quote: Sam D. Chavez

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Herman Cain is staging a mutiny?

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His ex-girlfriend appears to be organising a courtroom drama for him (though of a somewhat different kind to Humphrey Bogart's), but that's the only connection I can think of!

Could the desaturated image be a deliberate effect, with the colourist for the earlier DVD release not having been aware of it and timing the transfer based on what (s)he thought three-strip ought to look like? That sort of thing has happened before.

To my shame I can't recall ever having seen this one, though having just finished reading Dmytryk's memoir of the blacklist, I'd be intrigued to - must remember to buy a copy of this BD on my next visit to the US.

Incidentally, according to this site, Caine Mutiny was the second to last Hollywood film shot using the three-strip camera (with a completely forgettable B-movie Western, Foxfire, being the last, the following year). IIRC, the two cameras and the IB lab based in London continued in use for a bit longer, with The Ladykillers being the final British feature to be shot using the system.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-19-2011, 04:53 PM:
 
Hello Leo

THE CAINE MUTINY's image on Blue Ray does not have saturation problem. What it looks like as I said in my original thread as a washed out image with no detail in the highlight of people faces and the overall image is very bright. I am planing to go to my brother's house and play the disc on his BD player and see how it looks on his screen. If it looks the same as how it looks on my set, I will return the disc at the Barnes & Noble store where I bought it and get a refund.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Bill Gabel (Member # 1105) on 12-19-2011, 05:25 PM:
 
Here are some screen shots from DVDBeaver site.

DVDBeaver
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-19-2011, 06:13 PM:
 
Thanks Bill for the screen shots.

Strange, DVD Beaver was the first place I checked about the image quality of my TCM BD but I must have overlooked it at the site. What I am seeing on my screen does not look like the screenshots at the Beaver site. The screenshots looks like my DVD copy of the movie but the image on my BD is totally washed out and unwatchable. I want this movie on Blu ray and if my copy looks washed out on my brother's set, the disc is defective . If the image quality on my brother's set look good, why does it not look the same on my set?

-Claude
 

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Posted by Sam D. Chavez (Member # 1841) on 12-19-2011, 06:20 PM:
 
At least is wasn't Borders.

As to audio, I'm assuming it was originally a mono release or at best, 3 or 4 track Magnetic. I don't know how much there would be to work with for Stereo, except to clean up pops and brighten the tracks.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 12-19-2011, 08:40 PM:
 
The Disc was purchased from Barnes & Noble and if I can show proof the disc is defective, I am sure I can get a refund or store credit in the original amount I had paid for it.

THE CAINE MUTINY did have a stereo track and probably played in that format in New York and Los Angeles in 1954. All other cities might have only played it in mono. I first saw TCM at the Waipahu Theatre when it first came out and it was mono because the theatre got stereo later that year with THE ROBE in CinemaScope.

-Claude
 

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Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 12-21-2011, 06:55 PM:
 
As much as I hate it that some of the grain has been removed for the Blu, there's still no denying which one is the winner.

DVD:


BluRay:

 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-22-2011, 07:02 AM:
 
I'm going to try to get hold of a copy when I'm in California over the new year, and if successful will look at it on two PC graphics card/monitor combinations (one VGA and one DVI) plus the 1080p DLP projector in our theatre at work. Comparing other BDs I've found the projector to have a bit higher contrast (on default settings, at least) - more vivid blacks and whites, but less detail in the midtones.
 

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Posted by Paul H. Rayton (Member # 1817) on 01-25-2012, 03:27 PM:
 
I've viewed this disc (BD version) and can concur with Claude -- there are some occasional scenes that appear somewhat "overexposed", to phrase it another way from saying "washed out". For the most part, exposure and focus is spot on, but there are the occasional bits that seem a bit "off" from what might be ideal. So, FWIW, I don't think Claude's disc is defective -- it's just that the transfer may have had "issues", either something in the source that was compromised (or they didn't want to spend the money to fix), or ... someone not paying full attention to the final QC playout before mastering.

My playback is nothing fancy -- standard (Samsung) BD player and a normal HD TV, connected by HDMI. Other materials played through this system look fine, so, again, I'd say the disc is just not up to our expectations.
 

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 01-25-2012, 04:48 PM:
 
I am glad you agree with me, Paul. I stumbled on my DVD of THE CAINE MUTINY last week and watched a few scenes and they were gorgeous. After I did that, I watched the same scenes from the Blu Ray, and the image was too bright and look like over exposed color transparency film almost a full f stop. I have a Panasonic BD player and a Samsung HD set and was wondering if there is something about my system that makes the picture look washed out. All other BD in my collection look fantastic such as STAR WARS Episode 111. I never had the opportunity to go to my brother's house and see what the disc look like on his almost top of the line Sony 52 inch set but I plan to do so soon.

-Claude
 

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Posted by Jeff Taylor (Member # 443) on 02-03-2012, 09:31 AM:
 
FWIW, I have a very nice 16mm IB print of this title, and while the color is very nice it does not have the "over the top" color saturation of many Technicolor prints of that era--many washed out greyish skies and muted colors. Many of the skin tones have the typical Technicolor tans, but it sounds like the BluRay may be somewhat faithful of how the original looked.
 

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Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 02-05-2012, 11:33 AM:
 
I've now seen this BD on a theatre screen (Sanyo PDG-DHT1000L projector fed via HDMI on a screen about 12 feet by 7) and selected scenes again on my PC (NVivia GEForce 9500 graphics card connected by DVI to a Hannspree 27" LCD monitor), and agree with Claude and Paul. Some shots have a misregistered three-strip look to me, as if they were transferred from seps that had shrunk differentially. Others looked incredibly sharp and saturated.

As for the film, I found it a bit uncomfortable to watch, knowing that Bogart was in an advanced stage of drinking himself to death and that it basically represented a last-ditch attempt to relaunch his career. His portrayal of Queeg seemed to have a lot of parallels with what was actually going on in his real life: it was certainly a very different Bogart from the one we're familiar with in Casablanca, The Big Sleep and Dark Passage. According to Dmytryk's autobiography, a lot of sub-plots in the Herman Wouk novel on which the film is based were cut out entirely (which led to battles between Dmytryk and his producer, who insisted on the film being under two hours), including ones about Queeg's career before the war and the Fred MacMurray character having a long history of having a problem with authority. The book is in the library of the university where I work (though intriguingly, it's currently out and there is a waiting list of seven for it!), and I'm looking forward to reading it.

Maybe my imagination is running away with me, but I'm wondering if there's a HUAC/blacklist metaphor in there, as well - the scene in the wardroom in which Queeg asks for help but is met by silence and contempt, cf. the studio moguls cutting blacklist victims loose?

Incidentally, kudos to Sony for including the original mono audio mix on the BD, as well as the now familiar 5.1 reconstitution.
 

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