Lost Horizon (1973/Sony/Columbia/Twilight Time Limited Edition Blu-ray)/A Star Is Born (1976/Warner Blu-ray)
Picture:
B-/B Sound: B- Extras: B- Films: B-/C+
PLEASE
NOTE: The Lost Horizon
Blu-ray is limited to 3,000 copies and is available exclusively at the Screen
Archives website which can be reached at the link at the end of this review.
Hollywood
and its obsession with and legacy of Musicals was very challenged by the 1970s
since the genre was dead, even after the huge box office of The Sound Of Music (1965, Blu-ray
reviewed elsewhere on this site) and critical success of the likes of Oliver! (1968, which won the Best
Picture Academy Award), most other Musicals in their wake had bombed. That did not help the studios already dealing
with competition from TV and the second rise of Rock Music (which Hollywood did not know
how to deal with) in the 1960s.
However,
Rock Operas were successful and the studios tried to figure out how to find new
approaches to making possible new kinds of Musicals that would be moneymaking
and people would like. What follows are
two very interesting, ambitious and different attempts that show how serious
the studios were about making this happen.
Back in
1967, Columbia Pictures made the spoofy version of the first James Bond novel Casino Royale into an overproduced mess
that still did business, but had five directors and many big name stars who
were fighting with each other. The
bigger surprise was the one thing that did work: the soundtrack. It was not only a hit, but music fans and
audiophiles were stunned by the superior fidelity of the recording, recorded at
higher levels than anything that had even been released before save The Beatles
and resulting in a superior recording that still is a serious favorite today.
It had
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass performing the instrumental title track,
Dusty Springfield singing the classic “The
Look Of Love” and all the music was written by the team of Burt Bacharach
and Hal David, the most successful writing team of the decade next to John
Lennon & Paul McCartney. The album
sold very well, well past the film’s box office and afterlife, so could the
Bacharach/David team have another music classic in them and could it make for a
hit Musical?
Columbia
Pictures was willing to find out and decided to get the famed duo together with
Producer Ross Hunter and create a project that might work. The choice was an odd one. Take Frank Capra’s 1937 non-musical hit Lost Horizon and make into a
wide-ranging Musical production. That
would make it a Fantasy Musical as the characters get stuck in the Himalayas
only to discover a secret world that is too good to be true (Shangri-La) and
asks all the same questions about freedom, happiness, self-will and life
choices. If it worked, it could be a
terrific accomplishment and the Bacharach/David team had been moving towards
moviemaking projects, especially since they parted ways with the longtime main
vocalist for all their classics, Dionne Warwick.
Peter
Finch, Sally Kellerman, George Kennedy, Michael York and Bobby Van would play
the travelers and yes, they would all sing.
Awaiting them at Shangri-La would be John Gielgud, Charles Boyer (both
playing Asian characters in choices that date the film the most!), Olivia
Hussey and in the biggest shock of all, Ingmar Bergman’s favorite actress, Liv
Ullmann. That is the same Bergman whose
intellectual films about spirituality, life and death had long passages of
silence and very long close-ups, many of which were of Miss Ullmann, so the
idea that she would be singing like Julie Andrews in any movie was as big a shock and surprise as the material
chosen to make into a Musical. Bette
Midler (the original one who always had wit) even joked she never missed any of
Miss Ullmann’s Musicals.
The production
was huge (Producer Ross Hunter just scored big with his 70mm disaster film Airport!), the money is one the screen,
many big sets were built, the script goes all out even before the music was
added, some interesting visual effects would have to be applied and when it was
all done, the film would run 149 minutes and when released in 1973, the Charles
Jarrott-directed epic turned into a box office disappointment. Why?
The film
is actually not bad and by today’s standards is pretty ambitious, but there is
something here that just never coheres and this would be the case for the film
at any length. It has some fun moments
and interesting performances, but it also becomes unintentionally funny when
the singing is poor or the film gets politically incorrect (like that casting)
putting it in line with the dated approach of most of the 1960s Musicals that
bombed to begin with.
Also, if
you go halfway around the world and find yourself in a mysterious land, the
otherworldly music will sound like songs by Burt Bacharach and Hal David? Needless to say you have to suspend disbelief
when you watch a Fantasy Musical and the team still made some good songs for
the film, but none of them stand out (including the title song which is sung
off camera during the credits by Shawn Phillips) though they all add up and
make sense in forwarding the narrative, so they just work well enough to keep
the film together.
Unfortunately,
the casting is awkward and that has not dated well, though I like all the
actors very much down to a brief turn by Kent Smith and no doubt this is a
collaboration of some of the top talents in the entire entertainment
industry. However, it has become a cult
item since, which is why it is offered in this terrifically restored limited
edition Blu-ray. The magic that the
Bacharach/David music stood for with its unforgettable melodies, tricky time
signatures and some of the best lyric writing of all time has started to fade,
though the compositions remained clever and classy. Once they parted ways with Warwick, however, that magic was gone and as
well, like Lennon/McCartney, they could not and make the transition into the
1970s and beyond so they parted ways for a very long time after this film
disappointed at the box office. However,
it is a proud coda to their work and for all involved, a special film that
deserves revisiting that hoped to be the biggest Musical since The Sound Of Music, but didn’t quite
make it.
Extras
include another nicely illustrated booklet on the film including informative text
and another fine essay by Julie Kirgo, while the Blu-ray adds Original
Theatrical Trailers, TV Spots, Burt Bacharach Song Demos, vintage featurette “Ross Hunter: On The Way To Shangri-La”,
Alternate Scene: “I Come To You” and
an Isolated Music Score of the soundtrack in stereo that audiophiles will
especially love.
The quest
by Hollywood to
have a new cycle of hit Musicals was expressed the following year by nominating
the compilation Musical documentary That’s
Entertainment! (reviewed elsewhere on this site) for a Best Picture Academy
Award in 1974 and Ken Russell’s Tommy!
(1975, reviewed on Blu-ray on this site twice!) would join Godspell and Jesus Christ,
Superstar (both 1973) as hit Rock Opera films, even as some other such
films did not make as much money. So
what would be the next breakthrough music film hit?
Besides
being one of the biggest singers in the world (and for very good reason),
Barbra Streisand was also one of the biggest movie stars around and beyond
Musicals, she had proven her acting talent in underrated dramas like Irvin
Kershner’s Up The Sandbox and Peter
Bogdanovich’s huge hit comedy What Up
Doc? (see our Blu-ray coverage on the site) both in 1972 alone. In addition to an unbelievable string of hit
singles and hit albums, she was on a roll and was not likely to stop any time
soon.
At this
point, she started dating a hairdresser named Jon Peters, whose relationship
would be surprising (he already had a reputation in the town for womanizing
among other things, allegedly) and turn out to be prolific as he would
encourage Streisand to take on projects she might not have otherwise considered
like the landmark Guilty album with
the Gibb Brothers (aka The Bee Gees) creating all-new material for her and
backing her up on most songs, the groundbreaking duet “Enough Is Enough (No More Tears)” with Disco Queen Donna Summer and
a remake of a film that had been made three times before.
George
Cukor has made What Price Hollywood? (1932)
early in the sound era and it was a hit about a romance connected to a band
leader, but as A Star Is Born in its
1937 and 1954 versions, it would be more about the film world. A new screenplay was circulating to remake it
yet again and Peters got a copy, read it and not knowing it had been made into
a hit 3 times before, told Streisand about it.
She was reluctant to do it knowing its legacy, but Peters wanted to
become a film producer and she reluctantly agreed. So in 1976, a new version of the film would
hit screens with Streisand and she was determined to make it work.
Though
they would not get along during the production, the capable Frank Pierson was
hired to direct the film, but Streisand (with and without Peters) wanted to
make sure this would be a modern version and went over every aspect of the film
from music to costumes to plot to how her character would be portrayed. Her Esther Hoffman would not be a passive
woman but a modern one, a naturalistic one, a sexual one and one that reflected
the new woman of the era, feminism and otherwise.
After several
tries, Kris Kristofferson was chosen to play the male lead of the star
performer who was about to see his star fall as he became increasingly
irresponsible and alcoholic, playing Rock/Pop/Country singer John Norman
Howard. Her character would be doing hit
pop songs with some Rock orientation and off the movie went. Though it is not a great film and has as many
problems as the Lost Horizon remake
(the shrill Gary Busey performance, a set of songs that are not memorable and
even bad, moments that do not always ring true), the film was a massive hit,
Streisand remained a huge box office star, Kristofferson would be a big box
office star until Heaven’s Gate (now
restored on Criterion Blu-ray) bombed spectacularly in 1980 and the film’s hit
single love theme “Evergreen” became
a hit classic that was a #1 Hit and won the Best Song Academy Award.
What does
work in the film is the chemistry of the leads, the realism of the concert
sequences, the leisurely pace that shows their romance as more palpable than pervious
versions, the sexuality and moments that now serve as a time capsule of the
period. Though Streisand was a
perfectionist to a fault, it turns out she was also right about almost every
choice and here was a hit Rock Music film that was not a Rock Opera or even an
outright Musical, paving the way for the soundtrack-driven non-Musicals of the
1980s to date and making way for Grease
(1978) to be the biggest Musical since… The
Sound Of Music.
At 140
minutes, this is about as long as Lost
Horizon, but the idea in both cases was to give the audience a
unforgettable Musical experience they would love and though both films have
aging issues, they are also ambitious, think big and are by studios who cared
and knew how to back big projects because the people running those studios at
the time knew and loved movies. We don’t
see that much now, especially where music is concerned, but both films remind
us such success is still possible.
In the
place of Bacharach/David, Streisand wisely hired and worked with top writes of
the day like Rupert Holmes (Him, Escape (The Pina Colada Song)), a young
Kenny Loggins (of Loggins & Messina before becoming a writer of way too
many movie songs himself) teaming with Streisand’s unstoppable team of Alan
& Marilyn Bergman, legendary blues singer and pianist Leon Russell and Paul
Williams (see the Still Alive
documentary elsewhere on this site) who co-wrote “Evergreen” with Streisand and a few other songs with his then
co-writer Kenneth Ascher. To top it off,
Phil Ramone (soon top be Billy Joel’s legendary ace producer) was involved with
the recording, engineering and producing of the music on top of all the other
talents involved.
That all
makes this version of A Star Is Born
worth revisiting.
Extras start
with the nicely illustrated booklet on the film built into the DigiPak packaging
with informative text and stills, while the Blu-ray adds a feature length audio
commentary track by Streisand herself, A
Star Is Born Trailer Gallery, Wardrobe Tests with Streisand commentary and Deleted
Scenes/Alternative Takes also with Streisand commentary.
The 1080p
2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfers in both cases look pretty
good, though Horizon can have some fading
and softness. Both films were shot in
real anamorphic 35mm Panavision with big screen shooting, framing and the
intent of 70mm blow-up prints meaning the makers were aiming for big screen
experience performance. That comes
though in many shots on both discs, especially noticeable if you have a big
screen HDTV or now, Ultra HDTV. These
were meant to be seen on a big screen and both Blu-rays deliver that big screen
quality.
The Director
of Photography chosen for each film was also a reason they hold up because they
understood the big screen and best uses of widescreen filmmaking and in both
cases, it was the great Robert Surtees, who was the debut DP for 70mm film when
Todd-AO 70mm was introduced with the hit film Oklahoma! in 1955, then he moved onto large
frame widescreen films like Raintree
County (1957), Ben-Hur (1959), Doctor Dolittle (1967, the original
Musical version with Rex Harrison), plus widescreen classics like The Graduate (also 1967) and black and
white gems like The Last Picture Show (1973,
see the Criterion Blu-ray elsewhere on this site). Though the approaches are different, they
both work visually and it is ironic they should both be making their Blu-ray
debuts at the same time.
The
DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mix on both Blu-rays are good and the
best these films have ever sounded, derived from their 6-track 70mm blow-up
magnetic stereo tracks, but each has their own limits since both were
experimenting with how to make their sound mixes better and more effective. Since 5.1 had not been established yet, the
sound in both cases tends to be towards the front channels, including some
traveling dialogue and sound effects on Horizon,
but each also have one-of-a-kind mixes and mixing to begin with.
In the
case of Horizon, Bacharach/David and
the studio (et al) were determined that the film would have the best possible
audio fidelity as they were intending to meet those Casino Royale expectations, the highest standards of the biggest
music films made to that time and any other films you could think of. Though there are some sonic limits at times,
the film sounds as good as either Rock Opera of 1973 (as noted above) and any
other film from the latest Bond films to the latest Rockumentaries to George
Lucas’ American Graffiti (also 1973)
to any other film still being issued in 70mm for superior sound. Except for a very select few older films that
have been cleaned extensively and upgraded for Blu-ray and restored movie
theater presentations, you will be hard-pressed to find any films up to this
one that sound as good.
By 1976,
new sound systems were being introduced to make films sound better. The DBX company had a noise reduction system
that was eventually used to record Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979) and that would be the film that introduced
what we now know as 5.1 mixing, while Tommy
(1975) introduced a magnetic sound playback system called Quintophonic Sound
that was trying to play on the rise of 4-track Quadraphonic Sound being made
available in many formats as the next big thing for music at home, but it did
not get picked up either. Then there was
the Dolby Laboratories, whose concept of noise reduction was controversial
(audiophiles did not like the harmonic distortion it could produce) but they
were also interested in adding more realistic surrounds.
After
experimenting with both on MGM’s 1976 hit Logan’s
Run (shot in Todd-AO 35mm (reviewed on Blu-ray elsewhere on this site) and
issued in 70mm blow-up prints), Dolby would actually debut their then-4.1 70mm
concept on A Star Is Born and that
also put the film over the top as audiences who could see it in 70mm
experienced an added dimension of realism that shocked audiences, kept
Streisand on the cutting edge and would soon (with Star Wars, Close Encounters
Of The Third Kind and Superman – The
Movie) becomes an industry standard for decades to come.
You can
here the experimenting going on here, including some fun choices and a few
unusual ones, but the mix in 5.1 here expands the sound a bit more, but also
shows a unique character that makes this Star
Is Born a one-of-a-kind sonic experience.
Yes, some of the sound is not as good as others, as in both films, the
music is recorded with better fidelity than the other audio, but A Star Is Born started to bridge that
gap. Also, Phil Ramone had his hand in
this mix and the big surprise for me that was so striking is how some of the
choices reminded me of two special editions of hit Billy Joel albums he
produced.
Sony
Music issued The Stranger (1977) and
52nd Street (1978) in the
ultra-high fidelity Super Audio CD (aka SA-CD) format with remarkable 5.1 mixes
that too few fans have heard or experienced.
Mixing here on this film mirrors some of those choices. To give you a further idea of how this all
sounds (down to the movie score by Roger Kellaway (Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978), the TV classic All In The Family), you can read about
those special 5.1 releases of Joel’s classics at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/6417/Billy+Joel+%E2%80%93+The+Strange
That
should give you an idea of how interesting this one gets and is why you and
anyone serious about music or film should catch both Blu-rays!
As noted
above, Lost Horizon can be ordered
while supplies last at:
www.screenarchives.com
- Nicholas Sheffo
