This film has been my all time favorite movie since I was 3 years old and saw
it for the first time. Something about it resonated with me. I was brought up
in a small town in northern Minnesota, 90 miles south of the Canadian border.
Of course the theaters there were your average small town movie theaters and we
had 3 of them in a 40 mile radius. After its initial run in 1967 (which is when
our towns finally ), the theater would show the film every year for 3 nights
(Fri,Sat and Sun) and I was there almost every night and for the matinees,
which by the way all showings were always sold out and there was a standing
ovation at the end of every showing). In 1980 when I graduated I moved to
Minneapolis but alas it was too late to see the film in 70mm, something I
dreamed about seeing, so that is something I was never able to do, hopefully I
will get to a 70mm film festival and be able to see it there.
I have owned every single release on home video and since I am currently
writing a history of this film (I've spent 2 years on it already), I'll offer
here a bried history of the home video versions which may be interesting to
fans of the film:
First there were 3 different VHS releases, and then came 3 different laserdisc
releases and 3 DVD releases. For every one of these releases, 20th Century Fox
remastered the film and it always looked and sounded different. I would go on
to say that this had more remastering of the picture and sound than any other
film released on home video. But none of them ever had everything done right,
until the 40th Anniversary DVD which was very close to the Robert Wise approved
remaster which was for the laserdisc box set (30th anniversary). For that they
even went as far as to press a gold CD of the soundtrack and almost all
underscore music from the original 35mm music master tapes, these would be the
tapes used at the actual recording session, so they would be first generation.
When it was time to release a 45th anniversary edition and for the first time
release the film on blu-ray disc, which I waited for hour by hour since the
announcement, Fox said they were going back to the 65mm camera negative and
making an 8k scan, converting it to 4k and releasing it on Blu-ray (which is
2k). When it came out, the most ardent of fans had some major complaints. All
of a sudden, almost all of the pinks and blues were missing. This film looked
like it never had before. It was very heavy in the brown and beige and green
palettes. I am a member of all of the video web sites like Home Theater Forum,
and have written film histories for Blu-ray.com, The Digital Bits and Home
Theater forum.
Well, I can tell you those who remembered seeing it in glorious 70mm were very
upset and all came out exclaiming this looked nothing like what they
remembered, as these people had seen it in 70mm when it came out and for the
1973 reissue, and it looked nothing like Robert Wise's approved 30th
anniversary video transfer. Many went on to say they were selling their blu-ray
and were sticking with the 40th anniversary DVD which most (some of them
projectionists at the time) agreed was the closest. The blu-ray is a drastic
change in the look of the film and while the detail is jaw dropping due to the
1080p high definition and the work they did on scanning each frame of the
Todd-AO film, everything is earthtone and it was not the way the film had ever
looked. There is rumour that for the 4k blu-ray release, which will probably
be on its 55th anniversary (the 50th anniversary blu-ray was the same as the
45th, the one in the wrong palette of colors), that they will correct the color.
Another problem with the blu-ray version is the sound. Those who know better
all agree that Fox added noise reduction to the sound. They claim in interviews
that the public today is not used to tape hiss, so most of the time they remove
it. The problem with that is, it removes some of the sounds and frequencies in
the upper register which would be horns, cymbals and many other instruments,
and indeed if you listen and compare it to the 40th anniversary DVD, the DVD
has a much cleaner sound, even though Fox used, for the blu-ray, the original 6
track stereo master for the first time. I was very saddened by this, as this is
one of the most beloved musicals of all time, and even in it's name, The SOUND
of Music, that they would do this. Personally, I would rather have the tape
hiss there and hear everything the way it was recorded. Remember there was no
Dolby noise reduction in 1965, so naturally the master tapes have tape hiss, it
was just part of the recordings in that era. So my opinion is they ruined the
chance for a beautiful high definition release by changing the color palette in
every scene, and adding noise reduction to remove tape hiss that should be
there which inadvertently removed the very high end of the sound.
So there's a little history for those interested in the past and current home
video releases. I have all of the film's posters including the 3 sheet, 6 sheet
and 24 sheet (and I waited for sales where these would be mint or near mint).
I have the pressbooks, presskits, and one half of a wall in my home theater
room contains all of these items. I do have the poster being discussed here
which I came across about 10 years ago and had never seen before. It seems
unusual to me that they would print something that was not full color for this
film.
If any of you are interested in reading the history of such films as The Ten
Commandments, This is Cinerama, Frankenstein, Jaws, The Gold Rush, Psycho,
Citizen Kane, Marilyn Monroe films, and many others, I used to write for
Blu-ray.com and was able to make up 60 columns over a two year period, my
column was called The Silver Screen and you can read them here (there are many
pages of them so just click next page at the bottom for more columns). I got
some of this material from the pressbooks and did alot of research on these
films. One thing you will notice is that I tried to present these differently
that other movie columnists, instead of using the same old photos from the
movie, I used poster art and tried to make these columns as appealing visually
as they were to read. I personally cleaned all of these images up and spent
hours doing it so you will see many U.S. and international posters here
corrected in major detail (I even removed the poster fold lines). Also the same
with sets of lobby cards and other materials. There is much to read I am very
proud of these. There are 4 pages worth of titles to choose from:
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/search.php?action=search&keywordtitle=&keywordtext=&postername=Robert%20Siegel&fromyear=&frommonth=&fromday=&toyear=&tomonth=&today=&interview=0&article=0&giveaway=0
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