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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Adventure > Politics > World War II > Bridge On The River Kwai (Superbit PAL)

Bridge on the River Kwai (Region 2 PAL Superbit)

 

Picture: B+     Sound: B     Extras: D     Film: A

 

 

Sometimes the greatest films ever made are the ones that you only see a few times.  Not because you do not really want to see them that often, but rather because when you do see it, you experience something very real, very powerful.  That experience then becomes something precious and by overseeing it, can take away from that power.  David Lean is responsible for quite a few of these spectacles and was on a serious roll in the late 50’s and 60’s with three films that are stand-alone masterpieces.  Those films are Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia, and Doctor Zhivago.  All three are unique in their own way and while they share similarities by being grandiose and epic in nature, they are also quite distinctly different.

 

Keep also in mind that between these three films Lean won a total of 19 Academy awards!  It is no wonder Steven Spielberg imitates him so much, but falls short.  Bridge on the River Kwai was issued to home video in the U.S. in two separate DVD editions.  Both were identical with the exception of the limited edition version containing a second disc of extras and a cooler packaging design.  However, outside the U.S. you can obtain a Region 2 edition that is part of Columbia TriStar’s Superbit catalog and is the subject of this review, which will be compared to the Region 1 DVD. 

 

The transfer on the Region 1 DVD was fairly good when it was released a few years back, but looking at it again you can see a bit of softness and the darker portions of the film do not hold up too well.  The sound was available on that disc in Dolby Digital Stereo and also a remixed Dolby Digital 5.1 that took some of the spillover sound and turned it into a relatively weak rear mix.  The surrounds sound more like a matrixed rear channel that is spread into two channels, which in essence sounds like Pro Logic or 3.0 configurations.  The .1 LFE channel was barely distinguishable as well. 

 

Picture quality for a film like this is imperative and The Bridge on the River Kwai, like the other epics mentioned above are meant to be seen BIG!  If you are viewing it on a 32” TV you are not really going to capture the film and it’s magnitude quite like in a theater no matter how good the DVD quality is.  That being said, the film can still look staggering and accessible on a TV set, but keep in mind that you are not getting the ‘experience’ that you would otherwise.  The Bridge on the River Kwai was shot in CinemaScope in its original, a very wide 2.55 X 1 aspect ratio and also received 70mm blow-up prints for theaters capable of doing the larger frame format.  Although in 1957 at it’s release there were very few theaters doing such, but that would change during the 60’s and Lawrence was straight out shot in 70mm Super Panavision. 

 

Finally the region 2 PAL Superbit brings back some of the depth and detail that was missing on the Region 1 discs.  By utilizing more of the disc space and having less compression the film looks solid.  Blacks are much darker and deeper, while colors contain more vibrancy and overall fidelity.  The difference is noticeable even to someone not necessarily looking for it.  Jack Hildyard’s Academy Award winning cinematography seems to put you right into the film with its third person perspective keeping us within the framework of the film.  This is possibly his finest work and would only be outdone by Freddie Young a few years later when he captured Lawrence of Arabia.  Lawrence could quite possible by the most amazing use of camera of all time, certainly for the large format 70mm, but it has few rivals for its scope and breadth.  Likewise that film was issued as a Superbit Edition from Columbia TriStar and looked far better than the earlier DVD issues, and the newly mixed DTS mix for that film is most welcome!

 

Also upgraded is the sound since the Superbit goes a notch above by including a DTS 5.1 mix along with a weaker Dolby Digital 5.1 mix.  The Dolby audio track seems identical to the Region 1 5.1 mix, but the DTS offers a much smoother, tighter, and more refined mix.  While it is not necessarily a huge improvement there is no doubt that it is the preferred playback choice.  Ambient sound seems to be heard more distinguished in the rear channels and the overall range seems much better.  By comparison the Dolby mix seems flat and lacks the overall fidelity needed to drive this film.  While I get tired sometimes of repeating how much better DTS sounds than Dolby, I never get tired of hearing the differences no matter how great or small.  Here, they are subtle, but certainly noticeable and much appreciated.

 

What also helps the picture and sound is the fact that the DVD is spread across two DVD’s making the compression factor have little potential from holding this disc back.  The 2.55 X 1 PAL-encoded anamorphic transfer certainly looks great for being this old and shows the capability of CinemaScope.  You will of course need a DVD player that is capable of playing Region 2 DVD’s here in the U.S. and also have a machine that has a smooth PAL to NTSC converter that enables the picture to display properly, but the more vertical lines of the PAL format make detail look far sharper in this case.  I have a hard time believing that the transfer though is 2.55 X 1, as it looks more like your basic scope 2.35 X 1 ratio.  If that is the case then there has been some minor cropping off the image. 

 

For some reason this DVD seems to be a tough one to get inside the U.S., or at least get for a reasonable price.  It’s impossible to not want to recommend a film this great and of course the better the presentation the more appealing, so it would seem at this point in time that this is the winner and the version worth putting in your collection.  While light on extras since it is a Superbit, the quality makes up for all that and then some. 

 

As far as the film itself is concerned it’s practically one of the most imitated films of all time, especially in the prisoner/war genre of filmmaker that would become more popular in the 1960’s with The Great Escape (reviewed elsewhere on this site).  Likewise with Lawrence, Bridge is a testosterone driven film with no females and the only concern is survival.  If you want to see the more romantic side of David Lean check out Summertime or even Ryan’s Daughter (a 70mm film desperate to be on the DVD format whenever Warner Bros. gets to it).  Personally, I would prefer the better quality over some of the perks that the Region 1 Collectors Edition offers, at least until something better comes along, which might be soon with a 50th birthday coming up for the film.  Let’s hope!

 

 

-   Nate Goss


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