7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 3.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.2 |
George Eastman is a poor young man determined to win a place in respectable society and the heart of a beautiful socialite. But a factory girl with a dark secret threatens Eastman's professional and romantic prospects. Consumed with fear and desire, Eastman is ultimately driven to a desperate act of passion that unravels his world forever.
Starring: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Keefe BrasselleRomance | 100% |
Drama | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
For anyone who may think that the “ripped from the headlines” phenomenon in various contemporary media is at least relatively recent, being disabused of that notion might come in the form of a 1925 novel by Theodore Dreiser entitled An American Tragedy. Dreiser at least slightly fictionalized his tale, and it’s true that the headlines he was ripping his story from were a couple of decades old by the time the book came out, but the basic story was founded in actual events, and Dreiser made copious use of the actual historical record, including love letters, of a kind of tawdry tale of a social climbing factory worker who murders his pregnant girlfriend so that he can pursue a romance with a better heeled woman. An American Tragedy was almost instantly adapted into a stage play by Patrick Kearney in 1926, which was successful enough to last the rest of that Broadway season, and which kind of surprisingly was revived fairly quickly, in early 1931, perhaps because producers knew a film adaptation was imminent. That (first) film version of An American Tragedy opened in August 1931 after a rather tortured gestational period that saw none other than Sergei Eisenstein initially attached as director in what Eisenstein evidently hoped would be a “Marxist” interpretation of Dreiser’s text, which in fact is a rather trenchant critique of certain aspects of Capitalism. Another rather legendary director, Josef von Sternberg, ended up directing the film, which had been shorn of any overt political content, much to the distress of Dreiser, who evidently attempted to sue Paramount to prevent the film’s release (he obviously lost). As is disclosed in some of the supplements included on this Blu-ray disc, when George Stevens returned to Hollywood after World War II, he was on the hunt for some kind of “major” project and if I’m understanding the situation correctly, it was actually someone at Paramount who mentioned they still held the rights to Dreiser’s novel. While perhaps not quite as tortured as the gestational period encountered by the first film adaptation, Stevens’ version, which attained the new title of A Place in the Sun, did take a while to finally start shooting, but in an era already rife with anti-Communism and what would soon become the HUAC, a “Marxist” interpretation of Dreiser’s novel was probably a non starter once again.
A Place in the Sun is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Via Vision Entertainment and Imprint with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. The back cover of this release touts "a 4K restoration by Paramount Pictures", and that, combined with the fact that this well regarded film has not been released previously on Blu-ray, may well spark considerable interest from fans beyond the shores of Australia, especially since this is a region free disc. The restoration is often very impressive, if not perfect, though my hunch is that "4K restoration" verbiage may raise expectations to unreasonable or at least unmeetable levels. I found the entire transfer just a tad dark at times, something that's especially noticeable in some of the lakeside material (the less said in that regard in terms of possible spoiler information, the better). That said, while there's occasional minor crush, blacks are nice looking and gray scale is almost always very appealing. Detail levels are generally very good and elements like fibers on fabrics are rendered with good precision. The grain field kind of ebbs and flows, at times fairly dramatically, throughout the presentation, and it looks like some relatively judicious filtering may have been applied. That said, grain generally resolves naturally.
While there are two lossless tracks on this disc, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0, there's no original mono track for purists, which may disappoint some. Fidelity here is occasionally a bit problematic from a prioritization standpoint, though both tracks deliver a forceful accounting of Franz Waxman's Academy Award winning score. Amplitude on dialogue is variable at times, but optional English subtitles may help to elide any deficiencies for some listeners. As regular readers of my reviews may know, I'm not always a fan of rejiggered surround tracks, and the good news here is there's very little of the "phasey" quality that sometimes attends these sorts of "new, improved" tracks. The bad news, at least for those wanting regular surround activity, is that the track is pretty heavily weighted toward the front and center. I noticed no actual damage or distortion in the presentation.
A Place in the Sun is highlighted by some impressive performances (I found Winters especially heartbreaking in this film), and the story, while maybe a little on the smarmy side, is often very moving. This film won a handful of Academy Awards the year it was released, including Best Director for George Stevens, and its relatively late entry in the Blu-ray world should be welcomed by fans of classic cinema. While there are occasional hurdles both video and audio encounter, overall technical merits are solid and the supplementary package very enjoyable. Recommended.
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