Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		3.5

Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie Review

Norte por noroeste?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 15, 2014

Rarely in the annals of film history has so much technological know how been lobbed at one single property to such inglorious effect as was the case with Scent of Mystery and its redacted version, retitled Holiday in Spain. A pioneering Swiss “osmologist” named Hans Laube invented a system to pump aromas into theaters evidently as early as the 1930s, having his first wide use of the technology premiere during the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair for a specially commissioned film that played there. Somewhere along the way vaunted showman Mike Todd (Sr.) became aware of the process, evidently originally titled Scentovision, and along with his son, Mike Todd, Jr., gave Laube a “testing facility” of sorts in Chicago’s 1100 seat Todd Cinestage Theater. Those experiments ultimately resulted in Scent of Mystery, a kind of combo travelogue-thriller which bore the imprimatur of Todd fils after his father’s tragic death in 1958. Not to put too fine a point on it, but Scent of Mystery turned out to be a stinker critically and at the box office, where because of the hurdles of installing the newly minted Smell-O-Vision process it only managed to play a handful of major markets, and then for a matter of a few weeks, if not a few days. Todd realized he was hemorrhaging money and according to longtime Cinerama restorer David Strohmaier (who provides some interesting commentary on one of this Blu-ray’s supplements), the film was more or less licensed to Cinemiracle, a competitor with Cinerama which was at that point looking for a followup to its middling success Windjammer: The Voyage of the Christian Radich . (Later on, circa 1967 according to Strohmaier's commentary, the film was sold lock, stock and barrel to Cinerama, who just sealed it away in a vault.) Rather incredibly, National Theaters, the owners of Cinemiracle, and Todd drastically recut the film, jettisoning over 20 minutes of footage, calling back star Denhom Elliott to record narration to help bridge narrative gaps, and then, most incredibly of all, optically converting the 70mm original to the so-called “smilebox” format for projection on the famous curved screen that both Cinerama and Cinemiracle utilized. Redubbed Holiday in Spain, the film reopened as a supposedly “all new” feature in late 1961 and early 1962, but once again failed to ignite either critically or with paying audiences (though it evidently did at least somewhat better in its new version than it had originally).

The film has remained a curio for years, especially since the original Scent of Mystery version seems to have largely vanished, suffering further indignities due to the vagaries of time and insufficient curation of assets. Strohmaier, who prefers to use the terms “reconstruction and remastering” for his effort rather than “restoration,” utilized a badly damaged 65mm negative for the shorter Holiday in Spain version, along with two badly faded 70mm prints, in order to cobble together this new version. From a purely technological standpoint, especially considering the fact that Strohmaier probably didn’t have unlimited funds to manage the process, Holiday in Spain is a bit of a wonder, though there are still image quality issues on display. From a purely cinematic standpoint, Holiday in Spain is pretty much a scenic train wreck. The cutting the film endured in its matriculation from its Scent of Mystery version makes the shorter version a bit confounding quite a bit of the time, not to mention the fact that some audience members not conversant with the film’s rather colorful (and odoriferous) history may wonder why so much time is spent on scenes involving things like wafting pipe smoke, the spritzing of a supposedly irresistible perfume, or even the smashing of wine casks, releasing a flood of ostensibly fragrant liquid across a Spanish alleyway.

Holiday in Spain desperately wants to be an ebullient Hitchcock-esque romantic mystery, but either due to some inherent deficiencies or other problems related to having been tinkered with so radically, it’s a mixed bag at best from a narrative standpoint. A rather young and dashing Denholm Elliott, evidently a replacement for David Niven but here looking rather amazingly like Trevor Howard, plays writer Oliver Larker, who is in fact on a holiday in Spain. Larker quickly meets up with hangdog cabbie Smiley (Peter Lorre, who was evidently quite ill during the shoot), who initially is going to show Larker the sights (and/or smells, as the case may be).

Larker catches a glimpse of a glamorous woman clad in blue, though he's only able to see her from the rear (not necessarily a bad thing). When an apparent near disaster comes close to killing the woman, simultaneously involving Larker and Smiley in a fender bender, Larker becomes concerned after a legendary local drunk named Johnny Gin (Liam Redmond) insists it was no mere accident. Meanwhile, a lurking figure named The Baron (Paul Lukas) seems to have something to do with all the nefarious shenanigans, though it's not exactly clear how.

Larker sets out to find the woman, resulting in a couple of quick comic vignettes as he meets two other women who he thinks might be the right one. These include the rather bodacious Winifred Jordan (Diana Dors), who more or less proposes a four way to the staid and stolid Brit right there on a Spanish beach. Larker ultimately does find the right woman, a somewhat less flashy blonde named Sally Kennedy (Beverly Bentley), who can't quite believe anyone would want to kill her, even though she is evidently an heiress. And so Larker simply decides to tail Sally in order to provide a bit of (perhaps vicarious) protection.

That's basically it from a plot perspective, though Holiday in Spain does work in a number of bits for various character actors like Leo McKern and Peter Arne. There's also a supposedly "surprise" cameo at the very end of the film which probably shouldn't be that much of a surprise given the fact that Mike Todd, Jr. produced the film and one Eddie Fisher sings its two songs. (For those who aren't spoiler averse, I've included a screenshot in the last position revealing this "surprise".)

While Holiday in Spain lacks the panache of a typical Hitchcock outing, it has its own peculiar if decidedly lightweight charms. The best thing about the film is the still extant travelogue aspects, something that director Jack Cardiff exploits from air and road, offering views of everything from the Alhambra to the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Perhaps surprisingly, his compositions don’t always take complete advantage of what was originally a “flat” 70mm frame, eschewing (for the most part, anyway) point of view shots and tending to stick to midrange framings that at times relegate the scenery to the background. There are some notable exceptions, including a great “wine cask eye’s view” trundling down an alleyway after a hapless victim, or, later, scenes from inside a car on a winding Spanish roadway.

Probably the worst decision made in the film’s transition to its Holiday in Spain version was the addition of the Elliott narration. It’s hamhanded at best, and actually annoying at worst, offering supposedly wry commentary to some onscreen developments while actually doing little to support its ostensible reason for being there—to help make the now somewhat befuddled plot make more sense. Ultimately, though, from a film history standpoint if not from any inherent quality, Holiday in Spain is a fun little jaunt through some extremely scenic territory, and it's that scenery which may ultimately be the film's best remembered element. It’s probably just one of several indignities suffered by this odd film that some of the travelogue material is what hit the cutting room floor first once Scent of Mystery vanished in a puff of pipe smoke and perfume.

Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Holiday in Spain is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinerama and Redwind Productions with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in Cinerama's "smilebox" curved screen format, which equates more or less to a 2.59:1 aspect ratio. (Original "flat" 70mm screenings of Scent of Mystery were around 2.20:1, and indeed when I measured some screenshots from the restoration featurette included on this Blu-ray which features some of the flat source material, it measured at around that aspect ratio.) David Strohmaier has done near-heroic work here rescuing a little remembered film that was never curated properly. If we had a rating for restorative efforts, this would no doubt be a five star affair all the way, but that said, there are simply some inherent source issues which even Strohmaier's valiant efforts couldn't completely ameliorate.

As mentioned above, this was sourced from a damaged 65mm negative as well as two very badly faded 70mm prints. The result is a patchwork of image quality which has been "normalized" to a degree, but which is still widely variant. The sections sourced from the negative look best in terms of color timing, clarity and sharpness, though even here, as Strohmaier mentions, some incorrectly looped film resulted in image instability at the negative level (obviously passed on to prints) which could not be completely stabilized. The print sourced material presents the biggest challenges in terms of color timing, and the results here are watchable but problematic. Strohmaier mentions the difficulty in obtaining decent fleshtones with such a strong magenta fade as the two prints evidently had, but at times fleshtones tip almost more toward a kind of weirdly ruddy brown-green look.

There is also still some occasional damage stemming from what looks like emulsion issues and other splotching, something which Strohmaier addresses in his reconstruction featurette, and which is certainly improved here, though not completely eradicated. There is also occasional flicker on display, as well as minor density issues.

With all of that said, some may wonder why this is rated as high as a 4, and a case could be made for a lower score. But looking at what Strohmaier had to begin with, and what the eventual results are, is a lesson in both the advances as well as the limitations of current day technologies of image harvesting and color correction. While the source material here was so variable that only so much could be done with it, there are no issues with over aggressive digital tweaking that would have kept this from looking as organic as it does. The fact that Holiday in Spain looks as good as it does is something of a minor (cinema?)miracle.

Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Holiday in Spain features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix sourced from the original 6 track mag stems, and aside from some very minor distortion (oddly in some of the dialogue scenes rather than in Mario Nascimbene's score), there isn't much here to worry about. Surround activity is a lot of fun, starting with the manic car horns that play under the opening, and continuing through with a wealth of nicely done sound effects as Larker starts on his quest through Spain. There are some minor sync issues that I assume are the result either of less than rigorous post-looping or perhaps due to the redaction process, but they're transitory and not much of a distraction. Dialogue is cleanly presented and there's no damage of any major import to mention.

Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Holiday in Spain Locations Short (1080i; 14:37) has host Dave Strohmaier visiting many of the Spanish locations utilized for the film.


• Missing Scenes from Scent of Mystery Version (1080p; 10:03) are sourced from a "severely faded 70mm work picture", but at least give completists a few more minutes of the tantalizingly elusive original version of the film.


• Exclusive Interviews (1080i; 33:34) includes interesting sit downs with Beverly Bentley, who plays Sally in the film, and Susan Todd, daughter of Mike Todd, Jr.


• Remastering of Holiday in Spain (1080p; 7:28) once again features David Strohmaier detailing the heroic efforts to try to rescue this film. Considering the conditions of the elements, the results are quite laudable.


• Slideshow (1080p; 9:57)


• Newly Created Cinerama Trailers Gallery (1080p; 34:21) includes This is Cinerama, Cinerama Holiday, Seven Wonders of the World, Search for Paradise, Cinerama South Seas Adventure, Windjammer, Holiday in Spain and The Golden Head.


• Audio Commentary features David Strohmaier and Sandra Shahan hosted by Bruce Kimmel.

Non Disc Supplements:

• Soundtrack CD of Scent of Mystery


• Reproduction of Original Roadshow Souvenir Program for Scent of Mystery

Holiday in Spain Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Smell-O-Vision probably is at or near the top of the list in the ever expanding Hollywood version of "what were they thinking?", but even without that gimmick, my hunch is audiences probably never would have flocked to this film in any case, since it's hardly a model of narrative ingenuity. The gorgeous Spanish scenery is the film's biggest calling card, and while not quite all of that made it into Holiday in Spain, there's enough left to keep the eye entertained even when the actual plot of the film fails to completely engage. David Strohmaier, who continues to do fantastic work restoring Cinerama (and Cinemiracle) properties, has done epic work on this release, but that doesn't mean Holiday in Spain has been completely returned to its release day splendor. With proper expectations, though, this release provides solid technical merits and some enjoyable supplements. Recommended.