Carmen [VHS]

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Price: $559.11   

Carmen [VHS] Review

Much has been written in these reviews regarding the great performances and fine quality of filmmaking in Francesco Rosi's film of Carmen. Here I am only going to comment on the new Blu-Ray edition.

The Olive Films Blu-Ray disc of the 1984 film of Bizet's Carmen, featuring Julia Migenes and Placido Domingo, arrived today. I just finished watching it, then compared it to the Columbia-TriStar DVD version.

Columbia's DVD had virtually no extras, just a couple of theatrical trailers, one being for this production of Carmen. It did have a choice of subtitles: English, Spanish, French, or none. It also had 24 scene chapters.

The new Blu-Ray disc form Olive has a magnificent picture with great detail and the stereo soundtrack is wonderful. But it has absolutely no extras, just the film. The English subtitles are permanently on, as though it was like an old videotape where you cannot switch the subtitles on or off. There are no other choices - no Spanish or French titles, just English, British English it seems to this Yank, with spellings and phrases I am familiar with from watching BBC shows.(The "passers-by" are translated as "a rum bunch".) The scene chapters are also reduced to only 8, which makes it a bit tricky to find certain arias or music without having to shuttle the FWD-REV keys, again like the old tapes.

I have no regrets in getting the Blu-Ray because of the outstanding high-def picture and sound, and I do need the Engish subs, even if I can't turn them off to practice my French. I just wish they could have provided a better overall product with at least as many chapters, at least as many subtitle languages (including "none"), and at least an extra or two, like Columbia did with the DVD.

By the way, the Columbia DVD said the image was "presented in the originally filmed aspect ratio of 1.66:1" The new Blu-Ray says it is in 1.85:1. I looked for some corner details in the projected images of both versions, but they appear to be almost identical. My old VHS of Carmen is full frame and actually shows more picture information above and below the same picture on disc versions, indicating to me it must have been shot in 1.33:1. The IMDB lists 1.75:1 for camera, and the 70mm blowups as 2.20:1.

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