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Senior Member
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Musings from the Tea Room...
Mamba (1930) ~ This film is an extremely important part of cinema history, by any measure of a film's status. This just isn't me being an old fart, either (I'm only 48). It was the first all-talking, all-color drama in movie history, and Kino Lorber helped raise the dead, along with the UCLA Film & Television Archive who did the heavy lifting.
Think about that for a moment. Mamba is the direct progenerator of every color, sound film that came after, all the way to today's fantastic Hollywood gloop. I mean, it had to happen at some time; it's just that Mamba came first, and with it a tiny controversy in 2022.
Kino Lorber attaches their advisory: This film contains racism and/or the mistreatment of people or cultures. Such depictions, in any era, are inexcusable. The film is being presented in its original form to bear witness to the history of racism in cinema, and to encourage a dialogue about how a future cinema can become more inclusive.
No worries. Mamba is essentially an anti-racist, anti-misogynist, anti-colonial, anti-war film, with hindsight coming from a 1930's view of pre-Great War colonialism, and what lead to the start of WWI.
Mamba was filmed using Technicolor's two-color process Number Three, which means it's one of the first to use the dye transfer process, making the film (in theory) impervious to color-fade. Whatever the negative looked like in 1930, 92 years later the colors don't look enhanced like some other two-color releases, meaning less of a garish green and more accurate skintones. Blues and yellows are still lacking of course, yet this is an honest image without looking overly cleaned. Small scratches and blemishes are evident. There are some color flecks and density fluctuations, but nothing of the egregious variety. The image holds together very well. The encode hangs around in the 30Mbps.
The only real flaw, despite a great encode, is that edges of shadows tend to break up a little, not necessarily giving a digital look on the edges; I'm thinking it's the amount of information available in the print from a 4K scan. The information just isn't there, so it's more of an analog noise issue. I sit real close to my 77", so you might not notice it if your set is placed above your fireplace, or you're 20ft away. Otherwise, the soundtrack isn't the best, either, but the sound was taken from lacquers, so that's what we get. It's okay. There's a vintage feel to it, which is only fitting. We're lucky to have the thing in the first place.
Some cool bits: Mamba starts with a 1:40 tracking shot that really gives us the lay of the land. Great camerawork, as it weaves its way through a colonial African military outpost, circa 1913. The film's structure is also fly; it eschews introducing the heroes and villains right off, in favor of setting the stage for a vibe, with a plot that follows shortly thereafter. Now, I'm not saying that Mamba is a great film; it's just not pedestrian by 1930 standards. It branches out and tries new things, not always hitting the mark, yet it succeeds in its subtext, some of which I identified on my own, others I gleaned from the excellent commentary by Brian Trenchard-Smith (whoever that is). The extras are illuminating, as well. The package has no shortage of goodies.
All-in-all, if you have even a little curiosity of cinema history, you owe it to yourself to peep Mamba. It's not going to live up to the recent WAC two-color offerings, but it's honest with a commensurate PQ. It also has one of the most interesting back stories of how a film that thought to be lost was found in 2009.
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