Month: June 2011

I’m watching the new Bluray of Henry King‘s Twelve O’Clock High — a highly regarded 1949 military drama about Americans running daylight bombing runs out of England in the early days of World War II. And within ten minutes I’m reminded of the difference between a highly competent, good-enough director (in this instance Henry King) and someone with a little more visual pizazz.

It begins in 1949. After buying a toby jug at a London curio shop, a now-retired officer (Dean Jagger) visits the 918th’s abandoned airbase at Archbury. Memories come flooding back. It’s like that scene in The Best Years of Our Lives with Dana Andrews roaming around a field of abandoned B-17s. Jagger looks down and the camera adopts his POV, looking at winds rippling through tall grass. Then the camera pans left and slowly moves up to the sky and you’re thinking, “Ahh, we’re going to see planes overhead without a cut…the past blending into the present!”

And then King blows it. He fade-cuts into a shot of planes cruising down and landing on the field in 1942. A fade-cut! He could have even put the civilian Jagger into the same shot with the planes. It could have been such a great moment.

The quality of the Bluray, by the way, is exceptional. It looks like “film” (i.e., you can feel the grain) but also clean as a whistle. The details and tonalities are perfect. The blacks and the shadings are about as good as any well-shot 1940s black-and-white film can deliver.

When I buy a Bluray of an older film that I’ve seen several times in various formats (projected, broadcast, cable, VHS, DVD), I want it to look better, dammit. It has to be an improvement of some kind — sharper and more vivid, deeper blacks, that “straight from the lab” look…something. In this regard Fox Home Video’s Bluray of The Hustler is a disappointment. It looks exactly like the DVDs I’ve been watching over the last decade or so. In fact, it looks a bit soft at times. The more I watched, the more my spirits sank.

I don’t want DVD quality when I buy a Bluray — I want more. I don’t care if that means the film looks DNR-ed to some extent — I have to get that sense of seeing something better or cooler or “extra” on some level. So call me an unsatisfied customer. It’s a nice rendering and good enough, but I paid money for this Bluray (hard cash at Kim’s) and I feel a wee bit flim-flammed.

“You wanna Bluray of a black-and-white film you’ve loved all your life?,” says the carnival barker. “Well, here it is!” But it doesn’t look any different, you say. Well realized as far as it goes, but not the least bit improved, as it were. It’s fine but I’ve seen this version before…exactly. “But it’s a true capturing of what the film actually looks like!,” says the carnival barker. “And that’s our task…to make our Blurays look as good as the film, in the truest sense imaginable. And you know if you pop in the most recent DVD of The Hustler of your 50″ set this new Bluray will seem like an improvement.”

But not the kind I want, I’m thinking. I’m nodding and feigning acceptance and kind of half-smiling at the guy, but I don’t like it.

Update: In his 5.13 Bluray.com review Jeffrey Kaufman called this disc “absolutely gorgeous.” He said that the film’s special edition DVD from a few years ago “looked pretty spectacular itself, and that same sharpness and clarity is only increased on this new release.” No, no…that’s just it. The Bluray looks fine but the resolution has not been heightened, increased, sharpened, etc. It’s the same thing only bigger….that’s all.