Product: Star Is Born (UK PAL Region 0)
Rating: 1.0
THIS IS A DISGRACE - DON'T BUY IT!
Last week I gave away an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. It was purchased by my mother in New Jersey in 1968. It cleaned our homes in New Jersey and Florida for 15 years, and it is still functioning perfectly. I only gave it away because today's lightweight vacs are much easier to tote. I tell this story because there was a time in this country when companies took pride in their products and ripping consumers off was unheard of, or at the very least, it seldom occurred. But the years have passed and companies don't care about quality anymore. Now it's all about getting top dollar for inferior products that promise you everything and deliver nothing. Such is the case with Kino's The Selznick Collection. All five films in this boxed set claim the following: MASTERED IN HD FROM AN ORIGINAL NITRATE 35MM PRINT PRESERVED BY THE GEORGE EASTMAN HOUSE MOTION PICTURE DEPARTMENT. If this is actually true I am willing to eat all five DVDs and then the cardboard box itself. All five films are of substandard quality, some of them so awful that they are barely viewable. The most disastrous of them all is BIRD OF PARADISE, with the lovely Dolores del Rio, which is not only marred by visuals worthy of bad public domain piracy but is also afflicted with a distortion of its soundtrack from the very beginning of the film, making the dialog unintelligible, to say nothing about Max Steiner's fabulous score, which is distorted beyond recognition. I have seen public domain copies of this film which are superior to this absolute merde Kino claims came from an original nitrate negative. Sound and image problems plague all five releases. The two Technicolor classics, A STAR IS BORN and NOTHING SACRED suffer from color variations which go from a pinkish hue to something that looks like three-strip Technicolor. At no time during these two films does one get any semblance to real Technicolor or anything close to it. The best of the worst are LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY and A FAREWELL TO ARMS, which is not saying much because the visuals are still substandard and so is the sound. It's just that compared to the other three aberrations, these two fare a little better. But I would like to stress that the entire set is no better than a bad public domain copy of any of these films. Kino has added no extras whatsoever, not even English subtitles. It's a no frills package of unacceptable prints at premium prices. This is an insult and a slap in the face to consumers and collectors. There should be an agency that handles situations such as this, and Kino should be made liable, and be forced to reimburse EVERYONE who has fallen prey to their false claims and advertising and has purchased these five films, whether singly, or all together in a boxed set. So be warned, if you spend any money on any of these 5 releases, you are just throwing your money away. If you absolutely must have one or more of these films, I suggest borrowing them from your public library or renting them and making dubs. It's exactly what Kino deserves for putting out crap like this.