Pre-Order National Velvet (1945) (Warner Archive Collection) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

Preorder should appear over the next few days

Thank you for supporting HTF when you preorder using the link below. If you are using an adblocker you will not see link. As an Amazon Associate HTF earns from qualifying purchases

 

[marcco00]

a lot of people will be happy with this release!

 

[Robert Harris]

Can’t wait to see Kodachrome.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

I am going to blindly order this day one. Have never seen it and have heard nothing but great things about it.

 

[Randy Korstick]

I am going to blindly order this day one. Have never seen it and have heard nothing but great things about it.

It should be a treat seeing it for the 1st time in HD and a WAC blu ray release to boot.

 

[B-ROLL]

Can’t wait to see Kodachrome.

Why wait ?

 

[Paul Penna]

Can’t wait to see Kodachrome.

Some of its photography originated on Kodachrome?

 

[Andrew Budgell]

Hands down the release of the year for me! So excited about this.

 

[Robert Harris]

Some of its photography originated on Kodachrome?

Most exterior location shots were Technicolor mono pack, ie Kodachome.

 

[AnthonyClarke]

Fascinating, Robert. Let's hope this transfer does this wonderful movie justice. I'm sure Warners will be doing everything it can.

 

[Will Krupp]

Most exterior location shots were Technicolor mono pack, ie Kodachome.

That's fascinating, I never heard that about NATIONAL VELVET before!

I knew the exteriors for LASSIE COME HOME and the entirety of THUNDERHEAD, SON OF FLICKA were shot using the 35mm monopack version of Kodachrome, but I had absolutely no idea it was ever used for VELVET!

Was it simply for the location shoot at the racetrack?

Monopack made it possible for color footage to be shot with normal, smaller 35mm cameras, which was a great help during the war for shooting color combat footage. The quality of the color on release prints, however, was noticeably inferior to material shot with the 3-strip camera (due, I would assume, to the printing matrices necessarily being made from dupes) and I didn't think they used it all that much for studio product.

Very interesting, indeed! You really CAN learn something new every day

 

[Will Krupp]

Hands down the release of the year for me! So excited about this.

I thought of you immediately!

 

[Matt Hough]

So did I. The only film I could think of that might have made Andy happier would have been the release of Raintree County.

 

[Will Krupp]

So did I. The only film I could think of that might have made Andy happier would have been the release of Raintree County.

We'd have to scoop him off the floor!

 

[Andrew Budgell]

We'd have to scoop him off the floor!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Preorder now live. See top post. Thanks for your support!

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Just watched this for the first time today.

Really nice film. Of course, the transfer is reflective of Warner's highest standards.

The Blu-ray showed off some limitations of the film. When we first meet Pike and he nearly tramples Elizabeth Taylor, you can see it's all back projection. I also noticed a stunt double riding Pike during the early training. I did read Taylor did a lot of the riding herself and even allegedly got hurt in doing so. The horse was not friendly on the set.

Speaking of set, kind of odd that back then it was deemed better to build these large outdoor farm sets complete with grass, trees, and dirt with a painted background rather than go out on location.

Glad I finally had the opportunity to watch this film.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Just watched this for the first time today.

Really nice film. Of course, the transfer is reflective of Warner's highest standards.

The Blu-ray showed off some limitations of the film. When we first meet Pike and he nearly tramples Elizabeth Taylor, you can see it's all back projection. I also noticed a stunt double riding Pike during the early training. I did read Taylor did a lot of the riding herself and even allegedly got hurt in doing so. The horse was not friendly on the set.

Speaking of set, kind of odd that back then it was deemed better to build these large outdoor farm sets complete with grass, trees, and dirt with a painted background rather than go out on location.

Glad I finally had the opportunity to watch this film.

TBH, I think that back projection scene probably looked bad to movie audiences in 1945/1946. It's just one of those things that audiences kind of accepted as normal when it came to movies.

 

[Will Krupp]

Just watched this for the first time today.

Really nice film. Of course, the transfer is reflective of Warner's highest standards.

The Blu-ray showed off some limitations of the film. When we first meet Pike and he nearly tramples Elizabeth Taylor, you can see it's all back projection. I also noticed a stunt double riding Pike during the early training. I did read Taylor did a lot of the riding herself and even allegedly got hurt in doing so. The horse was not friendly on the set.

I'm thrilled you liked it. It's really a perfect little film, IMO, though I'd be hard pressed to say exactly why. It all just "jells" so nicely and the cast is letter perfect to a man.

Three cheers for Anne Revere!

By the way, the horse is actually named "Pie." In the Enid Bagnold novel, the horse is a piebald so Velvet calls him "Pie" for short. In the movie, however, the horse isn't a piebald, he's a chestnut so they had to get creative. That's why early in the movie the Reginald Owen character refers to the horse as an aboslute "pirate" so that Velvet could still call him "Pie" (or "Pi?")

 

[benbess]

....The Blu-ray showed off some limitations of the film. When we first meet Pike and he nearly tramples Elizabeth Taylor, you can see it's all back projection. I also noticed a stunt double riding Pike during the early training. I did read Taylor did a lot of the riding herself and even allegedly got hurt in doing so. The horse was not friendly on the set.

Speaking of set, kind of odd that back then it was deemed better to build these large outdoor farm sets complete with grass, trees, and dirt with a painted background rather than go out on location.

Glad I finally had the opportunity to watch this film.

The special effects that you mention were, I think, to some degree apparent to some viewers back in the vhs era and 4:3 tv broadcast era. Although they are more noticeable now with the clarity of this wonderful new blu-ray, I noticed some of the make-believe fx stuff in this movie, and in many other movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s back when I was watching old movies on TV and/or on vhs in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember watching a vhs of The Wizard of Oz in the late 1980s, and realizing that Dorothy and company were dancing and singing their way on the yellow brick road toward a beautifully painted backdrop—and that the scene faded shortly before they would have hit the wall lol! And so even at vhs resolution I think many of these things are visible, and would also have been visible to original theatrical audiences watching in 1939, 1944, or whatever.

Somehow for me this usually doesn't take away from the magic of these movies. I slowly learned as a kid watching these movies that they were a different make-believe land. Having been in England as a small child, I realized when watching this movie a bit later that only some of the people in the movie were actually from England, and that many of them had American accents. The movie is set in this Hollywood make-believe land of a pretend and yet still sort-of real England.

Pablo Picasso once said, "Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

Picasso's lie — TOK RESOURCE.ORG

www.tokresource.org

Somehow mixed up with the special effects, fiction, and lies of the movies there are sometimes elements of truth, just as there are elements of truth in novels, as well in paintings by Picasso and others that are clearly made up. Anyway, probably this is all stuff that you and others have thought about too, but I just felt like adding my 2 cents about it.