Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		4.0

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 1, 2015

There seems to come a point in the arcs of many superstars’ lives and careers where they are perceived almost more as commodities than actual, honest to goodness, real live human beings. That disconnect was presented to me viscerally a few years ago when in my guise as a musician I was playing a gig and performed a little known tune by Brazilian bossa nova maestro Antonio Carlos Jobim. A woman who had been sitting next to the piano and listening intently for some time commented, “Oh, that was always junior’s favorite song.” I wasn’t quite sure what she meant and asked her to repeat it, at which point she elaborated, “That was always Frank, Jr.’s favorite song of Jobim’s that his father did,” and I instantly realized that the woman was speaking of the iconic Sinatra clan, since Frank senior had famously collaborated with Jobim in the mid- to late sixties (and beyond). I was a bit gobsmacked, but asked if I could sit with her during my break, which she kindly agreed to, and we struck up a very interesting conversation, as it turned out she was one of the people who have helped the Sinatra kids license imagery of their legendary father. This woman in fact was in my hometown of Portland to sell photographs of Sinatra to various establishments like restaurants and hotels, and she had a huge catalog of available imagery which she shared with me. It was a really a fascinating little tête-à-tête where both the humanity and commoditization of an individual were brought home to me in a really unforgettable way. Sinatra: All or Nothing at All attempts to do something somewhat similar, by approaching its titular subject as the unavoidable monolith he was (or at least became), while also peeling back various layers of preconceptions to try to find the living, breathing soul which animated the fantastically accomplished singer and actor.

Many documentary biographies of stars tend to be a laundry list of sorts, a chronology of various events that describe rather than really inform. Director Alex Gibney (Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief) attempts to give a somewhat distinctive shape to Sinatra: All or Nothing at All by structuring the documentary around Sinatra’s set list for his supposed retirement in 1971 (as any Sinatra fan will know, or indeed anyone who listened to such post-1971 Sinatra classics as “New York, New York” should be able to figure out, it was a relatively short-lived “retirement”). Gibney’s thesis is that this aggregation of eleven evergreens from the Great American Songbook provide a unique window in Sinatra’s own thinking about his life and career, at least as it stood then in 1971. It’s a perhaps wobbly foundation on which to build a typical biographical documentary, but it at least allows Gibney the chance to approach his subject from a somewhat unusual angle.

That said, there’s not much in Sinatra: All or Nothing at All which diehard Sinatra aficionados will find mind blowingly new or previously unknown. Gibney does an excellent job of documenting Sinatra’s long and notable career, offering a glut of personal reminiscences by Frank himself, courtesy of archival interviews, along with the Sinatra kids and others who knew and/or worked with him, but interestingly, there are no actual “talking heads” segments here (other than archival interview sequences), and instead Gibney lets audio interviews play under various archival stills and other footage of the star. That actually turns out to be a winning gambit, as it gives the documentary a somewhat more cohesive, organic feel, without constant cutting away to contemporary interview segments.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All is properly deferential toward its subject without ever lapsing into hagiography territory. There are segments devoted to various peccadilloes of the star, including his perhaps lesser known arrest early in his life (something that evidently helped lead to his first marriage in a backhanded kind of way), as well as his relationships with various members of organized crime families. But what may repeatedly strike viewers about Sinatra is how resilient he was at various points in his career. The most famous is probably the early fifties era, when Sinatra’s record sales had started to wane and it seemed his film career wasn’t going to amount to anything much, either. From Here to Eternity handily took care of that misperception, but even then Sinatra had various ups and downs that he managed to weather, and the documentary does a good job in offering a kind of hardscrabble work ethic that informed much of Sinatra’s life on and off the stage (and/or soundstage).

December 12, 2015 will mark the centenary of Sinatra’s birth (no doubt one reason this documentary is being released now on Blu-ray), and so fans will be deluged with various reminders of Sinatra’s life and legacy. This well done if perhaps not exactly revelatory piece provides tons of great archival footage of the star in both formal and candid settings, and may help to deliver more of the human side of Sinatra. One of Sinatra’s most famous television specials was A Man and His Music, made in part to celebrate the singer’s 50th birthday in 1965. When the music is as legendary as that associated with Sinatra, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to actually perceive the man behind the voice. Sinatra: All or Nothing at All offers at least a glimpse inside the commodity based monument that Sinatra ultimately became.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Universal Music Group and Eagle Vision, an imprint of Eagle Rock Entertainment, with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (some archival video and film footage is presented in various aspect ratios running the gamut from early television and/or Academy ratios to various widescreen ratios). As should be expected for a piece stitched together out of widely disparate elements, there's a noticeable quality difference as the documentary segues from source to source. There is ubiquitous use of still photographs employed throughout Sinatra: All or Nothing at All, and those typically look very sharp and well defined. Some of the film snippets are organic looking, if perhaps sourced from secondary elements at times. The newer video sources can be relatively sharp, as in an interview with Walter Cronkite, or pretty lackluster, as a 1980s interview with Sinatra which is riddled with ghosting and other similar anomalies. The historical importance of some of these video elements, including some older interviews with Sinatra's parents, far outweighs any limitations on display.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While Sinatra: All or Nothing at All offers a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, there's frankly not that much difference between it and the LPCM 2.0 track also provided, mostly due to the fact that the music tends to presented interstitially or even as underscore at times, with more prominence given to the near nonstop array of archival interviews and other quasi-narration. Fidelity is excellent throughout, however, with an understanding that some of the older archival recordings suffer from the limitations of the technologies of the day.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Bonus Material (1080p; 13:31) features audio interviews with Jerry Weintraub, Emil Davidson, Robert Wagner and Jill St. John, Quincy Jones, Jerry Lewis and Mia Farrow, which play out under photos of Frank.

Note: In a marketing decision that some Blu-ray consumers may find disappointing, the Deluxe Edition DVD version of this title contains several supplements which are not included on the Blu-ray release.

Sinatra: All or Nothing at All Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

A subject as iconic as Sinatra has both built in advantages and disadvantages for a prospective documentary filmmaker, and it's to Oscar and Emmy winner Gibney's credit that he makes the most of the pluses while mitigating the hagiographic minuses as much as possible. While there's little here that true Sinatra diehards won't already know, it's presented in a very winning fashion, with some excellent commentary along the way from a variety of very interesting people. The "final set list" gambit is probably more of a conceit than anything, but at least gives the documentary some shape. The biggest disappointment for Blu-ray fans is that some of the supplements included on the DVD version are not part of this particular package. Otherwise, Sinatra: All or Nothing at All comes Highly recommended.