6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Alan is a Seattle college student volunteering at a crisis center. One night when at the clinic alone, a woman calls up the number and tells Alan that she needs to talk to someone. She informs Alan she took a load of pills, and he secretly tries to get help. During this time, he learns more about the woman, her family life, and why she wants to die. Can Alan get the cavalry to save her in time before it's too late?
Starring: Sidney Poitier, Anne Bancroft, Telly Savalas, Steven Hill, Edward AsnerDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
If, as the old saying (which originated with none other than Benjamin Franklin) goes, the only two things of which we can be certain are death and taxes, a perhaps puckish auxiliary question might be asked: would you ever think of paying your taxes ahead of time? Probably not, which leads to a second quandary: what could ever lead someone to take their own life, when it’s obvious our built in mortality is going to take care of that “problem” sooner or later, anyway? Suicide remains one of the more baffling traits of humans, and perhaps no “outsider” can ever fully understand the reasons that would lead someone else to kill themselves. My own family was rocked with the suicide of an Aunt of mine (long before I was born), and though her siblings—including my father—haltingly tried to tie her decision to a childhood spent in foster care, it never really completely addressed the depression that must have colored her emotional being, especially since my father and his other siblings were also shunted around from foster home to foster home as they grew up and managed (for the most part, anyway) to “escape” unscathed, forging extremely successful personal and professional lives. But suicide is a rather rampant if frequently ignored epidemic, as the placard emblazoned across the wall of a call-in help line in Sydney Pollack’s directorial debut The Slender Thread makes clear: “Every two minutes someone attempts suicide in the United States”. It’s a staggering statistic and one that brings a certain sense of urgency to this well meaning if soap operatic look at a woman in distress who reaches out to someone—anyone—after a perhaps irreversible decision she’s made to end her own life.
The Slender Thread is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is yet another really nice looking black and white release culled from the Paramount archives and released by Olive. The elements here do have sporadic damage, including some reel markers, scratches and one bizarre moment of dots superimposed over the bulk of the image. There is also one moment of what appears to have been a slipped frame, when the image "jumps" just a little bit. Other than those anomalies, though, Loyal Griggs' cinematography is presented with excellent clarity and good (if not really exceptional) contrast. The second unit photography often looks just a tad softer than the more studio bound footage.
The Slender Thread features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix that gets the job done but which never really explodes into anything very sonically remarkable. One of the most interesting aspects to the film is its score by Seattlite Quincy Jones, one of his very earliest feature film outings. Jones modulates between straight orchestral backing and some jazz figurings that presage some his cool television themes of the mid-sixties. The score isn't especially cohesive for this very fact, but it sounds fantastically vibrant in this lossless setting. The rest of the film is really limited to dialogue scenes, with only a couple of sequences even offering much in the way of ambient environmental sounds. Fidelity is fine and dynamic range is about what you'd expect in a dramatic film like this.
No supplements of any kind are included on this Blu-ray disc.
It's kind of interesting that The Slender Thread never really was a huge theatrical blockbuster, despite the fact that both its stars had at that time fairly recently won Best Actor and Actress Academy Awards. The film was probably too intimate and perhaps was hobbled by being shot in black and white which by 1965 was a dying commodity. Seen in retrospect now, however, The Slender Thread provides Bancroft especially with a field day, and she delivers a really moving, wonderfully nuanced performance. If the call tracing "technology" on display is almost laughable by today's standards, it still provides a fascinating historical glimpse into the milieu of the film. It can't really be said that The Slender Thread is a feel good movie, despite its quasi-happy ending, but at least it helps to deliver a riveting story about those who keep the "attempts" in the suicide statistic quoted above (and seen in the first screencap) from becoming "succeeds". Recommended.
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