7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 4.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.6 |
Don Hewes and Nadine Hale are a dancing team, but she decides to start a career on her own. So he takes the next dancer he meets.
Starring: Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, Peter Lawford, Ann Miller, Jules MunshinRomance | 100% |
Musical | 75% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono (Spain)
German: Dolby Digital Mono
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono
English SDH, French, German SDH, Portuguese, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Easter Parade is the kind of big, scented bouquet of a musical for which MGM was renowned in the golden age of the studio system. It famously represents the only screen pairing of two huge stars, Judy Garland and Fred Astaire, but that literally happened by accident. Gene Kelly was supposed to play the male lead but broke his ankle shortly before filming began. At Kelly's suggestion, Astaire came out of retirement to step into his dancing shoes. Kelly's was not the only injury that affected casting. Cyd Charisse was set to co-star as the dancer Nadine, but was sidelined with torn ligaments in the knee. The role went to newcomer Ann Miller, who herself was suffering from a major back injury (a product of spousal abuse) and performed the role in a brace. The film launched her career. Garland's husband, Vincente Minnelli, was originally attached to direct, but Garland was advised (some say by her shrink) not to work with her husband again. The task fell to Charles Walters, who had only recently made the transition from choreographer to feature director, but his experience proved ideal for a film about dancers and their tribulations, both romantic and professional. (Walters would go on to great success with films such as High Society and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.) Long before Broadway invented the term "jukebox musical" for shows like Jersey Boys, Hollywood was already creating them. The script for Easter Parade was written to accommodate an existing catalog of songs by Irving Berlin, arguably the era's most popular songwriter. Berlin agreed to write several new songs, and the film was marketed, then as now, as "Irving Berlin's Easter Parade". The title song had already been used in the 1942 film Holiday Inn starring Astaire and Bing Crosby, and its popularity guaranteed name recognition.
If memory serves (and I encourage any reader with definitive information to assist me here), Warner created the DVD of Easter Parade using the same proprietary process for restoring three-strip Technicolor that was applied to Singin' in the Rain, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Meet Me in St. Louis. The results were well- received in 2005, but I do not know whether a new scan was performed for this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray, nor do I have the DVD for comparison. What I can report is that the Blu-ray has excellent blacks, vivid, richly saturated colors, a very good level of fine detail and a natural-looking grain pattern that appears undisturbed by digital tampering. To the extent there is anything negative to report, it is the slight and very subtle color shifts that will be familiar to any viewer of Technicolor restorations from this era, where the entire palette vacillates back and forth. The effect is most readily observable in backgrounds or large expanses of a single light color. It's not a major issue in Easter Parade, and many viewers may never notice it, but it caught my attention enough to warrant mention. Other than this reminder that even the best restoration can't solve everything, no artifacts were in evidence.
The film's original mono soundtrack is presented as DTS-HD MA 1.0, and it gets the job done reasonably well most of the time. The singing voices of Garland, Astaire and Miller come through unscathed, and the limitations of Lawford's voice are well camouflaged. The only voice that tests the limits of the 1948 source is that of Richard Beavers, who performs "The Girl on the Magazine Covers" and whose higher and more powerful notes strain the dynamic range of the contemporary recording technology. The orchestral backing obviously can't supply the lush presence that one would expect from a current recording, but given the source it does remarkably well. When the songs are by Irving Berlin, you don't need the orchestra to sweep you away.
The extras have been ported over from the two-disc special edition DVD released by Warner in 2005, but not all of the DVD extras have been retained. The DVD set included a Judy Garland trailer gallery, while the Blu-ray has only a single trailer for Easter Parade. The second DVD in the set was primarily taken up with a two-hour American Masters documentary entitled Judy Garland: By Myself. This item is listed on the Blu-ray jacket, but it doesn't appear on the disc.
By leaving a major extra off the Blu-ray, Warner hasn't made things easy for prospective purchasers. Lovers of classic film tend to be big fans of documentaries like the omitted Judy Garland: By Myself, and a first-time purchaser might reasonably decide to accept the trade-off of DVD's lower resolution in exchange for a substantially more extensive collection of historical materials. Those who already own the two-disc special edition DVD might reasonably ask whether the Blu-ray's image offers sufficient improvement to justify the upgrade. (The sound, though lossless, is limited by the quality of the source.) What Warner should have done was to include the second disc from the DVD set as a bonus disc with the Blu-ray, although I suspect that would have entailed additional licensing fees the studio did not wish to incur. The bottom line is that the best possible edition of Easter Parade requires the purchase of both formats. I am not making a recommendation, just presenting the options. If you love the film, you'll know what to choose. (Update: Purchasers of this disc have reported on the Blu-ray.com forum that contacting Warner customer service through this link has resulted in their being sent the second disc of the DVD set, which contains the missing documentary.)
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