Bronston epics and Land of the Pharaohs coming at last! (1 Viewer)

[ptb2007]

You guys kill me at times! Land of the Pharoahs looks great to me. Disaster? No way. I'm glad to have a dvd in the correct aspect ratio made from a clean print or negative. As I will be if El Cid proves to be in the correct ratio so that I can get to see the whole frame at long last.
You seem to enjoy complaining about all and everything, rather than just being grateful that you can get a decent dvd copy of a favourite movie.

 

[OliverK]

How can you not trust the screencaps regardless of what anybody says ? They look very bad.
In the end it does not matter what kind of master was used - the DVD looks very bad compared to other transfers of movies from the same time frame (man in a grey flanell suit anyone ?).

I you are happy with the picture I can assure you you will be more than happy with El Cid as Weinstein will not be able to put out something worse than Land of the Pharaohs - in fact all 3 widescreen versions of El Cid that I currently own are better already.
Regarding 4.0 vs. 2.0 sound: On a transfer I consider worthwhile I wholeheartedly agree but with Land... I could not care less because if the picture is as unwatchable as it is in this case I will never watch the movie anyway.

But El Cid will of course be a disappointmnt if it does not have a 4.0 or 5.1 mix, the LD from Criterion already had a great 5.1 mix and I expect something like that from Weinstein, too andf I am pretty sure we won't be disappointed.

 

[OliverK]

Being able to watch these on a big screen must have been something back then and great to see you still look forward to watching these movies again at home !

Regarding complaints about picture quality of DVDs: Land of the Pharaohs is the worst looking epic I got, even worse than The Robe. I think it is my right as a customer and one of the purposes of a forum like this to be able to demand better quality from studios that are capable of vastly superior transfers than The Robe and Land of the Pharaohs currently are. I watch these movies on a large screen front projection system and for them to look watchable just having the right aspect ratio won't cut it.

 

[OliverK]

He seems like a good guy and brings attention to movies that deserve a second look like Land of the Pharaohs.

But when it comes to the assessment of the actual technical quality of the discs at hand it seems that his grades are not much more than wishful thinking. After all if Land of the Pharaohs is excellent I would not have to worry about 98% of my DVD collection as in fact it is better than excellent in video quality - all these movies look better than Land of the Pharaohs

 

[Simon Howson]

Obviously Warner's reply would be that if you want a better looking DVD you would have to wait longer so that some manager could OK spending tens, if not hundreds of thousands making a new I.P. from the negative. I think the real issue here is that there is a growing number of people (me included) who think LoP is a much better film than what it is generally made out to be, therefore it deserved a better release, rather than being issued in the budget Camp Classics line. But if that was the case, a lot of people would be complaining "Where is it!?" at every Warner chat.

So I'm happy I've got it, but I hope in 5 years Warner restore this film, and release it on - blu-ray, then I can put my DVD on eBay. :-P

 

[Douglas R]

I think that's right. I saw the film when it was first released in cinemas and thought it was great then and still do. I don't understand why so many people seem to dismiss it as being little more than a joke. But then there are many people who simply don't appreciate or understand the epic style of filmmaking of the '50s. Unfortunately the powers that be at Warners think the same or they would not have released it under a "camp classic" label, which I consider an objectionable treatment of the film.

 

[Simon Howson]

The other thing may be that the reputation of the film becomes self fulfilling. By this I mean if the film hasn't sold well in the past on VHS, then that creates the reputation that guides how the film is treated on DVD. Whereas if Warner went all out and gave it a new transfer from a new element, and a 5.1 soundtrack, and added more extra features, then maybe, just maybe it would've sold more, because people would assume that it was a classic film deserving of a better release.

 

[OliverK]

Add to this argument that one of the strengths of epic movies are sweeping vistas and scenes with hundreds and thousands of extras. On a bad quality release these scenes are extremely painful to watch and take away from the enjoyment of the movie. Epics NEED the best transfers out there because of all of the information that is on the screen at any given time - a bad transfer will hurt Ben Hur much more than it will hurt The Big Lebowski.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

DVD Savant writes great reviews of the movies themselves, but his technical discussions indeed aren't valuable. If you want to learn about a movie, he's a great source, but if you want a dissection of a DVD, you need to go elsewhere.

I watched El Cid and was pretty impressed with both picture and sound. The transfer isn't flawless - some source flaws appear sporadically - but overall it's quite good...

 

[ptb2007]

Land of the Pharoahs was made in 1955.
The Wide Screen Museum says this....

1953 - 2.55:1. By the time The Robe was ready to premiere, 20th Century-Fox had solved the magnetic stereo sound problem on the picture film with the able assistance of Cinerama sound guru Hazard Reeves. Adding the four small bands of magnetic oxide required the use of smaller perforations and a slight reduction in the width of the picture.

1955 - 2.35:1. Exhibitor resistance to investing in stereophonic sound reproduction equipment forced the use of several different sound formats for CinemaScope. There was a mono magnetic sound stripe that was located in the same area as the optical soundtrack in standard films and there were optical mono soundtracks as well. In addition, MGM utilized the crummy Perspecta system to create ersatz stereo effects. These formats used standard film perforations and necessitated a reduction in image width to yield 2.35:1. In 1957, with the adoption of the magoptical sound track, which incorporated both a narrow optical mono soundtrack along with the four magnetic stripes, finally eliminated 2.55:1 as a ratio for CinemaScope and other anamorphic 35mm systems.


So it may not have been 2.55:1 but in fact 2.35:1

 

[ptb2007]

I do indeed look forward to seeing some of the 50s and 60s epics at home on my wide screen tv mainly because getting the chance to see them in a cinema on a big screen these days is virtually impossible. They showed a 70mm print of Cleopatra recently at the National Film Theatre here in London, but I couldn't get there so don't know what it looked like. Imagine seeing El Cid or FORE on the Imax! I saw a digital Imax projection of '300' which looked amazing. If only they'd try some of the older epics.

 

[Joe Caps]

Some good info here.
but first - When the Mag Optical Prints was introduced (both mag tracks and an optical track one one print) it indeed narrowed the aspect ratio from 2:55 to 1 down to 2:35 to 1

However, I still have fox original announcement of the intro of the mag oP Print from the middle of 1956 - the firt mag op film was with the release of Bus Stop.

Therefore, Land of the Pharoahs should be 2:55.

Again, Before I left l.A. in 1992, the egyptian theater had a minifestival of Hollywood films that took place in ancient egypt.
They ran The egyptian, Ten Commanments, and Land of the Pharoahs in a new print that Warners had made up.

Land looked positively awful, far worse than anything on laser or dvd.

Since the old Laser release, some work seems to have been done on Land, since it seems to have gotten its Blue Layer back.
I'm irked that we only get 2.0 sound when we should get 4.0 sound - bummer.

Remember Land was shot in Warner color which was not good to begin with.
Further it was shot on location in Egypt and interiors were NOT done at the Warner studio in Hollywood, but shot at Titanus studios in Rome.

I can;t prove this but I feel that dailies were certainly processed at Titanus and the film may have been processed there rather that at Werner superior hollywood facilities, leading Land to look not as good as it could have in the first place.

 

[ptb2007]

As an Editor I must jump in here and say that where the dailies are processed should make no difference to the final look of the film. It is the negative that matters. The cameraman would liase with the labs processing the cut negative to ensure the first print is the way he wants it. As the sound was done in Hollywood it is most unlikely the picture would be processed in Italy, which actually has good facilities. And are you suggesting that the cameraman couldn't light the movie the way he wanted because he was in Egypt and Italy?

 

[Joe Caps]

Thanks for putting many words in my mouth.

I did NOT say that the way the dailies were processed affected the look of the final film, but that if everything was processed in Italy and quickly, it probably didn't even liik as good as regular Warnercolor which was not that great to begin with.

 

[ptb2007]

I'm sorry but I do not get what you are saying at all. You appear to be suggesting that filiming outside Hollywood and getting dailies processed abroad explains why you think the end result looks, what was the word you used, a disaster.
Doesn't matter where a film is processed originally, it is the negative that counts in how the film looks in the end.
But then what do I know after 30 years as an Editor?

 

[OliverK]

I saw the new print of Cleopatra in 2006 and it was nice to be able to watch a 70mm movie looking rather close to how it was meant to be seen. Detail was very strong and it was the most impressive picture I saw at the 70mm festival Cleopatra was shown at.

It was discussed back then that probably color timing was not as good as it could have been as Fox had done only one print as part of the restoration project they did on Cleopatra but as Fox is the only studio doing anything like this at all I guess there is no reason to complain. If only more studios would strike at least one print of their restored classics like Fox has been doing for some time now with their large format movies we would not be relegated to watch all the other large format stuff in pink these days.

And Imax is great for movies shot in Super 35 or the old Vistavision movies like Vertigo or North by Northwest, but it seems that it is avoided to show movies in IMAX that have a wider AR than 1.78 in the OCN - not good for movies shot in 70mm and something that I would like to change.

 

[Joe Caps]

Looking back at my two posts, I never used the word "disaster" I'm merely trying to make suggestions as to why a film may look inferior than other films shot during the same era.

BTW - also shooting in Italy during this time was another Warner spectacle - Helen of Troy. Robert Wise himself told me that Warners originally wanted all the film cut andprocessed there but Wise refused as he thought the work being done at Italy was inferior to what he could do back in Hollywood.
But then what would Wise know. He only edited Citizen Kane.
BTW - Helen underwent a full restoration and looks and sounds wonderful.

 

[Simon Howson]

Maybe because the transfer for Land of the Pharaohs wasn't made from a new element?

 

[Joe Caps]

AS I said, it does seem to be a new element as the blue layer is now back. It was gone on the old laser and gone on the new print Warners had made back in 2001.

 

[OliverK]

I doubt that a new master has been created for several reasons:
By boosting the blue channel and simultaneously dropping a little the red and green one I can get a similarly bluish picture from the LD. It is not like there is no blue layer present on the LD, it is just not that prominent. Regarding the color balance I would also think that DVD screenshot leans a bit too much to the bluish side. Also there is very little detail together with halos and other artefacts present on the Land of the Pharaohs DVD and that would be the first remastered movie from Warner that looks like this.

Setting aside the question of the master that was used there are movies from the same period that were also done in Warnercolor that look much better, an example that immediately comes to mind is Rebel without a Cause and I am sure there are others.

With regard to the OCN:
It is beyond me how it can look even remotely as bad as to explain how the DVD of Land of the Pharaohs looks and frankly I have yet to see a theatrical 35mm based presentation even of a movie from the Fifties that approaches what LOP looks like on DVD.

As LOP was not intended to be a failure Or "camp classic" from the start you also have to take into consideration that it was a prestige production with a very good director and therefore it was not intended to be done on the cheap. All of this gives me no reason to believe the movie would have been shot in a way that made it look worse than other Scope movies of the time.