7.2 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Harold Pinter pens this 'portrait of a bad marriage' drama based on the novel by Penelope Mortimer. Despite her unwillingness to stop having children, Jo Armitage (Anne Bancroft), a thrice-married mother of several children by different fathers, is not exactly cut out for motherhood. Inflicting her existing brood on her third husband, screenwriter Jake (Peter Finch), does little to cement their marriage, and Jake's serial infidelities eventually lead a depressed and isolated Jo to a complete breakdown.
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason (I), Janine Gray, Cedric HardwickeDrama | 100% |
Family | Insignificant |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
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 A (B, C untested)
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
The Pumpkin Eater (1964) is being released as part of Shout Select's eight-disc box set, The Anne Bancroft Collection.
It was with some sorrow after I watched his great film The Pumpkin Eater that I learned Jack Clayton had directed only eight films, beginning with the Oscar-nominated short, The Bespoke Overcoat (1955). Clayton was a member of the British New Wave along with his filmmaking colleagues Lindsay Anderson, Joseph Losey, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson, and John Schlesinger. Clayton wasn't as prolific as his contemporaries but with the ghost story The Innocents (1961) and this picture, he demonstrated his range in showing different class sects of British society aside from the realist-based "kitchen sink dramas," which often portrayed the plights of young working-class rebels.
Anne Bancroft read Penelope Mortimer's autobiographical 1962 novel The Pumpkin Eater and envisioned herself on screen as Mortimer's alter-ego, whose unnamed in the book. Bancroft got in touch with British producer James Woolf and through him lobbied hard to Jack Clayton for the main lead. Bancroft and Clayton hadn't yet met but he had seen her Oscar-winning performance as Helen Keller's teacher in The Miracle Worker (1962). Even that didn't convince Clayton that she was right for the role of a British divorcee so Bancroft hired London voice coach Cecily Berry to giver her dialect lessons. Adolph J. Stern of the Courier (PA) Post reported that Bancroft arrived in London five weeks before filming began to study the “hot potato” English accent. Berry apparently taught many Americans how to speak British English and after five weeks, she passed Bancroft with "full honors." The Pumpkin Eater has a rather melancholic story about a woman dealing with depression and nothing gave Bancroft a bigger boost than having her new husband, Mel Brooks, make a Transatlantic flight to see her at Shepperton Studios. At a fall 1964 luncheon with the Daily (NY) News columnist Kate Cameron, Bancroft confided that Brooks's visit "raised my spirits, satisfied my feminine ego and made the separation and hard work endurable.”
The Pumpkin Eater makes its US debut on Blu-ray courtesy of Shout Select on this MPEG-4 AVC-encoded BD-50. The four-time BAFTA winner premiered on high-def in 2017 in the UK as a Powerhouse Films Limited Edition. The Indicator Series title derives from a Sony HD master that I can't confirm is a 2K or 4K scan (likely the former). As you'll see from the screen captures below, the Powerhouse appears in the film's native 1.85:1 ratio while the Shout has been reformatted to the 16x9-friendly 1.78:1. It hasn't been cropped or zoomed in, however. I don't know why Shout couldn't have just displayed it in 1.85:1. There's some dirt but this print looks very clear and textured. Some grain is scattered in spots but there are no image stability problems. Detail is excellent. Authoring and compression are slightly in favor of the Shout, which has encoded the feature at an average video bitrate of 36000 kbps.
Screenshot #s 1-15, 17, 19, 21, 23, & 25 = Shout Select 2019 BD-50
Screenshot #s 16, 18, 20, 22, & 24 = Powerhouse Films 2017 BD-50
Shout supplies the original monaural sound track, which is rendered here as a DTS-HD Master Audio Dual Mono (1566 kbps, 24-bit). Powerhouse delivers an LPCM Audio Single Mono mix (1152 kbps, 24-bit). I've listened to both tracks and prefer Shout's in terms of pitch and fidelity. There is no noticeable hiss, pops, crackles, or dropouts on either mix. Dialogue delivered by the mostly British cast is pretty crisp.
Composer Georges Delerue enjoyed an amiable collaboration with director Jack Clayton on multiple films. His light jazz score here has warm and romantic undertones. Its comprised mainly of flute, other woodwinds, a harpsichord, and strings. Delerue captures Jo's morose state of mind during her walk through Harrods, underscoring her mood with a sad-sounding flute. The score is only available as a compilation album for music Delerue scored for Clayton's movies (long OOP) and I hope it's re-released or appears in an expanded edition.
The Shout and Powerhouse each come with optional English SDH and I believe each label did its own subtitling track.
Powerhouse's still in-print LE has a "selected scenes" commentary (over fifty minutes from the movie) with author and film historian Neil Sinyard, a four-minute featurette with camera operator Brian West, a trailer, image galleries, and a exclusive 40-page booklet. Shout licensed three interviews that also appear on the UK disc:
The Pumpkin Eater is an oddball masterpiece about marriage, child-bearing, philandering, and much more. Film commentators often compare it with the alienated social worlds adult females inhabit in Antonioni's oeuvre but I'm also reminded of the cinematic milieus and characters from the films of Resnais, Bergman, and Dreyer. I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention Harold Pinter's witty and snappy script along with Oswald Morris's widescreen photography, which has very precise framings and multiplane compositions. Technical specs on this Shout Select edition are very good. There are some small differences between the transfer and audio presentation compared to Powerhouse's but the latter has more bonus materials. You should get the Bancroft box set or the UK package. The movie comes HUGELY RECOMMENDED. One of the best British films of the 1960s.
(Still not reliable for this title)
1963
1970
2019
지금은맞고그때는틀리다
2015
早春
1956
2009
Törst
1949
Scener ur ett äktenskap
1973
1960
Deux jours, une nuit
2014
2002
1996
1968
Torment
1994
Summer / Le rayon vert
1986
2018
1987
2002
Warner Archive Collection
1933
1966