There’s No Place Like Home (Theatres)…New Wave of Classics Hits BluRay

Over the slightly more than three years that BluRay disc technology has been available to the general public, the vast majority of the titles released have been recent theatrical hits and selected popular movies from the past 25 years or so. A modest selection of pre-1980 films but very few pre-1960 films, classic or otherwise, have made it to the new high-definition home video format.

That lack started to change ever so slightly about a year ago with Disney’s 1959 “Sleeping Beauty,” a box set of four 1950s fantasy films by Ray Harryhausen, sets of 1960s-70s James Bond films, a collector’s edition of “Casablanca” (1942), and the original 1951 “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Last December marked the welcome inauguration of the prestigious Criterion Collection’s switch to BluRay with “The Third Man” (1949) and others, usually two a month since then, largely focusing on foreign films.

A few major studios have finally started tentative releases from their archives. Last March saw Disney’s “Pinocchio” (1940), MGM’s epic “Quo Vadis” (1951), and three classic 1950s musicals: “An American in Paris,” “Gigi,” and “South Pacific.”

This fall is seeing a mini-boom in major classics and a few other notable older titles to hit BluRay, all of which have been on standard DVD for quite some time. Last month Warner Home Video finally released an individual BluRay disc of “Casablanca” and multiple differently priced packaging options for the latest digital restoration of what may well be the most beloved film of the 20th century, “The Wizard of Oz” (1939). Also on BluRay last week was the somewhat more recent cult children’s adventure-fantasy “Labyrinth” (1986).

Perhaps in anticipation of early Christmas shopping, this week alone saw an unusual surge of family classics: the BluRay debut of Disney’s “Snow White” (1937), again with multiple package/pricing options, as well as the holiday favorite “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947) and the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” (1971).

Scheduled on BluRay during the next six weeks are the influential indie hit “Easy Rider” (1969), Frank Capra’s beloved “It’s a Wonderful Life” (1946), the Alistair Sim “A Christmas Carol” (1951), Alfred Hitchcock’s great romantic thriller “North By Northwest” (1959), Buster Keaton’s magnificent silent comedy “The General” (1926), and the cult futuristic thriller “Logan’s Run” (1976).

The week before Thanksgiving comes the most enduring romantic epic of the past century, “Gone With the Wind” (1939). Announced for later this year but with no date is the 1959 version of “Ben Hur,” and two more Disney classics, “Dumbo” (1941) and “Fantasia” (1940) are slated for early next year.

Although the BluRay format uses a substantial amount of digital compression, a properly done transfer of a film to high-definition video, using well-preseved original film elements, can reproduce details that have always been there but were never visible in previous video formats.

Many video collectors and a surprising number of video reviewers seem genuinely shocked at how sharp an “old” film from even the 1990s, let alone the 1930s or 40s or 50s or 60s, usually looks in a new BluRay edition, apparently never having seen older films actually projected on film. The more studios decide to release on BluRay the films of the past that made them great, the more it can demonstrate just how much sharper film has always been, compared with television standards.

“The Wizard of Oz” is a perfect example. Most people are familiar with the 70-year-old film from countless TV airings or from numerous video releases on VHS and DVD. If they’re lucky, they may have seen one of a few theatrical reissues, which may or may not have had a film print in good condition and projected in focus, or may have had a hastily-made “kiddie matinee” print that was pale, washed-out, possibly beat-up, and no true representation of what it was supposed to look like.

For the BluRay edition (and even for the 2005 DVD), the original camera negative was scanned in high definition, yielding more detail than many typical 35mm theatrical prints. The color scenes, especially, are sharper because Technicolor used three separate black and white negatives, one for each color (and thus immune to the fading that often plagues color films from the 1950s through the 1980s), and modern computerized registration was able to recombine them much more precisely than Technicolor’s original mechanical color printing process. The result is truly stunning and very film-like.

For “The Wizard of Oz,” the studio was lucky enough to have preserved separately mixed soundtracks of the music, sound effects, and dialogue, allowing it to be remixed in stereo without artificial electronic extractions to simulate stereo. The BluRay has a tastefully done and quite effective 5.1 lossless stereo track as well, including the original mono soundtrack in English and five other languages.

This year, Warner Bros. heeded consumer complaints about last year’s “Casablanca” collector’s edition having no moderately-priced movie-only alternative. Last week’s “Wizard of Oz” release had a variety of $55-$65 box sets with special premiums and collectibles, a $35 three-disc “Emerald Edition” exclusive to Target stores that had only the BluRay of the movie and the two bonus discs, plus a $20 one-disc BluRay release available only at Walmart.

Thanks to the storage capacity of BluRay discs, the one main disc still has a fair amount of bonus materials, including an audio commentary, featurettes, audio sessions and more. The three-disc edition includes a new documentary on director Victor Fleming, a rather fuzzy copy of a 1990 TV movie dramatizing author L. Frank Baum’s life, four complete full-length silent feature films based on Oz stories and produced by Baum himself, a 1910 short Oz film, and a 1933 cartoon.

The cartoon’s in fair condition but all five silent films have pretty good transfers (notably the 1925 one starring Larry Semon and Oliver Hardy), though unfortunately all standard definition, and two of them have no musical accompaniment and are presented with no soundtracks. The third disc is a standard DVD with a six-hour documentary on MGM studios. The box sets include a fourth disc with a “digital copy,” as well as reproductions of memorabilia and other collectibles.

A BluRay edition of “The Wizard of Oz” is a must-buy for anyone who has a high-definition television set.

“The Wizard of Oz” on BluRay:
Movie: A+ / Video: A / Audio: A / Extras: A

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