6.5 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
Love is in the air and magic is afoot when turn-of-the-century inventor Andrew and his wife Adrian host a country wedding for the pompous philosopher Dr. Leopold and his young fiancée Ariel. But when Andrew's best friend, the randy Dr. Maxwell Jordan, and his lusty nurse Dulcy turn up for the festivities, the stage is soon set for thwarted seductions, mismatched mates and magical mayhem, as Maxwell falls for Ariel, Ariel seduced Andrew, Leopold beds Dulcy - and the bride and groom say "I do" to everyone... except each other!
Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, José Ferrer, Julie Hagerty, Tony Roberts (I)Romance | 100% |
Comedy | Insignificant |
Fantasy | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
Music: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 3.0 |
In the early summer of 1973 one of the hottest tickets on Broadway was A Little Night Music, Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s musicalization of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night, and in fact the show was typically oversold for the opening months of its run, not even having treasured SRO availabilities. Knowing I would be visiting New York to spend time with my uncles that June, I begged, pleaded and cajoled them to somehow get me a ticket to the show, which ended up being quite a little task, evidently requiring one of my uncles, who had backed a lot of straight plays and musicals through the years, to call in some kind of favor so that his noodge of a nephew could have his wish. The intellectualism of the musical most likely largely flew right over my head (I was still a pretty young kid), but the sensuous depiction of interlocking love stories cast an appropriate spell, despite a near miss between Boris Aronson’s plexiglas birch trees scenic design and lead actress Glynis Johns. It wasn’t until several years later in a college Film Theory class that I first saw Bergman’s source film and finally realized what a spectacularly brilliant job the musical had done of transporting the basic story into a new idiom. A somewhat less felicitous “adaptation” showed up some years later when Woody Allen decided to “remake” the iconic Bergman film, at least in a manner of speaking, as A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy. Allen of course had already begun to explore other Bergmanesque environments in some of his more dramatic offerings like Interiors, but here he exploited a more purely comic ambience, not always to fulsome effect. A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is, like a lot of Allen’s oeuvre, probably too self-aware for its own good, and it presents Mia Farrow (in her first starring Allen entry) in a rather peculiar light at times, as if Allen weren’t quite sure yet how to properly use her distinctive charms.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy is presented on Blu-ray with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Culled from the MGM archives (by way of Orion), this has the typical look of a lot of MGM masters recently, with a decently organic appearance but a somewhat soft overall ambience that is probably only exaggerated by the dewy, gauzy cinematography of the iconic Gordon Willis. While colors look generally accurate, saturation is just a bit on the anemic side, though some of the brightly lit outdoor scenes (and there are a lot of them) pop quite nicely, with some convincingly vivid blue skies and lush green foliage on display. The softness tends to slightly mask detail in midrange shots, though close- ups can still offer good amounts of fine detail. As the story gets into dusk and, finally, night, there are some recurrent issues with inadequate shadow detail. Opening credits display a fair amount of wobble, but otherwise image stability is fine. A couple of late opticals reveal the expected upticks in grain and softness.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy features a fine if unremarkable sounding DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track, one which adequately supports the film's dialogue and Mendelssohn inflected score. Some of the bigger cues like the brassy "Wedding March" from A Midsummer Night's Dream sound nicely forceful despite the narrow setting. Fidelity is fine, though dynamic range finds most of its peaks and valleys in the score offerings.
A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy has some flitting moments of good humor, but it's a strangely languid depiction of the titanic subject of sex. The best performances are by Ferrer and (perhaps unexpectedly) Hagerty, but a lot of the rest of the cast doesn't seem to know what to make of their characters. The film is certainly one of Allen's most gorgeous from a cinematography standpoint, and that aspect may be the film's most enduring selling point. With caveats noted, and with an emphasis on Willis' lovely work, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy comes Recommended.
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
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