Great Escape, The (UK)
The all time war action classic
Certificate: PG
Running Time: 165 mins
Retail Price: £15.99
Release Date:
Content Type: Movie
Synopsis:
In 1943, the Germans opened Stalag Luft North, a maximum security prisoner-of-war camp, designed to hold even the craftiest escape artists. In doing so, however, the Nazis unwittingly assembled the finest escape team in military history - brilliantly portrayed here by Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson and James Coburn - who worked on what became the largest prison breakout ever attempted.
One of the most ingenious and suspenseful adventure films of al time, `The Great Escape` is a masterful collaboration between director John Sturges (`The Magnificent Seven`), screenwriters James Clavell (`Shogun`) and W.R. Burnett (`Little Caesar`), and composer Elmer Bernstein. Based on a true story, `The Great Escape` is epic entertainment that "entertains, captivates, thrills and stirs" (Variety).
Special Features:
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
24 minute documentary, `Return To The Great Escape`
US Theatrical Trailer
Eight-Page Booklet Containing Exclusive Behind-The-Scenes Trivia And Production Notes
Video Tracks:
Widescreen Letterbox 2.35:1
Audio Tracks:
Dolby Digital Mono English
Dolby Digital Mono Spanish
Dolby Digital Mono German
Dolby Digital Mono Italian
Dolby Digital Mono French
Subtitle Tracks:
French
Polish
CC: German
English
Spanish
German
CC: English
Portuguese
Dutch
Norwegian
Directed By:
John Sturges
Written By:
W.R. Burnett
James Clavell
Paul Brickhill
Starring:
Gordon Jackson
David McCallum
Hannes Messemer
James Coburn
Donald Pleasence
Charles Bronson
James Donald
Richard Attenborough
James Garner
Steve McQueen
Casting By:
Lynn Stalmaster
Soundtrack By:
Elmer Bernstein
Director of Photography:
Daniel L. Fapp
Editor:
Ferris Webster
Costume Designer:
Bert Henrikson
Producer:
John Sturges
James Clavell
Distributor:
Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Your Opinions and Comments
The Great Escape is a memorable film fueled by Elmer
Bernstein`s excellent music.
The movie is presented in non-anamorphic 2.70:1 widescreen,
as looks pretty good.Film grain is very noticable during certain
scenes,but the picture is generally sharp and pleasing.The
main problem is how over matted the picture,because the
movie was filmed in 35mm Panavision,not Ultra Panavision.
The audio is acceptable with only 2-channel mono.
The extras are sparse but the 24 minute documentary is worth
checking out.The other extra is the original trailer which looks
pretty bad.There is also a booklet with info and an example
of widescreen v.s. pan & scan.
I imagine sometime MGM will re-release this movie as a special edition.
The Great Escape
MGM DVD
Region: 1 (USA), NTSC
Colour
Average bitrate: 5.12 mb/s
measured DVD ratio: 2.69:1 (4:3 Letterbox)
Original ratio: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
Chapters: 32
Soundtrack: English DD 2.0 mono (192 mb/s), French 2.0 mono, German 2.0 mono
Subs: English, French, Spanish
Extras: Original theatrical trailer, Making of documentary, booklet with production notes
Cert: PG
Cover Design: A large (Very large) face of McQueen and another picture of him crawling through
some wire fense. OK, but I prefer the poster instead. Average
Duration: 2:52:00
Dual layered - Single sided
The film: Excellent POW movie, the best of it's kind and I give it top marks
10
Image: The image is sharp but lacking overall detail, especially because it's not 16:9 enhanced. Colours are strongly oversaturated with reddish skin tones. Artefacts are apparent but the only distracting artefacts are reel change markers that indicate that this transfer was made from a display print 3 generations or more from the original negative. The image appears to be extremely grainy but satisfying, even with some digital artefacts. But the aspect ratio is incorrectly 2.69:1 because the DVD shows more information on the left side because the print used for transfer had no soundtrack on it and, thus had more picture information. This is just fine by me but a 16:9 enhanced transfer would have been better
6
Audio: The 2.0 mono audio is reasonably limited with background hiss that is just typical of a vintage audio track but this one is quite listenable throughout. Noted were slightly annoying volume drops near the beginning, slight high end distortion and infrequent pops or crackle from the source material. Incidentally, the worst audio quality is in the scene of 4th of July, the same scene that fares worst in image quality.
5
Extras: Extras are adequate for such a release with an original theatrical trailer (that looks absolutely horrible) and documentary. The booklet is good and informative and compared to other MGM releases I was pleasantly surprised to see anything other than trailer but more extras are welcome and the new special edition clearly tops this one.
3