I agree with positive reviews here; the film is an entertaining, well made, confection of 1950's upper class fantasy. Very well written script, and excellent performances from the entire cast. The late great Becall is a standout.
But Fox Cinema Achives made to order DVD (similar to Warner Archives products) is very subpar. Anyone who purchases it is being ripped off (I watched a copy from my public library).
The film is presented in a shrunken letterbox format with wide black areas around the borders; the sort of thing they sometimes used to do when formatting widescreen movies for square TV screens. In fact the video transfer they used was obviously done decades ago. The film looks grainy, colors washed out, and it's not presented in the full Cinemascope aspect ratio, so sides of what picture is shown are cropped. Given what many films of the same era look like when the DVD company spends even a moderate amount of money to do an up to date video transfer (I'm not even talking about a restoration here) this is not acceptable.
This is the first Fox Cinema Archives DVD I've seen; if this is typical of the product they put out, I'd pass up all of their products.
But Fox Cinema Achives made to order DVD (similar to Warner Archives products) is very subpar. Anyone who purchases it is being ripped off (I watched a copy from my public library).
The film is presented in a shrunken letterbox format with wide black areas around the borders; the sort of thing they sometimes used to do when formatting widescreen movies for square TV screens. In fact the video transfer they used was obviously done decades ago. The film looks grainy, colors washed out, and it's not presented in the full Cinemascope aspect ratio, so sides of what picture is shown are cropped. Given what many films of the same era look like when the DVD company spends even a moderate amount of money to do an up to date video transfer (I'm not even talking about a restoration here) this is not acceptable.
This is the first Fox Cinema Archives DVD I've seen; if this is typical of the product they put out, I'd pass up all of their products.