow-up prints and magnetic stereo in Mexico and France. Whether this is correct or not, it would not be unusual for stereo tracks to have been created for the purpose.
MGM and Fox have done their homework on a technical level, and created a superior product.
Battle of Britain is Recommended.
RAH
