7.9 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Brick, an alcoholic ex-football player, drinks away his days away and resists the affections of his increasingly desperate wife, Maggie. A confrontation with his father, plantation owner Big Daddy, who is dying of cancer, jogs a host of memories and revelations for both father and son.
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith AndersonDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
French: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
German: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Czech: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Polish: Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Spanish=Latin & Castillian
English SDH, French, German SDH, Japanese, Spanish, Czech, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Turkish
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is one of the best plays by one of America's greatest
playwrights. Premiering on Broadway in 1955, it has since been repeatedly performed in both
professional and amateur theaters, with three Broadway revivals in this century alone. It has been
adapted for TV both here and in the U.K., and its signature roles are as coveted by actors as any
part in Shakespeare.
The 1958 film adaptation directed and co-written by Richard Brooks was a hit for MGM, but for some of the play's fans (not to mention the
playwright himself), it's a bittersweet experience. The film was lavishly mounted, handsomely shot and is graced by career-defining performances
from Elizabeth Taylor, who was already a screen idol, and Paul Newman, who cemented his movie star reputation with his searing portrayal of an
alcoholic ex-athlete disgusted with himself and the world. Burl Ives's incarnation of plantation
owner Big Daddy, the role he originated on Broadway, is still widely regarded as the definitive
interpretation against which all subsequent performances are measured.
But Brooks's film is not Williams' play. While the strictures of the Hays Code governing studio
productions required the elimination of crucial elements from Williams' multi-layered portrait of
a family in crisis, the industry censors aren't entirely to blame. At least some of the changes to Williams' plot
by Brooks and co-screenwriter James Poe (They Shoot
Horses, Don't They?) were made in
service of providing a crowd-pleasing happy ending, which is not what Williams wrote. As a
play, Cat exists in multiple versions, the history of which is a whole separate subject, but all of
them resolve with a bleak conclusion that was reversed for the screen. If you know Williams'
Cat, watching Brooks's film is an exercise in mentally filling in the blanks (and, occasionally,
overwriting the dialogue) with what Williams actually wrote. Thankfully, the performances are
so good that the playwright's original characters shine through their Hollywood makeover. If
Brooks had been allowed to film the original text, the result might have burned a hole in the
screen.
After extensive restoration work, the Warner Archive Collection is bringing Cat to Blu-ray in an
exemplary presentation.
Cinematographer William H. Daniels (Billy Rose's
Jumbo) was nominated for an Oscar for his lush photography of Cat on Hot Tin Roof, which presented special challenges in
creating the new master for the Warner Archive Collection's Blu-ray. Cat was shot on the same problematic
Eastmancolor stock as Silk Stockings, which, as discussed in the review of that disc, is subject to "yellow layer collapse", adversely affecting both color and grain texture. However,
Cat was shot spherically, which means that it does not suffer from the same softening and lack of sharpness
imparted by early CinemaScope lenses. The main challenge is accurate color, and WAC's 2K scan of a recently manufactured interpositive was
subjected
to multiple passes of color correction, with the final work completed by one of the most senior and experienced colorists at
Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility.
The result on this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is a remarkably detailed image, with delicately
balanced colors showcasing the character-specific wardrobe and meticulous production design
that were hallmarks of MGM's classic era. The image's detail is particularly appreciable in the
long third-act section (invented by Brooks and Poe for the screen) where Brick and Big Daddy
continue their feud in a basement crammed with Big Mama's acquisitions from her trip to
Europe (a continent that Big Daddy dismisses as "one big auction!"). Black levels, contrast and
densities are all excellent, and while the film's grain is visible, it is natural-looking and never so
heavy as to offer a distraction. Whatever criticisms one may have of Cat's translation to the
screen, its transfer to Blu-ray is near-flawless, including the generous bitrate, which averages out
at WAC's usual standard of just under 35 Mbps.
Cat's mono soundtrack has been restored from the original magnetic masters and encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. Dialogue is the critical element, and it is cleanly and intelligibly reproduced, along with key sound effects like the recurrent intrusions of Gooper's and May's unruly children (or, as Maggie calls them, "no-neck monsters"). The sultry, jazz-inflected score by Charles Wolcott (Song of the South) plays with good fidelity and broad dynamic range for the period, punctuating and modulating key moments of the drama.
MGM released Cat on DVD in 1997, accompanied by only a trailer. Warner re-released the film
on DVD in 2006 with additional extras, which have been ported over to WAC's Blu-ray. As per
its now-customary practice, WAC has remastered the film's trailer in 1080p.
Cat is one of the jewels in the MGM library owned by Warner, and it's a memorable film, if only
for the combustible chemistry between Newman and Taylor. But Tennessee Williams had a
special genius for transforming pulpy subject matter into tragic poetry, and that quality appears
only sporadically in Brooks's film. (Elia Kazan had better luck with A Streetcar Named Desire.) Still, WAC has brought Cat to Blu-ray in a sterling presentation that should satisfy
the
film's fans and may even inspire viewers to seek out a good stage production. Recommended.
2012
Paramount Presents #30
1980
Limited Edition
1958
2008
1991
2017
2005
1984
2015
Warner Archive Collection
1933
2002
2012
1997
2019
1956
1932
1936
1941
2013
Warner Archive Collection
1933