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By
NICK ZEGARAC
William A. Wellman's The
High and the Mighty (1954) might very well be
called the 'Grand Hotel' of the wild blue yonder.
For it stacks a commercial airliner with an
all-star crew and passenger list then forces
everyone to interact when a mid-air malfunction
puts everyone's life in peril.
Top billed is legendary hero, John Wayne as
co-pilot Dan Roman. Seems Roman is living with
demons of a fiery plane crash lurking just beneath
the surface. The pilot, John Sullivan (Robert
Stack) is a stoic, troubled and neurotic mess who
eventually has a complete melt down -- forcing
Roman to rise to the occasion, take over and land
the plane safely. Ah, but will he? The rest of the
cast reads like a who's who of forgotten or nearly
forgotten character actors, including Sidney
Blackmere, Laraine Day, Phil Harris and Claire
Trevor. Despite being one of the most sought after
titles requested by DVD consumers, the film is
really little more than a sensationalist precursor
to the highly popular 70s disaster series,
Airport. The one curiosity of this disc is that it
is a Warner Brothers film presented by Paramount
DVD. Apparently a rights issue has allowed the
copyright to lapse in the latter's favor.
Advertised as meticulously restored, the transfer
represented on this disc is something of a
disappointment to the expectation of pristine
image quality. Although the DVD starts out
relatively strong, with a very bright and strongly
contrasted print element, it quickly degrades into
various levels of quality -- the worst being near
the end of the film when the plane makes its
emergency landing in Frisco. In those final reels,
the image is overly soft, exhibits some minor edge
enhancement and even has a touch of color
bleeding. Throughout, flesh tones are not very
accurate at all (an inherent flaw of all
Warner-Color film stock of the period); they're
either excessively pink or a flat orange. Most of
the color spectrum tends to mute along a greenish
gray, hazy brown balance. At times contrast levels
can seem a tad pasty. Blacks are rarely deep or
solid. Whites are bluish or yellowish but never a
true white. Transitions between scenes exhibit the
inherent flaw of all early Cinemascope transfers,
with momentary blooming of excessive film grain.
Yes, compared to the way this film has looked on
television this disc is a resounding improvement.
But it does not come anywhere near to the level of
quality one would expect from a disc advertised as
'restored and remastered.' The audio is a 5.1
attempt at recapturing the original six track
stereo, but it's generally strident and not very
natural sounding at all.
Extras are too numerous to go into any great
detail. There's an overkill of featurettes and
newly created documentaries, a bunch of vintage
material, stills gallery and theatrical trailers;
comprehensive to say the very least. |
