7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Benjy Stone, junior writer on a popular 1950s TV comedy/variety series, is assigned to keep guest star Alan Swann out of trouble during rehearsals and deliver him sober to the live telecast. Swann’s drunken antics make him a handful, and the show has other problems to contend with, including a mercurial star, a fractious writers room and a notorious gangster, Karl Rojeck, who threatens violence if the star doesn’t stop making fun of him on air.
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Mark Linn-Baker, Jessica Harper, Joseph Bologna, Bill MacyComedy | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English SDH
Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
My Favorite Year is based on a colorful account that Mel Brooks told to screenwriters Norman
Steinberg and Dennis Palumbo about his time as a young comedy writer. Brooks got his start on
Your Show of Shows, an NBC variety series that ran from 1950 through 1954 and starred comic
legend Sid Caesar. The show's writers room incubated an entire generation of now-famous
talent. Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, Woody Allen and Neil Simon were among its alumni,
and all of them have spoken of the insanity that reigned behind the scenes. But what else could
anyone expect from the pressure of producing ninety minutes of original material every week for
thirty-two live shows a season? (By way of comparison, Saturday Night Live does a mere twenty-one.) Adding to the pressure was the commanding presence of the show's star, whose
mercurial—one could fairly say "volcanic"—temperament was as outsized as his considerable
gifts.
Simon would eventually turn his experience into a successful Broadway play, Laughter on the
23rd Floor, which provided a showcase for Nathan Lane as the Caesar-like star. (Simon later
rewrote the play into a cable TV movie, which currently appears to be unavailable in any form.)
Reiner took a more oblique approach with The Dick Van Dyke Show, which focused on the life of
a live comedy show's head writer both at home and in the office, with Reiner himself making
guest appearances as the show's capricious and tyrannical host.
But it was Brooks's account of being assigned, as a junior writer, to babysit guest star (and
unrepentant drunkard) Errol Flynn that inspired the script for My Favorite Year. The fact that
there is no record of Flynn ever having appeared on Your Shows of Shows does not seem to
have deterred Brooks from sticking to his tall tale, and the resulting film demonstrates that truth doesn’t really matter when a story is so gloriously funny. My Favorite Year netted a
well-deserved Oscar nomination for star Peter O'Toole, who tore into the role of a faded matinee
idol with gleeful gusto. The film also provided a graceful transition to directing for actor Richard
Benjamin, who skillfully guided the ensemble surrounding O'Toole through the precision
machinery of the Steinberg/Palumbo script.
Responding to innumerable fan requests, the Warner Archive Collection has added My Favorite
Year to its roster in an immaculately remastered Blu-ray.
My Favorite Year was shot by Gerald Hirschfeld (Young Frankenstein), who supplied a gently
warm palette to complement the film's narrative structure as a memory play told by Benjy Stone.
The film looked pretty good on DVD (at least, as I recall it), but its 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray presentation is far superior. Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility has newly scanned an
interpositive at 2K, followed by the Warner Archive Collection's customarily thorough cleanup
to remove dirt, scratches and age-related damage. The result is a wonderfully film-like image
with fine detail that showcases the film's (idealized) period production design. Clarity,
densities and color saturation are superior throughout, and the blacks are truly black (men like
Alan Swann wore tuxedos to elegant restaurants in those days, which means the deep blacks are
critical). The reproduction is so faithful that, at the one-hour time mark, when Stone and Swann
are on a Manhattan rooftop looking down, you may spot the matte lines around their heads where
the nighttime sky has been added by optical superimposition. (See screenshot 18; the visibility of
the outlines will vary, depending on one's display and calibration.) This is not "banding", as some
viewers may wonder, but an artifact of the era's effects technology. WAC could have erased it
digitally but, as usual, has chosen to preserve the film in its original form. Artifacts that might be
attributed to the process of taking analog film into the digital realm are non-existent. WAC has
mastered My Favorite Year at its usual high bitrate, here just under 35 Mbps.
(Note that WAC's Blu-ray departs from the now-familiar practice, at both Warner and other studios, of reformatting films framed at 1.85:1 to 1.78:1. WAC has retained the original aspect ratio, and tiny black bars appear at top and bottom, although they will be hidden by overscan on most displays.)
My Favorite Year was released in mono, which WAC has encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. As mono tracks go, this one is particularly good, with a skillfully mixed selection of effects and dialogue, of which the latter is always clear. The musical score ranging from nostalgic to mock-heroic was supplied by Ralph Burns (winner of Oscars for both Cabaret and All That Jazz), and the film opens with a sweetly reproduced rendition of "Stardust" sung by another "King", Nat "King" Cole.
Even though the film boasts an Oscar-nominated lead performance by a cinema superstar, not enough people know the comic gem that is My
Favorite Year. The movie remains a comedic masterwork that hasn't aged a day, and Warner's
excellent Blu-ray should serve as a fine introduction to neophytes as well as a reward to fans who
have been patiently waiting. Highly recommended.
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