Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		3.5

Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 18, 2024

If you're a fan of some of the admittedly bloated but still generally hugely enjoyable sixties historical epics from the likes of Samuel Bronston (El Cid, 55 Days at Peking, The Fall of the Roman Empire, et al), you may be the perfect prospective audience for this huge 1965 production that was a gigantic Taiwanese outing for director Han Hsiang Li after years spent toiling for the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong. While this Blu-ray edition runs over two and a half hours, as Tony Rayns mentions in a supplement included on the disc (see below), the film was actually originally screened in a much longer two part version that despite its perhaps inordinate length turned out to be a box office bonanza.

The general outlines of this story might be at least passingly compared to some of the drama surrounding a rather famous "beauty of beauties" from Western tradition, namely Helen of Troy, as the lovely if perhaps scheming Hsi Shih (Ching Chiang) is utilized for "political" purposes, infiltrating the court of an enemy kingdom in order to upset the balance of power. The film is set during the so-called Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). and basically involves two warring factions, with Hsi Shih the veritable fulcrum upon which everything hinges. This is an absolutely gargantuan production with, as they say, a cast of thousands and the sort of epic sweep that was quite common in not just those aforementioned Bronston films but any number of other Western properties from the same general period. Also as with some of those arguably overblown efforts, real emotional tethers to the characters may be fitful, but the biggest hurdle for some may simply be the rather "relaxed" approach toward narrative momentum, which can frankly make this film's "redacted" version seem at least as long as the original apparently was.

Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Beauty of Beauties is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 88 Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.34:1. The back cover of this release states this is a "brand new 4K remaster from the original negatives", while some prefatory text cards provide further information, as follows (with some malapropisms intact):

The film was originally released in 1965, and its digital restoration was completed by Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute in 2021 as part of the "Taiwan Film Classics Digital Restoration and Value-adding Project" commissioned by the Ministry of Culture.

The restoration was based on a 35mm low contrast negative with 4K resolution. The content of the story is the compilation version released at that time. The condition of the film contains instability, warp, flicker, dy fade, molds and dirt. Automatic restoration was used to reduce the instability and flicker and to remove dirt and stains. The frame by frame process was carried out to remove tears, residual defects and artefacts caused by automatic restoration.

As the above probably indicates, the source (based on the restoration demonstration) was in pretty bad shape, and the result here shows heroic if still at times inadequate attempts to provide a consistent looking presentation. At its best, Beauty of Beauties offers commendable clarity, a nicely suffused palette and some very appealing detail levels. Unfortunately all of those aspects tend to ebb and flow throughout the presentation, and there are any number of passing moments that are suddenly noticeably desaturated and downright fuzzy looking (see screenshots 8 and 9 for just two examples). Some brief moments look positively out of focus, which may either be inherent to the shoot or the result of a badly damaged element. As with many Asian productions from this general timeframe, there are anamorphic oddities throughout, especially toward the edges of the frame. There are still remnants of image instability and other minor damage. Grain, like some of the other aforementioned issues, can tend to vary as well, but overall resolves without any major issues.

Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Beauty of Beauties features an LPCM 2.0 Mono track in the original Mandarin. The track has a certain boxiness that is probably most evident in some of the scoring and sound effects, but overall the track offers a reasonably full bodied rendering, and some of the big action scenes (notably in the film's climax) reverberate with decent force. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Diamond in the Rough - Tony Rayns on The Beauty of Beauties (HD; 22:03) offers another appealing analysis and history lesson from Rayns, who discusses both the film and some contextual issues like the dialectic between Mandarin and Cantonese. Kind of interestingly, the back cover describes Rayns as an "Oriental film expert", in a perhaps unwitting use of "vestigial" verbiage that I know some Asian friends of mine may chafe at.


• Restoration Comparison (HD; 5:39) aptly documents how problematic the source element was.


• Trailer (HD; 2:13)

Additionally an insert booklet contains an unusually interesting essay by Tom Cunliffe. The keepcase offers a reversible sleeve and packaging features a slipbox.

Beauty of Beauties Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For pure visual sweep Beauty of Beauties should easily please those who like their historical epics big, big, big, but the film's almost glacial pace at times may prevent some of that overwhelming quality from really resonating. Still, this is a rather interesting film and one that per Tony Rayns' comments has a fascinating history of its own, including an admittedly irrelevant connection to more contemporary "factions" of Mandarin and/or Cantonese speakers. Technical merits are generally solid, though video has some troublesome moments that the restoration hasn't been able to completely ameliorate let alone eliminate. With caveats noted, Recommended.