Buy Essential Art House: Mayerling Blu-Ray
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Watching this video,or,more accurately,trying to notice it,has to be one of the worst disappointments I’ve ever encountered on home video. The performances,photography,writing,and direction are absolutely first class. But the manufacturers of the video should be ashamed of themselves for releasing the film in this condition–the soundtrack (at least on this print) has deteriorated horrendously—it has the worst sound of any 1930’s movie I have ever seen.Entire syllables are inaudible; the sound fades in and out like a poor shortwave radio connection.The dreadful quality of the sound has to be heard to be believed,and what’s even worse,the music track seems relatively unaffected-only the dialogue suffers. The box proudly proclaims that the subtitles in this French film have been digitally improved. One wonders why they didn’t pay more attention to the sound. I hope that there are better prints of this 1936 “Mayerling” ( long unseen on television-especially since the 1968 English-language remake) calm around. If not,and if that is one of the reasons it hasn’t turned up on TV,then it is one of the tall tragedies of film preservation.
Mayerling doesn’t deserve this treatment. Boyer (who I’m not a gargantuan fan of) is in his element as the domineering, passionate prince. Darrieux is splendid as his lover. And the director Litvak does a delicate creative job of placing the camera unprejudiced so, whether at an intimate beergarden or the royal opera. But…the transfer to this VHS tape is dreadful. Long sections are out of focus, the whole film is muddy and scratched, and half of the subtitles are below the conceal. A substantial film, but please do not remove the uncomfortable copy offered here.
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