6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 2.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
A Manhattan psychiatrist probes a patient's murder and falls for the victim's mysterious mistress.
Starring: Roy Scheider, Meryl Streep, Jessica Tandy, Joe Grifasi, Sara BotsfordCrime | Insignificant |
Drama | Insignificant |
Mystery | Insignificant |
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, 16-bit)
English
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 2.5 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 0.5 | |
Overall | 2.5 |
Yes, Meryl Streep can do anything. In 1982, following her Oscar win for Kramer vs. Kramer, Streep re-teamed with that film's writer and director, Robert Benton, for a thriller that borrowed more directly from Alfred Hitchcock than anything ever made by Brian De Palma, who's the filmmaker most often accused of ripping off Hitchcock. As co-written by Benton and David Newman, Still of the Night consciously lifts so many elements from Spellbound, The Birds, North by Northwest and other Hitchcock classics that it's almost a film school assignment. Streep plays the typical Hitchcock blonde, mysterious, irresistible and possibly lethal, her hairstyle reminiscent of Eva Marie Saint's in North by Northwest. Still of the Night received respectable reviews and did acceptable box office, but it hasn't aged well. Unlike Hitchcock and De Palma, each of whom uses cinematic technique to probe deep-seated obsessions and primal fears, Benton seems to be engaged in a craftsman's exercise. His effort feels oddly detached, as if he were doing an intriguing experiment just to find out what happens. His thriller never establishes that peculiar intimacy with the viewer that makes Vertigo, Dressed to Kill or The Silence of the Lambs such unforgettable experiences. It's a technical feat that never gets under your skin.
Still of the Night was shot by the eminent Spanish cinematographer Néstor Almendros, re-teaming with Benton after Kramer vs. Kramer. Famous for preferring natural light, Almendros won an Academy Award for shooting Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, much of which was photographed during the brief interval immediately after sunset known as "magic hour". As with its other titles licensed from MGM, Kino has presumably sourced its 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray of Still of the Night from a master provided by the studio. The transfer supplied by MGM is of disappointingly poor quality. Plagued by frequent and intrusive video noise, the transfer also suffers from inconsistent blacks and weak colors, all of which detract from the moody atmosphere that Benton and Almendros attempted to create. Because he preferred natural light and learned his craft before the film industry was transformed by home video, Almendros was never concerned about graininess in film, and some viewers will no doubt mistake the noisiness in this image for film grain, which is also visible but of a distinctly different quality. The goal of an accurate Blu-ray presentation is to recreate, in the digital domain, the film's natural grain pattern without adding extraneous noise. MGM and Kino have failed in that mission here. Still, the transfer has captured enough detail to allow appreciation for Benton's deliberate shot composition, and the colors are good enough to distinguish between the different palettes of the present, the past and George Bynum's critical dream sequence. The Blu-ray is watchable—just. Kino has mastered Still of the Night with an average bitrate of 24.93 Mbps, which is probably adequate. It's possible that some minor compression artifacts are concealed by the video noise, but at a certain point there's little purpose in distinguishing between flaws.
The film's original mono track has been encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0, with identical left and right channels. It's a perfectly adequate track with clear dialogue, good sound effects and a tuneful rendition of the theme song by John Kander (the composing half of the team of Kander & Ebb, who wrote Chicago and Cabaret, among others). As discussed in the feature section, the film has very little underscoring.
The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 1.85:1; 2:06), plus trailers for two other films released on Blu-ray by Kino and featuring Roy Scheider (Last Embrace and 52 Pick-Up).
In an interview several years ago, Streep was asked to name a bad movie in which she'd appeared, and she picked Still of the Night. That alone should make the film interesting, but I disagree that the film is bad or that she's bad in it. (Now, She-Devil is another story.) It falls short of its aspirations, but in so doing it provides an informative perspective on the mechanics of creating a thriller. It also contains several well-crafted sequences. It's too bad that Kino's Blu-ray is such a mediocre affair. If you're interested, wait for a sale.
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