The Golden Gong: The Story Of Rank Films –
British Cinema’s Legendary Studio
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: D Program: B-
For their
50th Anniversary back in 1987, a very general documentary was made
for the half-century mark of Britain’s Rank Studios, complete with
Michael Caine as the host. The program
is funny, has some rare clips, some good interviews, but is very broad and not
as thoroughly informative as it should be.
It is not to say that we should give a gong to The Golden Gong: The Story Of Rank Films – British Cinema’s Legendary
Studio exactly, but it is not as comprehensive as even a more commercial
program on a great studio should be.
However,
a mixed catalog of films is offset by the achievement that is Pinewood Studios,
one of the greatest film studios ever built.
J. Arthur Rank wanted to have a Hollywood in Britain.
When his films were not doing well and were not getting booked, he
bought a bunch of theaters. When the
films were still a problem, he got more talented people and eventually, some of
the greatest films ever made appeared.
Whether
the studio was responsible (The Ipcress
File) or it was a co-production that was better than it did theatrically (Bugsy Malone), or it was a film being
made at Pinewood, a great legacy was eventually forged. The studio is best known for the Bond films,
none of which have the Rank name on them, except in the rare cases where Rank
labs did the color. Either way, David
Lean, Richard Attenborough, Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, Diana Dors,
Dirk Bogarde, Joan Collins, many more (Sean Connery goes unnamed) rose to the
top of the rank of Rank.
The
program runs 76 minutes and the subject should seriously be revisited
soon. Caine is a good voice-over host
who occasionally shows up in clips from the past and new footage. The full frame image is on the soft side,
originating on PAL video of the time.
Some of the clips look bad too, as many of them are dated to begin with
and are from pre-restoration copies. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 is monophonic, but Caine’s voice and some other voices bounce
between the left and right speaker, choosing one of the other on occasion. This is an encoding problem that is a bit
annoying, but does tot distort the voices.
There are no extras, but it is still worth seeing the main program if
you have not before. Either way, you
will want to see and learn more about Rank, but too bad the DVD stops short of
that.
- Nicholas Sheffo
