The Chase Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

The Chase Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov July 7, 2024

Arthur Ripley's "The Chase" (1946) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The supplemental features on the release include archival audio commentary by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin and two vintage radio adaptations. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

I'll give you a thousand dollars to get me to Havana.

Somewhere in downtown Miami, while fantasizing about a proper meal, unemployed veteran Chuck Scott (Robert Cummings) spots a lost wallet full of crispy dollar bills. At a nearby restaurant, he orders a juicy steak, and later, while paying for it, notices a business card with a name and address. Assuming the business card identifies the wallet's owner, he immediately decides to give it back.

In another part of Miami, Chuck rings the bell of a lavish home and meets gangster Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran) and his right-hand man Gino (Peter Lorre). After handing the wallet, Chuck is offered a job -- driving Eddie and Gino wherever they need to go, or the former’s stunningly beautiful wife, Lorna (Michele Morgan) -- and he accepts on the spot.

But soon after Chuck begins working for Eddie, during a trip to the beach, Lorna offers him one thousand dollars to get her to Havana. Lorna is no longer in love with Eddie and unable to tolerate his ‘business practices’, so she is making a desperate play to reset her life and rediscover happiness without him. Having already fallen in love with Lorna, Chuck agrees to make the dangerous trip to Havana and instantly wins her heart. Despite improvising, the two successfully reach Havana, but so does Eddie’s order to get them punished for their betrayal.

Arthur Ripley directed The Chase from a screenplay by Philip Yordan, who had adapted Cornell Woolrich’s novel The Black Path of Fear. However, the original material for The Black Path of Fear came from a short story titled Havana Night, which Woolrich had published in Flynn’s Weekly a couple of years earlier.

The Chase retains a certain pulpy quality, but its interesting narrative construction and atmosphere transform it into a most unusual genre film. Indeed, a good portion of its narrative quickly creates the impression that Chuck and Lorna’s run to Havana will be a straightforward affair of the kind virtually all conventional film noirs promoted during the 1940s. However, in a busy nightclub in Havana, The Chase bents reality in a most unusual way and evolves into an uncharacteristically fluid and oozing thought-provoking symbolism film. Does this transformation make it absolutely impossible to place The Chase among conventional film noirs? No. However, just about everything in it that can be associated with film noir is dramatically overshadowed by the effects of the transformation, so it is quite clear that it was conceived to have a different genre identity.

In the 1930s, on the other side of the Atlantic, French filmmakers directed a number of crime thrillers that resembled conventional film noirs but also overlapped different genre identities. This particular style of filming became known as “poetic realism”. For example, in Marcel Carne’s Le Jour se Leve a.k.a. Daybreak Jean Gabin plays a doomed factory worker who falls in love with a beautiful flower girl as he is running out of time to stay alive. In Carne’s Le quai des brumes a.k.a. Port of Shadows, Gabin again plays a doomed deserter who meets the most beautiful girl (Morgan) in France at the wrong time.

The Chase channels plenty of the fatalism that flourishes in the two Carne films. However, its characters and their environment are drastically different. Cochran and Lorre’s characters, for instance, become so unhinged in the second half that in a single sequence the two manage to effectively redefine fatalism.

Ripley’s man behind the camera was Oscar-nominated cinematographer Franz Planer, who lensed such classic films as Champion, 99 River Street, Roman Holiday, The Big Country, and Breakfast at Tiffany's.

The Chase Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.41:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, The Chase arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

In 2012, UCLA Film & Television Archive, with support from The Film Foundation, restored The Chase. In 2015, Kino Lorber introduced the restoration on the home video market with this Blu-ray release. The label's new special edition of The Chase reintroduces the same restoration. However, there are some discrepancies in its technical presentation.

The new presentation has slightly different gamma levels. However, I do not think that this is a meaningful improvement because the restoration has many uneven areas and the difference is indeed very small. (Your player, if a high-end model, should make adjustments on the fly as well). The presentation is better encoded, too, which is an upgrade that could be appreciated by viewers with large screens. On my system, I could see footage from select darker areas looking marginally better. On the other hand, the restoration does not address many rough spots and surface imperfections, so there is plenty of material that can benefit from manual repair and automatic cosmetic work. This material can frequently make it difficult to appreciate the improvements from the superior encoding. Delineation, clarity, and depth are pleasing, routinely even very good, but you should expect to see many fluctuations. The grayscale is convincing. However, it also reveals some minor yet noticeable inconsistencies. All in all, The Chase has an attractive organic appearance on this release, which is the best I have seen, but in an ideal world it will look healthier. My score is 3.75/5.00. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

The Chase Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature. (The original Blu-ray release of The Chase did not offer optional subtitles).

Unlike the video, the audio does not reveal age-related related inconsistencies and serious anomalies. I had the volume of my system turned up quite a bit and did not notice anything that may negatively affect your viewing experience. I did not even notice light background hiss, which sometimes sneaks in on older films like The Chase. Dynamic intensity is good, too. The train crash and several other action sequences sound great. A good soundtrack produces fine contrasts as well.

The Chase Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary - this archival audio commentary was recorded by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin (My Winnipeg, The Saddest Music in the World), who is a huge fan of The Chase. Unsurprisingly, Maddin provides a very enthusiastic, very detailed deconstruction of The Chase with plenty of curious observations about its narrative construction and visual style. The careers and cinematic legacies of many of the people that made The Chase are frequently addressed as well. This audio commentary also appeared on the original Blu-ray release ofThe Chase.

• Radio Adaptations - presented here are two radio adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's novel The Black Path of Fear, which inspired The Chase. In English, not subtitled.


• Adaptation One - starring Brian Donlevy and broadcast on August 31, 1944. (30 min).
• Adaptation Two - starring Cary Grant, produced by William Spier, and broadcast on March 7, 1946 (27 min).

The Chase Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Michele Morgan plays the young girl who melts Jean Gabin's heart in one of my all-time favorite films, Port of Shadows, which channels a lot of the same fatalism that flourishes in The Chase. Morgan is impossibly beautiful and in a doomed romantic relationship in The Chase, too. However, while similarly effective, these films are quite different because they bend their genre identities in unique ways. Kino Lorber's special edition offers a new technical presentation of UCLA Film & Television Archive's 2012 restoration of The Chase, which is not perfect but remains the best available for this terrific film. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.