Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Friday, April 04, 2014

Counting Blessings For What We've Got ...

Priscilla Lane and James Cagney Listen In On A Future When Their Films
Would Look As Rich As Stills They Posed For

It's Never Been Better Than Right Now

A friend who collected 16mm had got himself an "original" print of The Roaring Twenties which he said was so good "it looked like a still." That was thirty years back when fuzzy images were eternal bane of old pic watching, an era forgot since we've settled into luxury of Blu-Ray and HD streaming. How bad was it? Think back, be honest, then wish if you can for so-called glory days when we looked at favorites for a first time. Truth is, I'm seeing mine for a new first time on each occasion one debuts as High-Def disc or download. Happens almost daily now. This week it was Bombshell, Invisible Stripes, The Set-Up, all of which I'd known before and collected in some instances on 16mm. Each had been compromised by the smaller gauge or TV transmission. Since early-or-so 80's, most could be had on VHS, then viewed on analog sets at 25-inch max. Who'd now watch them in such degraded circumstance? Seems we're spoiled to expect crystal clarity for everything we see, based on nit-picky reception got by discs that a couple decades ago would have awed us.


Here's an instance of how time and technology have spoiled us. Back in the early 90's (that now seems way back), someone turned up a 70mm roadshow print of The Alamo with all of footage missing from the hacked version we'd known for forty years. Fans bought the MGM/UA laser disc and called it a revelation. Quality seemed a best you could imagine, LD's representing "perfect vision" among serious cine-collectors. As far as home enthusiasts were concerned, the Alamo book was closed and a battle won. Within a few years, however, would come DVD and extinction for lasers. Even the best of those were mere smears beside progress the smaller discs represented. Blu-Ray and streaming would then arrive to put DVD in the shade. Home projection meanwhile soared to levels undreamt of in headiest digital days. Sony even made 4K available to homes. If The Alamo was to be liberated now, it would cost, and dearly. The 70mm print used as source for the LD had unfortunately gone vinegar and totally red, and no additional print turned up in a two decades' interim. Our standards and expectation have increased so as to make The (roadshow) Alamo once again a lost film.


I admit to sometimes counting threads on coats off Blu-Ray rack rather than see/listen to stories unfold, that result of ongoing disbelief that these things can look so good. If black-and-white had registered as well before as now, would general viewership have turned from it as they eventually did? What was once cloudy and gray registers sharp as woodcuts. Look at anything out on Blu-Ray. I played The Wolf Man to friends who'd seen it lots on tiny tube and owl terms, enough for know of dialogue by heart, but they went slack-jaw over a show reborn to point where for a first time after ten times (in my case, no telling) there was depth/detail unimaginable for home, or maybe even 1941 theatre, watching. Any download of HD is occasion for renewal --- yes, you've never really seen most classics until this.


The recent loss of several Classic era stars was, I think, more keenly felt than would have been case if they'd left say, ten years ago. Now, as opposed to then, we have High-Definition access to films Joan Fontaine did seventy years ago that no longer seem so old, thus remote, as they had for ... well, seventy years. To watch Rebecca, Jane Eyre, or Letter From An Unknown Woman on Blu-ray is to feel closer to each than was possible before, Joan Fontaine far less a distant figure than was case for lifetimes we saw her through Coke bottling that was analog TV and primitive cassette. Old star images have become so pin sharp as to make theirs seem like new faces, such detail long having been something we saw only in photos reproduced for coffee table books. Now that clarity is up on screens again, we can glean (sometimes surpass) what folks did when 35mm enjoyed silver nitrate edge. Assist toward that is home theatres like one vividly described by Stuart Galbraith IV at fascinating site that is World Cinema Paradise, "An Oasis Of Cinema Scholarship and Reviewing" that Greenbriar highly recommends. Galbraith and others have made dens into exhibition sites in many cases better than what we spent years paying admission to. The Golden Era of classic movie viewing is no longer a matter of Was, but happy reality of Right Now.

7 Comments:

Blogger Kevin K. said...

I've had to explain to my daughter that what she takes for granted now -- razor-sharp images in restored movies -- is still a revelation to me. Her take on it is, well, how else is it supposed to look? And she's right.

By the way, in the top photo on this piece, I thought for a second that Priscilla Lane was Jennifer Lawrence.

2:49 PM  
Blogger James Corry said...

John I was born in 1952; I am now 62 years old. I was raised in L.A. and have been very close to the film industry all my life. I also lived through the age of small B&W TV sets which were (at the most) 17" to 19" wide and had their signals received from a transmission which was "funneled" through a primitive (by 2014 standards)antenna....We were at the mercy of horrible reception, commercial breaks every 10 minutes, ruthless editing of films to fit a certain time slot (generally 90 minutes) and the butchering of widescreen films to fit a 1.33 aspect ratio. Not to mention the sound squeeking through a 4-to-5" mono speaker. Whenever a favorite film showed up on the TV Guide schedule, we thought we'd died and gone to heaven. What has happened as far as technological advances since 1952 is, to me, nothing less than a miracle. If ANYONE had told me when I was in High-School in 1969 that I would be able to see and hear films like "Ben-Hur" or "Journey To The Center Of The Earth" in my own home and they would look and sound better than they ever did even on their initial releases in a professional cinema, I'd have said they were crazy. But it DID happen. The technological strides which have taken place in the past 60 years (and really, just the past 25 or so...)have been, and continue to be, the salvation of these wonderful classic films that we of my generation all grew up on and loved so much.....I just wish that people like Bernard Herrmann, Willis O'Brien, Boris Karloff and others were here to see (and hear) it.

6:52 PM  
Blogger Robert Fiore said...

Of course, some people watch these things on their telephones.

3:00 PM  
Blogger Robert Fiore said...

The only thing to miss about the old days is a feeling you had when you were up in the middle of the night watching the Marx Brothers or Humphrey Bogart and you thought about people here and there watching the same old dream at the same time when the rest of the city was asleep. The feeling you don't miss was the feeling that there were hundreds of movies you'd never see in other than a mutilated or periodically interrupted way because they weren't notable enough to be booked into a repertory house.

3:07 PM  
Blogger Scott MacGillivray said...

Robert Fiore said...
"The only thing to miss about the old days is a feeling you had when you were up in the middle of the night watching the Marx Brothers or Humphrey Bogart and you thought about people here and there watching the same old dream at the same time when the rest of the city was asleep."
______________________________________________

And most of the old movies you watched were relegated to late-late-show time slots. They had once played in prime time in the 1950s, only to be rescheduled as fillers when TV stations expanded and updated their film libraries. First the oldies became matinees, then night-owl fare, then retired.

As late as the 1970s there was a station in Boston that still played arcane Paramounts at one in the morning: Edward Everett Horton in HER MASTER'S VOICE, Jack Oakie and Stuart Erwin in DUDE RANCH, Dorothea Wieck in MISS FANE'S BABY IS STOLEN. These are long gone from public view, as forum members know all too painfully.

9:39 AM  
Blogger Kevin K. said...

I remember that Boston station -- it was how I got to see the Marx Brothers for the first time, along with those Big Broadcast pictures. But a price was paid. For some reason, Groucho's "I'm Against It/I Always Get my Man" number was completely cut from "Horse Feathers." They also cut one of Chico's jokes from "Cocoanuts" -- responding to Groucho's mention of "levys" with "That's the Jewish neighborhood" -- apparently afraid someone might take offense at 1:30 in the morning. No, I don't miss those days at all. Give me TCM, my trusty DVR and Blu-Rays any time.

10:19 AM  
Blogger Scott MacGillivray said...

Kevin and I were watching the same broadcast! Both "I'm Against It" and Zeppo's rendition of "Everyone Says I Love You" were cut. It wasn't a rigid time slot; the station didn't care whether the movie ended at 2:21 or 2:26 or 2:38. So I'm guessing the musical numbers were cut from HORSE FEATHERS for a previous matinee broadcast, and someone in the film room forgot to put them back for the 1:00 a.m. "Boston Movietime."

It's ironic that the only Harold Lloyd picture you could see on television then was PROFESSOR BEWARE, a 1938 Paramount. Forty years later, with the Lloyd estate releasing his library to home video, PROFESSOR BEWARE is now the hardest Lloyd feature to come by.

11:53 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024
  • April 2024
  • May 2024
  • June 2024
  • July 2024
  • August 2024
  • September 2024