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"Mister Roberts" in an entertaining though very stagebound drama which plays like
a filmed record of the Broadway hit within the procenium arch of the CinemaScope
ratio.
It's much better than you would expect for a movie that went through three directors
including John Ford, Mervyn Leroy and Joshua Logan. I've read different accounts of
Ford either bowing out because of illness or clashing with star Henry Fonda and using
that as an excuse to get out of the picture.
I guess the problem when creating a movie out of a stage hit with the original actor
is that after hundreds of performances, the star is unlikely to take direction since
he will be very set in his ways. This why Zero Mostel was not utilized for the cinematic adaptation of "Fiddler of the Roof". Director, Norman Jewison, wanted the character to be played realistically and not over the top and did not feel that Mostel would be willing to alter the way he had been doing it for so many years.
Fortunately, Fonda is very good as the lead character here, a popular officer with the crew
of a cargo ship. Mister Roberts is going bonkers stuck in the dead end job while World War
II passes him by. He's in a personality conflict with the ship's tyranical Captain played by
James Cagney who has a lot of class envy baggage which he takes out on his second in
command. Of course Fonda is much too low key for a real life Officer required to discipline an inexperienced crew but this became one of his defining roles.
The other characters include a young Jack Lemmon playing the lecherous, goofy
Ensign Pulver (he won the supporting actor Oscar) and William Powell as the world
weary medical officer in his final screen role. The song that Lemmon sings to himself
throughout the story was added in post-production as a gag so you don't see his
lips move when your hear it.
Through a series of confrontations, Roberts is finally released by the Captain and gets active duty in the Pacific only to be killed. Because of this film's lack of a cinematic structure, this takes place off screen. Certainly we should've seen Roberts in his new ship, his satisfaction at his new job, then destruction for dramatic impact. This is the type of film that could've easily been done as a TV movie instead of a theatrical feature. A movie should 'move' shouldn't it?
The three directors frame the characters so they are spread out across the wide frame and
most of the scenes are played in long single takes with little intercutting. So, you feel like you're sitting in the first row of a theater but not really like you are stuck on the claustrophic ship which would've been more effective and cinematic. Since the play is good character study it works for what it is but I feel it could've been better or at least less static in it's approach to the subject.
The DVD was originally released in 1998, the second year of the format and the same
transfer was re-issued in 2006. Suffice to say, it leaves much to be desired compared to
contemporary transfers. The anamorphically enhanced CinemaScope image looks acceptable
on a standard monitor but if you try to project it as I did, a lot of the visual artifacts and
problems become noticeable.
Aside from the general distortion with the old CinemaScope lenses, the shoddy Warnercolor
visuals are not consistently saturated throughout the 122 minute running time. I guess back
in the early fifties when Eastmancolor was introduced as a cheap alternative to the more
expensive (and vastly superior) Technicolor, it seemed like a win/win proposal for some of the
studios to set up their own lab for in house productions. Fox created "De Luxe", MGM created
"Metrocolor" and Warner Brothers "Warnercolor". While it might have been easy to process
Eastmancolor under a studio tradename, the expertise in color correcting the film on a shot to
shot and scene to scene basis as well as complicated optical effects like fades, dissolves and
credits seemed beyond the capabilities of these three labs. Whereas old Technicolor movies
look sensational when transferred to the digital medium, all of the ineptitude and artifacts of
the competing labs are exacerbated by the DVD format. Warnercolor is certainly no exception. The credit sequence and all fades and dissolves look very grainy and murky to the point of distraction. Also, some of the negative footage seems to have been damaged and replaced by blotchy looking dupes. In some cases, the image jiggles noticeabley in those shots, specifically some footage when Pulver meets the nurses on the Island. So be prepared for a fair amount of visual problems and grain throughout the feature. I'm not sure whether a future blu ray transfer will be able to fix these defects through some grain reducing technology or make it even worse. Warner Brothers eventually shut down their Warnercolor lab and switched back to Technicolor in the sixties with
much better results (i.e. "The Music Man", "The Great Race", "My Fair Lady" etc.) Unfortunately all of their fifties features processed at their own facility have similar problems. "Giant" is a visual mess too.
The 5.1 adaptation of the of the original 4 channel mix is better than anticipated. They even
retained some directional dialogue and the music score is majestic with the exception of when wolf whistles are worked into the tracks which was pretty hokey.
P.S. It's somewhat funny to think of a CinemaScope movie being 'anamorphically enhanced'
since the process itself was based on anamorphically squeezing a standard square
frame. It proves there's nothing new under the sun. Squeezing and unsqueezing
a square image to make it wider is what both formats are based on. In other words,
"Mister Roberts" was squeezed on a square frame making it skinny. Then it was un-
squeezed for the widescreen ratio then squeezed again so that when it was
unsqueezed it would expand in the 16:9 ratio. Hope you followed all that.
a filmed record of the Broadway hit within the procenium arch of the CinemaScope
ratio.
It's much better than you would expect for a movie that went through three directors
including John Ford, Mervyn Leroy and Joshua Logan. I've read different accounts of
Ford either bowing out because of illness or clashing with star Henry Fonda and using
that as an excuse to get out of the picture.
I guess the problem when creating a movie out of a stage hit with the original actor
is that after hundreds of performances, the star is unlikely to take direction since
he will be very set in his ways. This why Zero Mostel was not utilized for the cinematic adaptation of "Fiddler of the Roof". Director, Norman Jewison, wanted the character to be played realistically and not over the top and did not feel that Mostel would be willing to alter the way he had been doing it for so many years.
Fortunately, Fonda is very good as the lead character here, a popular officer with the crew
of a cargo ship. Mister Roberts is going bonkers stuck in the dead end job while World War
II passes him by. He's in a personality conflict with the ship's tyranical Captain played by
James Cagney who has a lot of class envy baggage which he takes out on his second in
command. Of course Fonda is much too low key for a real life Officer required to discipline an inexperienced crew but this became one of his defining roles.
The other characters include a young Jack Lemmon playing the lecherous, goofy
Ensign Pulver (he won the supporting actor Oscar) and William Powell as the world
weary medical officer in his final screen role. The song that Lemmon sings to himself
throughout the story was added in post-production as a gag so you don't see his
lips move when your hear it.
Through a series of confrontations, Roberts is finally released by the Captain and gets active duty in the Pacific only to be killed. Because of this film's lack of a cinematic structure, this takes place off screen. Certainly we should've seen Roberts in his new ship, his satisfaction at his new job, then destruction for dramatic impact. This is the type of film that could've easily been done as a TV movie instead of a theatrical feature. A movie should 'move' shouldn't it?
The three directors frame the characters so they are spread out across the wide frame and
most of the scenes are played in long single takes with little intercutting. So, you feel like you're sitting in the first row of a theater but not really like you are stuck on the claustrophic ship which would've been more effective and cinematic. Since the play is good character study it works for what it is but I feel it could've been better or at least less static in it's approach to the subject.
The DVD was originally released in 1998, the second year of the format and the same
transfer was re-issued in 2006. Suffice to say, it leaves much to be desired compared to
contemporary transfers. The anamorphically enhanced CinemaScope image looks acceptable
on a standard monitor but if you try to project it as I did, a lot of the visual artifacts and
problems become noticeable.
Aside from the general distortion with the old CinemaScope lenses, the shoddy Warnercolor
visuals are not consistently saturated throughout the 122 minute running time. I guess back
in the early fifties when Eastmancolor was introduced as a cheap alternative to the more
expensive (and vastly superior) Technicolor, it seemed like a win/win proposal for some of the
studios to set up their own lab for in house productions. Fox created "De Luxe", MGM created
"Metrocolor" and Warner Brothers "Warnercolor". While it might have been easy to process
Eastmancolor under a studio tradename, the expertise in color correcting the film on a shot to
shot and scene to scene basis as well as complicated optical effects like fades, dissolves and
credits seemed beyond the capabilities of these three labs. Whereas old Technicolor movies
look sensational when transferred to the digital medium, all of the ineptitude and artifacts of
the competing labs are exacerbated by the DVD format. Warnercolor is certainly no exception. The credit sequence and all fades and dissolves look very grainy and murky to the point of distraction. Also, some of the negative footage seems to have been damaged and replaced by blotchy looking dupes. In some cases, the image jiggles noticeabley in those shots, specifically some footage when Pulver meets the nurses on the Island. So be prepared for a fair amount of visual problems and grain throughout the feature. I'm not sure whether a future blu ray transfer will be able to fix these defects through some grain reducing technology or make it even worse. Warner Brothers eventually shut down their Warnercolor lab and switched back to Technicolor in the sixties with
much better results (i.e. "The Music Man", "The Great Race", "My Fair Lady" etc.) Unfortunately all of their fifties features processed at their own facility have similar problems. "Giant" is a visual mess too.
The 5.1 adaptation of the of the original 4 channel mix is better than anticipated. They even
retained some directional dialogue and the music score is majestic with the exception of when wolf whistles are worked into the tracks which was pretty hokey.
P.S. It's somewhat funny to think of a CinemaScope movie being 'anamorphically enhanced'
since the process itself was based on anamorphically squeezing a standard square
frame. It proves there's nothing new under the sun. Squeezing and unsqueezing
a square image to make it wider is what both formats are based on. In other words,
"Mister Roberts" was squeezed on a square frame making it skinny. Then it was un-
squeezed for the widescreen ratio then squeezed again so that when it was
unsqueezed it would expand in the 16:9 ratio. Hope you followed all that.
