The Loveless Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

The Loveless Blu-ray Movie Review

The Wild at Heart One.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 11, 2019

Kathryn Bigelow entered the annals of all time film history when she became the first female to win an Academy Award for Best Director (along with a slew of other accolades for her work on The Hurt Locker). But like many, probably even most, of those who have similarly had their names inscribed in whatever the virtual “Book of Life” of Hollywood luminaries may be, Bigelow had had a long career as a journey(wo?)man in La La Land, as evidenced at least in part by this interesting new release by Arrow of The Loveless. The Loveless also offered Willem Dafoe his first starring role as a biker named Vance roaming the rural areas around the old U.S. Highway 17 (the original title of the film). Perhaps due to the then relatively unknown cast and crew, The Loveless kind of unusually seemed to have its theatrical exhibition unspool over the course of several years, with some festival outings as early as 1981, but with its New York premiere not occurring until 1984. Also kind of interestingly, Bigelow shares co-writing and co-directing credits on this effort with Monty Montgomery, a guy who is perhaps better known as a producer, especially with regard to a couple of his collaborations with David Lynch (Montgomery was an Associate Producer on an episode of Twin Peaks, and was one of the producing team on Wild at Heart). The Loveless is at times reminiscent of such films as another outing with “Wild” in its title, the inimitable Marlon Brando biker entry The Wild One, or even some older films like The Petrified Forest, in terms of a bunch of folks gathered at an at least somewhat isolated “watering hole” who have some unexpected visitors drop by.

In a way, I guess an admittedly tangential connection to Wild at Heart might be made for this film, at least in terms of some of its “retro” proclivities and its star-crossed love affair between Vance and a girl named Telena (Marin Kanter). Vance is shown to be catnip for women from the get go, in a kind of funny vignette which shows him helping a stranded female motorist with a flat tire who initially seems to be quite fearful of him, but warms up to him, especially after he takes off his jacket and reveals his upper torso. Dafoe manages to craft the whole almost feral ambience of his character rather nicely in these early scenes, so that later plot developments with Telena may ring at least a little truer than some of the frankly overamped melodramatic aspects of the eventual storyline might otherwise suggest. (There's everything from incest to "gender fluidity" here, for those who are keeping count.)

But The Loveless seems to want to kind of meld those over the top histrionics onto more of an Art House property, one that some may feel moves at a pretty glacial pace, despite lots of shots of motorcycles and some really cool vintage cars tooling around the back roads of Georgia. And the film may suffer from not clearly defining whom it wants the "real" villain to be. It would seem to be Tarver (J. Don Ferguson), owner of the diner and gas station where Vance and his crew stop. Tarver is also not so coincidentally Telena's father, which of course leads to disastrous consequences. But if you look around, The Loveless isn't especially kind to some other characters (in terms of making them at least a little villainous), something that may have been intended to imply a general moral turpitude, but which struck me as having some issues at the screenplay level.

Along with some arguably clunky writing, some of the supporting performances here probably can't quite match Dafoe's acumen, even at this early stage of his career. The film probably relies too much on trying to be a "character" piece, when many of the characters are given some relatively unhelpful dialogue and some of the actors attempting to bring those characters to life can tend to stumble. Still, the film has style in abundance, and those interested in the early careers of Dafoe and Bigelow may well find this an agreeable enough diversion.

The Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Loveless is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

The Loveless is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with mono audio. All restoration work was completed at R3Store Studios, London. The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 2K resolution in a Scanity. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, picture instability and other instances of film wear were repaired or removed through a combination of digital restoration tools and techniques. The mono tracks were remastered fro the original mag reels. The film was graded on Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master.

The restoration of The Loveless involved an international search for the original elements, which involved valuable assistance from many people, including the majority of the original filmmaking team. Thankfully, these materials were finally located with Augustus Color's assistance in the Technicolor vaults in Rome.

This restoration has been approved by co-director/writer Monty Montgomery and director of photography Doyle Smith.

This is another impressive restoration of a cult item by Arrow, one that offers a nicely organic appearance and an at time incredibly lush palette (take a gander at some of the screenshots accompanying this review, and pay special attention to primaries like blues and especially reds). Detail levels are often quite expressive as well, and with the film's emphasis on retro fabrics, sometimes with ornate patterns, the precision of fine detail is especially notable. The opening sequence looked a tad rough to me, and the grain field is fairly "gritty" looking throughout the presentation. There's also some minor and passing crush in a couple of dark scenes, including some night scenes toward the end of the film. That said, there are no real issues with compression anomalies, and I noticed absolutely no damage whatsoever.

The Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Loveless features an LPCM Mono track that I'm scoring at a 4.0, though it has one odd thing that may in fact be an error, so the score is open to change as I get more information. At around 1:16:52 the soundtrack simply stops — there's dead silence for almost 20 seconds — and then picks up again. Then again at around 1:17:15, it stops again, for just a second or two. This is at the film's climax and both of these "silent" snippets are shots of Telena walking away from a tragedy, and I frankly wouldn't put it above this film's "art house" sensibility to have cut all sound there, but it strikes me that this is more likely some kind of odd conforming error (I've made Arrow's PR firm aware of the situation, and if it turns out that this is an error, I'll update the audio portion of the review). Other than that kind of strange few seconds, things sound nicely robust here, with a good accounting of the kind of jangly, swamp boogie score and a glut of period appropriate source cues. Dialogue and effects like the many roaring motorcycle engines are rendered cleanly and clearly without any major problems.

Update: Arrow has confirmed that the two silent sections are part of the original soundtrack, and so are indeed part of the "art house sensibility" I mentioned above, so the 4.0 score stands.

The Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Monty Montgomery is hosted by Elijah Drenner.


• No Man's Friend Today: Making The Loveless (1080p; 34:28) is a really appealing and at times quite funny new piece featuring interviews with Willem Dafoe, Marin Kanter, Robert Gordon, Philip Kimbrough and Lawrence Matarese.


• U.S. 17: Shooting The Loveless (1080p; 15:16) is another new set of interviews with producers Grafton Nunes and A. Kitman Ho.


• Chrome and Hot Leather: The Look of The Loveless (1080p; 15:16) features new interviews with production designer Lily Kilvert and director of photography Doyle Smith.


• Relentless (1080p; 4:26) is a new interview with musician Eddy Dixon, whose music gives The Loveless quite a bit of its unique flavor. This is an audio interview that plays out to various stills.


• Image Gallery

  Behind the Scenes (1080p;)

  
  

  Storyboards (1080p)

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 1:11)

The Loveless Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Loveless may not completely succeed in trying to be a hyped up biker gang drama and an Art House character piece, but it's quite stylish and Dafoe is fascinating in his first major role. Some of the writing may strike some as clunky, and a few of the supporting performances aren't quite ready for prime time. Technical merits are solid, and as usual Arrow has assembled an enjoyable slate of supplements, for those who are considering a purchase.