Grand Prix
(1966/HD-DVD)
Picture:
A Sound: B Extras: B+ Film: B+
To put it
directly, despite being a 40 year old film, the HD-DVD version of John
Frankenheimer’s incredible (and incredibly underrated) 70mm/Cinerama racing
epic Grand Prix from 1966 is now the
best single title out in the HD-DVD or Blu-ray formats in its incredible new
HD-DVD edition. No disc offers more
interesting color, detail, depth, ivory whites, jet blacks, accurate reds or
clarity than this film. And we thought
the restoration for the standard DVD looked good.
To read
about the film and films like it, you can access our review on the DVD set at:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/4044/Grand+Prix+(1966/Two+Disc+Special+Edition)
Besides
being still the best film in a cycle of such films that was recently celebrated
to some extent in the highly entertaining computer animated Disney feature Cars (2006), I think there are some
more complex things going on in parts of this film than it might seem at
first. For one thing, instead of just
being a montage of sloppy, useless, fancy editing with no point, there is a
deep love, grasp, understanding, the sport, the science, the art and the
experience of what makes racing cars great.
The way Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) takes you through time and space, this
film takes you through and into the world of racing no video game, digital
effects or amusement park simulations have yet to scratch the surface of 40
years and counting.
Frankenheimer is one of the great American filmmakers and his is a
cinema of the adult and real world, of what it is to go out there and get your
hands dirty. It is one of retaining your
dignity as you try to reach great goals and great truths. It is one of intelligent people who can deal
with their selves and sexuality seamlessly as they find their goals obstructed
by people in a real world where not everyone is your friend. With a cast of often-clashing characters
played by James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune, Jessica
Walter, Antonio Sabato (Sr.), Adolfo Celi, Genevieve Page, Albert Remy and many
real-life racing legends mixed in for good measure, the film has off-track
action often as intense as the races themselves.
Of course, Frankenheimer is at the top of his form and he is one
of the few filmmakers then or now who could have put this all on the screen and
then make it work.
For a 3-hour film, it seems shorter than most of the 90-minute digitally
degraded, color-gutted rip-offs that get sent en masse to cineplexes each
week. This is the work of a master
filmmaker who has the right resources, studio backing, situation, material and
subject matter at the right time.
The 1080p
2.20 X 1 digital High Definition image is the new high watermark to beat and
the DVD may have been one of the best in the format we have seen to date, but
the restoration work and striking of a new 70mm print from the 65mm negative
has yielded stunning results that honestly make this as amazing-looking a film
as I have ever seen on any 5-inch video format!
That is
no exaggeration. Besides what I said in
the opening of this review, this disc makes the film what Frankenheimer, his
longtime cinematographer Lionel Lindon, A.S.C., and titles, advanced optical
printing and montage designer Saul Bass intended it to be: a major cinematic
event. Realistic, exciting, intense,
involving and rich in visual experience and ideas to match the strong, smart,
honest, mature screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur (a Frankenheimer friend from
their live TV days, with additional dialogue from William Hanley) makes this
one of the most underrated films of the 1960s.
The film was shot in 65mm negative, and (to repeat some of the DVD
reviews technical aspects) those materials were also cut into three Cinerama
strips to project in an even wider 2.76 X 1 blow-up in that great system and
the sound derives from the 6-track magnetic stereo where five of the tracks
were behind the Cinerama or 70mm screen.
That means there is traveling dialogue and sound effects, recaptured
very well here. Looking good in
MetroColor, 65mm negative offers new color possibilities digital has years to
catch up with, looking incredible here. Oh,
and the extra 5mm’s on the print were for magnetic sound striping.
Personally, I would now rank this as my fourth favorite
65/70mm-produced film behind Kubrick’s 2001:
A Space Odyssey, Sir David Lean’s Lawrence
of Arabia (1962) and Jacques Tati’s Playtime
(1967) as masterworks of that particular large-frame format. Like those films, the makers knew how to use
the large frame format without it being stale, boring, showy or simply gimmicky
by showing off superior picture fidelity only.
It was very innovative visually and those innovations are yet to be
fully realized.
As for sound, though I still wish there was DTS of some kind or
Dolby TrueHD to capture the amazing soundtrack and interesting score by Maurice
Jarre, The Dolby
Digital Plus 5.1 mix is just that much better than the standard Dolby Digital
5.1 and has enough punch to bring the reconfigures 6-track magnetic stereo to
life in a more lively way closer to how great the magnetic tracks would sound
when first played fresh and dry for the first week or so on such a great
print. 35mm reduction prints had poorer
sound, but is skipped for this presentation.
Lindon
also collaborated with Frankenheimer on other films, including the original
(and only, as far as we are concerned) Manchurian
Candidate available for now on DVD (and soon we hope in Blu-ray) that can
be read about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/1351/Manchurian+Candidate+(1962,+remastered)
Finally,
the same excellent extras are here from the double set you can go to at the top
of the page’s review link, but you have got to see the film first. Frankenheimer later revisited the excitement
of the racing though the brilliant car chases in his underrated 1997 Spy
thriller Ronin. With this film coming out as early as it has
in HD-DVD, Grand Prix should finally
get some long overdue respect and reconsideration as the remarkable work it is.
- Nicholas Sheffo
