Quote:
Originally Posted by oildude
I feel much the same about Pony Soldier. It is a nice lost-in-the-vault discovery, and for its time it must have been groundbreaking in its portrayal of Native Americans. In my opinon, though, of all the TT blu-ray releases so far - and I have them all - I rank it one of the weakest as a film. Now, this is relative, which means it is still a darn good movie. I am a huge fan of classic westerns, so I very miuch enjoyed it, but looking at it objectively, it just didn't pull me in or entertain me as much as many of the other TT releases, or even compared to some of the westerns released by Olive. That may be unfair, since it is not a Bite the Bullet, or a Rapture or a Bell, Book, and Candle or Nicholas and Alexandra, so I should not expect more from it than what it is - a competent, well acted, and enjoyable classic western with some twists to its setting and story that make it different from many of the other well done westerns of the era.
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Curiously, I didn't have any major problems with
Pony Soldier as a film
oildude...except to wonder at times who, other than early Canadian history buffs would even 'get' a lot of its arcane socio-political references? For me, no foul with any of that stuff, although the
union jack flag was wrong for
1876, but Hollywood frequently fudges such period details...relying on whatever happens to be available from the prop department. Nevertheless, the movie did pull me in - Tyrone Power is always a strong screen presence (those eyes; you can always sense the gears whirring behind them) - likewise, the guy who played Natayo added an unexpectedly funky touch (ironically a
Mexican actor better known for his TV roles) - and of course the kid who played 'Comes Running' frequently commanded the frame with just a look (it takes some doing to steal a scene from a pro like Power). The only problem from a dramatic standpoint was that the substance of this tale was such a repudiation of so many classic Western myths and conventions. It wasn't always easy finding your bearings in terms of what was happening and why, especially with those additional layers of rather esoteric Cree, Blackfoot, and Canuck history.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oildude
As for the transfer, it is still a lovely looking film, so I would not let these issues discourage anyone from owning it. It certainly has less problems to my eye than The Roots of Heaven, which has more noticeable color shifts but is still a worthwhile transfer. Never having seen Pony Soldier before, I found the color to be more subdued than I expected it to be. I am not knowledgeable enough about technicolor to judge how true to the source the tranfer is. One thing I am figuring out about technicolor, though, is that not all technicolor films were created to look like the Wizard of Oz. Pony Soldier may have always fallen into the more subdued category, if that is a viable description.
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That's true
oildude, not all
Technicolor films looked the same. And only MGM musicals tended to look like...well...
MGM musicals! Every studio had its own comfort zone with this process, as well as its preferred 'house look'...sometimes amounting to only minor variations in lighting design and saturation, but unmistakable to those who knew these films in their original IB print form. Funnily enough, I once met a vet projectionist who could be shown a Technicolor frame or still, and even if he couldn't quite remember the movie, 90% of the time he could identify which studio made it...including many of the International production houses, such as Rank and Cinecitta.
Although it was *possible* to subdue Technicolor, it wasn't as easy as merely applying some print timing changes...it was painstaking and expensive work, which is why few ever attempted it. John Huston and Oswald Morris did manage to achieve a more desaturated, pastel look for
Moby Dick but it required trial and error testing of custom print matrices. During the heydey of the Technicolor process, nobody understood and creatively manipulated it better than Jack Cardiff, and yet despite stylistic variations, his films were still unmistakably Technicolor. And there is really only one true point of reference when comparing any Technicolor film transfer, and that is its imbibation dye transfer prints. What is commonly accepted as Technicolor on video - good, bad, or indifferent - is frequently misjudged as a result of baseline unfamiliarity with the IBs. Unlike other colour systems, the Technicolor negative(s) do not tell the full story; you need those dye transfer prints to see what colour values came to the fore and which were recessive as a result of the imbibation process.
Which in a longwinded way brings me back to
Pony Soldier , and what I didn't like about its Technicolor transfer. Foremost, the image often looked rather pallid, but darkened to compensate, no doubt the result of the ageing (now gone?) original negative(s). The blue skies were still blue, but not that rich
Fox BLUE I remember from that studio's Technicolor prints. Reds were still strong though, and the black levels seemed generally okay (of which there were lots of both in this picture). It was just everything in between that looked rather distressed...especially the tent interiors which would have been lower lit (read: grainier) to begin with. Also the red fringeing in some shots was a tell-tale sign of uneven YCM layer shrinkage, which would contribute to colour smearing too.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oildude
EDIT: on a side note, I watched Warner Archive's release of Gypsy the day after Pony Soldier. Gypsy falls into the realm of technicolor dreamcoat, with bright rich colors that look like a candy store on a summer day. Gorgeous looking film. I think it was meant to be that way, whereas maybe Pony Soldier was not. I would also add that anyone who is wondering about the quality of the Warner Archive releases need not worry. Based on Gypsy, they look and sound outstanding.
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None of the reservations I've noted above made
Pony Soldier unwatchable, but nevertheless, it doesn't have that classic 3-strip spit and polish...or purity. To me, it looked more like a heroic salvage job than a restoration. It's a terribly hard thing to describe, or even demonstrate via venues such as this, but if you saw an IB Technicolor print of this movie, you would immediately be stunned by the difference. With a lot of patience and some expensive digital workflow Fox *could* have come much closer to that original Technicolor look like they did when they restored
The Robe from its badly faded Eastman negative. This was just one of those unlucky ones from the vault that wasn't - and likely never will be - treated to that level of video restoration.
Love the score though. Listened to it again while I was posting this evening. For me, that's the reel treasure in this edition.
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I wasn't planning on getting Christine anyway and thankfully The Fury is less likely to sell out. 
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