Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Spencer's Mountain (1963) DVD

This is topic Spencer's Mountain (1963) DVD in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 01-04-2004, 08:14 AM:

OK. It's been out a few months. I watched it yesterday on my Sony player.

In the olden days, I would catch this film anytime that it played on local TV, usually as a Sunday Afternoon Feature.

(minor spoiler)
Everybody remembers the part where Grandpa Spencer dies.

This copy has some extras. A short documentary of the making of the film, some press interviews with Henry Fonda and James MacArthur that are pretty bad, the trailer, and the movie in glorious mono sound.

I knew since childhood that this film was made in Panavision. Yesterday is the first and only time I have seen it presented in scope.

Better film. The shots of the mountains are spectacular. The whole film is more smooth without the constant pan and scan action. Some of the best reaction shots in the film are left out of the TV version.

The Technicolor is beautiful, as usual. The print transfer has a slight few specks of negative dirt now and then mostly around the reel changes. Warners has digitally removed the theatrical cues here. They were awfully big, and jumped around on the screen, as I recall from TV.

Does anyone know if this film is a victim of Warners reusing magnetic film? Was this film possibly shot in stereo? So many Warner titles were stereo, then when they went to TV, management erased the master tracks and reused the film for other productions.

Now that the film is in scope on TV, one can see some of the bigger errors very clearly. (spoiler) When the house burns, you can clearly see the oil pipes that cause the fire to spread very quickly on this release.

Lots of people compare this film to The Waltons. It should be the other way around. This is superior to the TV series.

Posted by Paul Linfesty (Member # 214) on 01-04-2004, 03:34 PM:

quote:
Does anyone know if this film is a victim of Warners reusing magnetic film? Was this film possibly shot in stereo?

According to Michael Coate's mag stereo list on the Widecreen Review online site, it was one of the relatively few stereo films (11) released in 1963.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 01-05-2004, 07:04 AM:

Thank you, Paul. I was afraid of that answer.