The Korean War: The Big Picture – Volume One (BCI Eclipse DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C Extras: B- Episodes: B-
BCI has
issued this interesting compilation of 22 episodes of the first-ever film
production of The United States Army for TV showing the Korean War (known as
both The Forgotten War and a police action) in a series they called The Big Picture. Touting anti-communism and essentially giving
a series of progress reports that are partly propaganda, but also a valuable
record of footage and ideas of what happened at the time, no matter how
accurate or not.
Watching
it today nearly twenty years after The Soviet Union fell and knowing Korea is still split in two, it reminds us how
ugly this was, is, how Japan could have been like this still to this day and
that this story is still not over nearly six decades later! Sadly, it is one of the too few records of
any kind on the subject you’ll find outside of the printed page and it makes
for some must-see viewing on the subject.
The 1.33
X 1 image is all black and white and a little soft throughout all the episodes,
with aliasing errors, but the sources are on the clean side. These would be interesting to see on
Blu-ray. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is
also weak, second-generation and shows its age, transferred here at a volume
too low to the point you should be careful in switching sound on playback. Extras include two films by no less than John
Ford on DVD 4: Motion Picture History Of
Korea and This Is Korea, which
have both become the subject of recently revived interest.
- Nicholas Sheffo
