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Directed By Douglas Sirk - Has Anyone Seen My Gal?/All I Desire/Magnificent Obsession/All That Heaven Allows/Written On The Wind/The Tarnished Angels/Imitation Of Life
RRP: £69.99
Our Price: £14.00 (subject to change)
Doomsday? Quite the opposite.
Review date: 2008-05-05 Rating: 10 out of 10
It seemed like a few reviewers had experienced Doomsday when watching Magnificent Obsession in this collection. Well, for those who have been fortunate enough to have watched this in its original aspect ratio it may be so. However, being a movie fan who has quite recently discovered Sirk, it was far more important to watch the film for the first time. I even had a good time doing so, and didn't find anything wrong with it. I can recommend the collection.
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Reviews
Maybe people are being a little unfair...
Review date: 2008-05-01 Rating: 8 out of 10
In my opinion I think some of the reviews here are bring a little unfair. The RRP for this box is £70, but amazon is now selling it for under £20 which is a true bargain.
Yes unfortunately it's true, Magnificent Obsession has been cropped, and while I agree that this is a shame and that Sirk's framing and composition is very meticulous, this film is unavailable on any other R2 DVD and so I'm still relatively happy with it.
As for the rest of the films in this set the aspect ratios seem to be fine. I also think the picture quality is pretty good, the colour and vividness that Sirk's films are intended to display are definitely there. Okay, they might not look as good as a criterion edition, but then that's why a single criterion dvd costs more than this entire set.
Overall, if I had paid the full £70 then I'd be giving this a two or three stars (that's a lot of money no matter how good the dvd's are) but for a mere £17.97, this really is a bargain.
At last!!!
Review date: 2008-02-01 Rating: 10 out of 10
Amazing how long it took to bring to DVD the works the of one the most talented directors to ever walk the Hollywood ground!!! The master of the "tear-jerkers", his movies completely grasp the concept of melodrama, to perfection! Less would be trivial and uninteresting, and more would be corny! I'm at odds with choosing my favourite movie, but the ones with Hudson and Wyman are top of my list. And then there's Imitation of Life, a movie far ahead of its period. While supposedely focusing on an actress's life, its most important theme is "colour". With a magnificent rendition by Juanita Moore, her Anne is in itself a colourful character, showing us a strengh rarely seen until then in the movies! Most moving of all, is her belief in God, and His wonders! I confess I have everything ever published in DVD by Sirk, even a tawainese edition of Magnificent Obsession, the only one I ever found! But I own the very good portuguese 4-movies box edition, plus Imitation (all in the 16:9 format). A must have, all of them, for everyone who likes CINEMA; and yes, with capital letters!
Disappointing
Review date: 2007-03-15 Rating: 6 out of 10
As great as it is to have Magnificent Obsession and Tarnished Angels on DVD at last, it's disappointing to see what Universal have - or rather, haven't - done here. The cropping of MO - as detailed by the two previous reviewers - and the soft dull colours of the other films are not a pleasure to behold. Imitation of Life seems to have copied the same soft transfer as the previous Region 1 release, while the transfer of Written on the Wind is nowhere near the eye-popping sharpness of the Criterion DD from a few years back. Sadly, Criterion no longer have the rights to the Sirk films, so it looks like this is the best we're going to get... unless Universal puts some work into fresh versions for a Region 1 release.
A disaster
Review date: 2007-02-13 Rating: 2 out of 10
DVD companies take a lot of criticism, much of it justified, for finding ways to get consumers to re-purchase the same titles over and over. For example, with this box set, instead of including All I Desire, which had already been available on DVD for some time, they could have included a different Sirk film like There's Always Tomorrow. This time, however, I had nothing but good feelings about buying this set. Two of my most desired films that had not been released on DVD before, Magnificent Obsession and The Tarnished Angels, were finally coming out! But the way they botched the release of a great film like Magnificent Obsession is inexcusable.
The colors are off (everything is too pink), there is way too much visible "grain" in the transfer, and many scenes have a blurry look, probably due to improper alignment of the three separate strips of the film elements.
Worst of all, as the other reviewer already pointed out, they were way off on the aspect ratio. Back in mid-1954 when this film came out directors and cinematographers were still composing for 1.37:1, or 1.66:1 at the very widest. Sirk and Russell Metty meticulously set up each shot to show important characters, objects, and relationships between them composed in a particular way. For some reason, Universal has seen fit to retain masking to roughly 2:1 that was applied at some point after Magnificent Obsession's initial release.
If this seems like tech geekery or home-theater hair-splitting to you, imagine how different it is seeing the film reduced to a completely strange-looking state by intruding cuts way into the top and bottom boundaries of the frame, starting with the Universal logo at the beginning and continuing all the way through the film. Magnificent Obsession's careful composition of the shots to frame the important visual information is crucial to the mise-en-scene (and thus the substantial meaning of the film) and is not very forgiving of a drastic change like this.
I know this is only one film out of the box set, but as it is one of Sirk's best and this was to be its auspicious DVD debut, it really is a major disappointment. One can only hope that Universal will do a much better job if and when Magnificent Obsession is released in the U.S.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Agnes Moorehead
Rock Hudson
Virginia Grey
Conrad Nagel
Jane Wyman
Creators:
Jane Wyman (Primary Contributor)
Rock Hudson (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Universal Pictures UK
Manufacturer: Universal Pictures UK
EAN: 5050582430592
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 7
Format: Box set, PAL,
Release date: 2007-01-15
Audience rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
Region code: 2
Running time: 653 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1956-06-15
Language: English (Original Language)