|
|
|
Young Man With A Horn AKA Young Man Of Music AKA Young Man With A Trumpet
R4 - Australia - Warner Home Video Review written by and copyright: Stevie McCleary & Noor Razzak (18th June 2007). |
|
The Film
 “Young Man with a Horn”, well if that isn’t the greatest title to ever grace a Hollywood film then I simply don’t know what is. In Australia they called it “Young Man with a Trumpet”. Well that’s just dumb. I miss the types of film titles that used to exist back in the 1950s. You don’t get many winners like this one anymore. Nope, we just get “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” (2005)…whatever. From 1950 and starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall (shazam~!) and Doris Day, “Young Man with a Horn” (it’s not going to get old, people) is the story of the lonely Rick Martin and his trumpet. He sure does love his trumpet. Based on the life of jazz great Bix Beiderbecke (un-officially) and adapted from the novel by Dorothy Baker, Rick gets tutored in the ways of the horn (tee hee) by the legendary performer Art Hazzard (Juano Hernandez), but becomes obsessed with wanting to play outside the conventions of the mainstream bands. That and the search for a particular high note. He becomes a star at the expense of every other part of his life, and thus experiences all the usual problems famous people do in this situation… Harry James (who apparently is very famous) did the trumpet work for Douglas, and it sounds pretty darn good. Definitely worth a listen if you’re a fan of jazz music. The strange part is that the film portrays Martin as a performer that butts heads with more narrow-minded people. Yet the music he plays sounds mostly the same as the sappy stuff he seems to be rebelling against. This could simply be a by-product of the times…Hollywood wouldn’t be overly keen on a main protagonist that actually creates music that is subversive to audiences…you never know what your movie could convince those young hep-cats to get into. It also confuses its own points a few times. We’re supposed to believe that his obsession with music is a bad thing…yet when Bacall’s character starts to interfere, one of the reasons is that she is distracting him from his music…so which is it? Does he need to focus more on being a good human being, or on being an artist? Or does it simply not matter? Perhaps it’s not best to delve to deeply into a film of this kind. You can tell that the film-makers were concerned with giving you a good time, and maybe that’s all that should be focused on. Is it fun? Yeah, it’s a well-made film. It’s just not one that you should scrutinize too much. Simply put, this isn’t a movie that requires a lot of explanation, or delving into the plot here. That time period of filmmaking didn’t exactly need a science degree to understand it. You pretty much know what you’re getting from the start. In fact, you’re not even going to pick up this DVD, or search it out, unless you were already interested in this style/time period of movie. And if you do decide to seek it out, you’ll find that it’s a decent film that’s a bit too ‘Hollywood’ for its own good, but with some great music to sooth the sap.
Video
Presented in the film’s original 1.33:1 full screen transfer, this black and white image has its fair share of problems but overall it’s a rather decent presentation. The image is occasionally soft, sharpness isn’t consistent especially in wider shots, close-up and mid-shots hold up well however. There are a few scratches, bits of dirt and the occasional white speck that pops up during the print as well which does get a little annoying but never distracting (I’ve seen worse and this is far from bad). I’m sure a complete digital clean up would be an expensive and time consuming effort for a film that not that many people would normally purchase. Black and white contrast is fairly good with bright whites and deep blacks, I could not spot any compression related issues aside from some very minor moiré effect against some patterned lines. There’s nothing to write home about, but that’s better than releasing a sub-standard transfer with many things wrong with it.
Audio
Two audio tracks are included in English Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono as well as an Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono track. For the purposes of this review I chose to view the film with its English soundtrack. For a film that is 57 years old you wouldn’t normally expect a full blown 5.1 track, although considering this is a film about a jazz musician I couldn’t help but wonder what an up-mixed 5.1 track would have sounded like? Even though surround sound technology wasn’t in use back then this very basic Mono track does a fairly good job at presenting the film’s audio with clean and crisp dialogue that appears top have no distortion such as pops, hiss or drop-outs and the music is loud and robust. That’s about all that I can really say about this track, it’s clean and doesn’t really disappoint. Optional subtitles are included in English, English for the hearing impaired, French, Italian, Italian for the hearing impaired, Dutch and Arabic.
Extras
Warner Brothers has released this film with the original theatrical trailer which runs for 2 minutes 15 seconds as the sole supplement on this DVD release.
Packaging
Although the package states this is an R4 disc it is actually coded R1, R2 and R4.
Overall
|
|||||
|