"The Robe" Blu Ray Review

[deacongreg]

Richard W. Haines wrote:

Well if you want to get a few laughs from a bad film, try "The Outrage" which
is part of the Paul Newman collection. Fortunately I got it out of the library
so it didn't cost anything. I guess it's the flip side of the "Best Of" type
series. This would be appear to be the "Worst of" the actor. I also saw another
picture in the collection which is "The Helen Morgan Story". Newman is an
excellent actor and he made a reputation playing charming heels and con men
(Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy) but he's so painfully
miscast in both of these movies they are funny.

The upside of both pictures is they have excellent black and white cinematography
and were shot in CinemaScope. I always thought that widescreen worked best in
color but the camerawork and compositions are excellent. However the movies themselves
are poor.

"The Helen Morgan Story" stars Ann Blyth as an alcoholic, self destructive actress.
Newman is supposed to be her bootlegger boyfriend. He was fine as a conman in "The
Sting" but isn't convincing as a hoodlum at all in this one. Blyth is okay is light musicals
like "The Student Prince" but doesn't have the acting range to pull off this complex
role. At least she can sing. The only person well cast is comedian Alan King as another gangster. Similar to the type of role he played a decade later in "The Anderson Tapes".

But the real howler is "The Outrage". It's an American remake of "Rashomon" and
it's so awful it's hard to believe they didn't shut the film down after watching the
dailies. It's the old "he said/she said" story about a rape and murder told from
different perspectives and you're not sure which one is the truth. What makes
this movie a riot is Newman trying to play a Mexican bandit similar to the Eli Wallach character in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". You have to see it to believe it. Newman's
Spanish accent is hilarious. He sounded like something out of "Blazing Saddles". What was he thinking?

Well, you certainly have one on me here. I`m not familiar at all with this film. I think right now, I`m gonna have a little desert, and watch Bones. I`m not a big tv person at all right now, outside of movies and sports. But Bones is funny, original, technical with all the medical jargon, absolutely loads of fun.

[Brian Greenhalgh]

Richard W. Haines wrote:

The movie was simultaneously shot as a standard flat 1.33 movie for theaters that didn't
have CinemaScope and for later TV broadcast. Too bad they didn't include that as a suppliment because it's a different movie in many respects. I've seen a 16mm Technicolor print of it and noticed different compositions and more subtle performances in some scenes.
It's a good but not great Roman epic.

I obtained an IB print of the flat version about 35 years ago and prefer it to the scope version. It really excels in the intimate scenes that have classic two-shots. The composition is better in most scenes. In the scope version scenes often start with actors blocked out to use the available frame, yet they start to move around and "bunch-up" either screen right or left at times. My copy of the blu-ray includes the flat version as a picture in picture so that the two versions come up together and can be compared. I wish it was also available as a stand-alone version.

[Richard W. Haines]

I saw a 16mm IB of the flat version years ago and agree the compositions are better
and some the acting is less hammy. The movie started filming as a standard 1.33
picture and then Fox decided to re-shoot the early scenes with the CinemaScope lens
and finish the picture in both formats. The lens attachment really wasn't that good though
and distorted a great deal. The format improved a bit once they made the deal with Baush
and Lomb to make new CinemaScope lenses from scratch rather than continue to use the old
ones from the twenties.

[Brian Greenhalgh]

Richard W. Haines wrote:

I saw a 16mm IB of the flat version years ago and agree the compositions are better
and some the acting is less hammy. The movie started filming as a standard 1.33
picture and then Fox decided to re-shoot the early scenes with the CinemaScope lens
and finish the picture in both formats. The lens attachment really wasn't that good though
and distorted a great deal. The format improved a bit once they made the deal with Baush
and Lomb to make new CinemaScope lenses from scratch rather than continue to use the old
ones from the twenties.

Yes, the distortion in the scope version is very apparent in vertical elements in the frame, especially when columns (common in the scenes set in Rome) are near the edges,

In the Bonusview side by side comparison of the scope and flat versions on the blu-ray disc some commentary points out how the scope version is more effective in some scenes (the market at the beginning), but it is pointed out that the flat version also shines at times such as the crucifixion scene, where more is seen due to the vertical nature of the cross. Some scenes show alternative takes, but more commonly there seems to have been simultaneous shooting from slightly different angles from two cameras. When I was paying attention, the camera with the spherical set-up showed a view more from the right. I seem to remember some still photographs during the comparison showing the side by side cameras.

I had read about the alternative versions many decades ago, so I took advantage of talking with a principal actor at a birthday party given for him 22 years ago. Everyone else at the party was pestering Jeff Morrow about his sci-fi roles and I think he found it a relief to talk with me since we discussed travel and not film. But I did ask him one question about The Robe, and that was about the two versions. He did not recall there being two versions. I think this might have been due to his scenes involving mostly simultaneous takes, most notably a sword fight he has with Richard Burton.

Jeff was a very charming gentleman and I'm glad I was able to meet him that one time.

[Brian Greenhalgh]

Richard W. Haines wrote:

For me back in the day...well it depends on the era. The seventies was the era of film collecting prosecution and persecution which made everyone very paranoid. And it was so hypocritical of the industry. While Valenti was intimidating if not
terrorizing teenagers and college kids who had 16mm prints of classic movies to
show in their livingrooms, the same studios were releasing whole feature films
for sale directly to consumers in Super 8 sound. So it was considered illegal to
own a copy of "Gone with the Wind" in 16mm but okay to own it in Super 8?
Fortunately, the MPAA lost most of their cases against collectors because it
was difficult to impossible to prove 'unauthorized exhibition' when they were merely
showing it to friends and families in their home and the same film was available in
another format for the same purpose. It was one thing to copy and sell a movie
or charge admission but another to just show old films privately. Valenti made
no distinction between a real pirate (selling copyrighted material for profit) and
a film buff just watching old flicks in their private residence.

I had purchased an incomplete 16mm IB Tech print of Bullit from a film list for $50 and the guy who sent the list was indicted. This clearly had been rescued from a garbage can and even had some coffee damage to a minute or two. I got a visit from an FBI agent asking a bunch of questions and he took the print as "evidence"....but the seller was acquitted. I never got the print back and was out the money. It did have the complete chase scene, so I possibly should have pushed for its return, but the FBI agent and made veiled threats so I let sleeping dogs lie. This same seller had listed a lot of Roddy McDowell's collection when Roddy first discovered video (U-Matic) and in some of Roddy's obits it was mentioned how hurt he was to have the FBI threaten him, probably due to the same connection as I had.

[Richard W. Haines]

Sounds like you have some stories to tell about the "Valenti" era. Fortunately
in the eighites and nineties the prosecution and harrassment had stopped and
old prints of movies were openly sold in "The Big Reel" and other venues. One
of the reasons the industry backed off private film collectors (as opposed to
actual pirates) is that video companies needed them to release certain movies
where they were missing elements like censored scenes or magnetic stereo
sound tracks. Films like "King Kong" and "The Brave One" were restored by
borrowing film collector prints they had saved that the producing studio
had lost.

There were even cases where film school professors were harassed for showing their
prints to students in their lectures. It was an insane situation. How can you teach
about cinema without showing the movies but if you showed film students the films
you could be accused of 'unauthorized exhibition'. While they had some 16mm rental
companies for college use, not every historically important movie was available to show.
What choice did a teacher have other than to show a film collector's copy? For example
if you wanted to show "Vertigo" in the seventies you couldn't rent it because
Hitchcock had pulled five of his movies out of release. But that feature was one of
the most important pictures of the era. So teachers showed private prints at their
own risk anyway.

Film collecting as a hobby fizzled out after the introduction of high definition DVDs
and DLPs which can project an image that surpasses 16mm.

[Brian Greenhalgh]

Richard W. Haines wrote:

Sounds like you have some stories to tell about the "Valenti" era. Fortunately
in the eighites and nineties the prosecution and harrassment had stopped and
old prints of movies were openly sold in "The Big Reel" and other venues. One
of the reasons the industry backed off private film collectors (as opposed to
actual pirates) is that video companies needed them to release certain movies
where they were missing elements like censored scenes or magnetic stereo
sound tracks. Films like "King Kong" and "The Brave One" were restored by
borrowing film collector prints they had saved that the producing studio
had lost.

Yeah, I used to subscribe to The Big Reel and bought a few things from ads there. I remember a collector having some scenes that were restored to the Judy Garland version of "A Star is Born" after the thaw, or that helped the thaw. Disney borrowed an original trailer for one of their 40's animated compilations from a collector friend of mine. He got an acknowledgment in the credits for the special edition release. One of his 4-channel mag prints was used for some soundtrack work. He was approached about another, "Journey to the Center of The Earth" but I think his print was judged too splicy to use.

There were even cases where film school professors were harassed for showing their prints to students in their lectures. It was an insane situation. How can you teach
about cinema without showing the movies but if you showed film students the films
you could be accused of 'unauthorized exhibition'. While they had some 16mm rental
companies for college use, not every historically important movie was available to show.
What choice did a teacher have other than to show a film collector's copy? For example
if you wanted to show "Vertigo" in the seventies you couldn't rent it because
Hitchcock had pulled five of his movies out of release. But that feature was one of
the most important pictures of the era. So teachers showed private prints at their
own risk anyway.

Interestingly enough I saw a private sceening of Vertigo at a collector's house back about 1981 when it was still unavailable. A nice 35mm dye transfer print. The instructor for my film history course (1972) used a local 16mm rental outfit, but it did limit what he could show. For Hitchcock he used a lesser film than most in my opinion, The Paradine Case. he actually apologized for the David Lean film he obtained to show, The Bridge of the River Kwai....the rental outfit was big on Columbia titles so the only Bogart effort he showed was Knock on any Door...

Film collecting as a hobby fizzled out after the introduction of high definition DVDs and DLPs which can project an image that surpasses 16mm.

Not fizzled completely. Have you seen some stats about this? It hasn't been so long that Hi-def has been available and it came with an economic downturn. I remember people making a similar claim when laserdiscs started being released. It was true in part, and prices dropped. But I really haven't noticed a drop in premium title prices in the past couple or years. I have seen some 16mmm films sell for hundreds of dollars quite recently. IB prints of Bullit and The Glen Miller Story just closed on eBay for about $300 each. And then there are the 35mm collectors. However, that friend with the Disney trailer claims he is quitting 35mm collecting because of blu-ray and his DLP. However, he still ardently collects some things on 16mm. How soon do you think you will see the "Profiles in Courage" TV series on blu-ray...or even DVD?