Gone with the Wind Blu-ray (US)

Gone with the Wind Blu-ray (US)

70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition / Blu-ray + CD

Warner Bros. | 1939 | 238 min | Rated G | Nov 17, 2009

Adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, this dazzling epic stars Vivien Leigh as the tempestuous Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as the dashing Rhett Butler. Forever linked by passion and separated by pride and self-delusion, these unforgettable screen lovers bring Mitchell's immortal saga vividly to life, set against the stunning backdrop of a time and place forever "Gone With the Wind".

Pemain: John Travolta

Sutradara: Brian De Palma

Video
Video codec: VC-1
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.37:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Audio

English: Dolby TrueHD 5.1
English: Dolby Digital Mono
French: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono
German: Dolby Digital 5.1
Italian: Dolby Digital 5.1
Japanese: Dolby Digital Mono
Portuguese: Dolby Digital Mono

English, English SDH, French, Spanish (less)

Subtitles

English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, German, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish

Discs
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Four-disc set (2 BDs, 1 DVD, 1 CD)

Playback
Region A

Cover

Gifset

Availability

1-5 days

Harga

Rp. 499.000

Special Features

The Box

Blu-ray collectors may have seen their wallets slimmed down considerably with the slew of collector's editions recently, but few are going to complain about spending money on this lavish new box for what is arguably the greatest film from Hollywood's Golden Era. Similar in size and shape to the Snow White Diamond Edition I recently reviewed, as well as Warner's recent Wizard of Oz Collector's Set, this Gone With the Wind offers several supplements ported over from the last DVD release, as well as several new ones. The box itself is clad in a rich red velvet and features the iconic painting of Gable holding Leigh as the flames of Atlanta burning rage in the background. The main extra-disc feature is a beautiful 52 page hardcover book which has a wealth of pictures and details about the film. While not, perhaps, quite as opulent as the oversized book that came with the Snow White set, it certainly is in a league with its Wizard of Oz counterpart. For those unfamiliar with Behlmer's The Memos of David O. Selznick, several are reproduced here, all germane to the casting and crew hiring, as well as the budgeting, of Gone With the Wind. They show a producer absolutely fixated on the minutiae of an epic scale production and offer a keen insight into a man seemingly compelled to handle every last detail himself. Also included is a reproduction of the Atlanta premiere's souvenir program, a fascinating little piece of memorabilia that shows how studios promoted their films back in the days when audiences were a bit more starry-eyed than they are now. Finally, ten paintings of the plantations of the film are included, all on heavy cardstock.

The Discs

The two Blu-rays and one SD-DVD are contained in a trifold case. A standalone soundtrack CD is packaged separately.

Disc One:

The main feature, running at around four hours, is on a BD-50 disc and contains "only" the Behlmer commentary as its one bonus. I say "only" because this is one of the most authoritative, yet easily accessible and unfailingly affable, commentaries ever recorded. Behlmer, unlike his frequent counterpart Drew Casper, doesn't deal in faux profundities or outright inanities, and instead imparts one fascinating fact after another about the film and the filming. I'm not sure if he was also schooled by my late mother, but he also goes into detail about the differences between the Margaret Mitchell source novel and the final film version. Though you'll end up spending eight or so hours watching the film and then rewatching with Behlmer's commentary, I can't recommend it highly enough.

Disc Two:

The bulk of the film's supplements are offered on this second Blu-ray disc. Unfortunately they're all in standard definition and several have been released previously.

• The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind (SD, 123 minutes): This documentary has cropped up regularly on TCM and was included on the previous DVD release of the film. Filled with fantastic information about the history of the property, and its tortuous production, Legend also offers a great assortment of screentests and other archival film.
• Gone With the Wind: The Legend Lives On (SD, 33 minutes), is a sort of sequel to the above supplemental feature, focusing on the now 70 year old legacy of the film. Emphasis on film preservation and some of the collectors of Wind memorabilia (who will no doubt be including this set in their treasure trove) is included.
• 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year (SD, 68 minutes), is one of the better extras on the set, devoting an in-depth look to that most storied year of Hollywood's halcyon days. M-G-M may have had the "big two" that most people associate with that year, Wind and Wizard, but as this feature makes abundantly clear, the studio system was in full swing with high style at all the majors, and there was a bumper crop of classics that year.
• Gable: The King Remembered, (SD, 65 minutes), gives us a nice Biography-esque overview, hosted by Peter Lawford. of the man and the movie star.
• Vivien Leigh: Scarlett and Beyond, (SD, 46 minutes), is a little bit more surface level than the Gable effort, but with hostess Jessica Lange pointing the way, does venture into Leigh's mental issues which affected her later career. Lange, of course, played another famously troubled actress, Frances Farmer, an actress who was in fact considered for the role of Scarlett, as you will see if you look quickly in a "potential casting sheet" in The Making of a Legend.
• Melanie Remembers: Reflections by Olivia de Havilland, (SD, 39 minutes). At last we get some first-person reminiscences, and with the ever lovely and gracious de Havilland providing them, you know you're in for a rare treat. What may surprise you is how impish the star was and still is when this was filmed.
• The Supporting Players, (SD, 30 minutes). I mentioned just a few of the incredible supporting cast of this film in the main review, which should give you some indication of the variety and quality of actors covered in this excellent featurette.
• Restoring a Legend, (SD, 18 minutes). Though this focuses on the 2004 UltraResolution restoration for the film's 4 disc DVD release, this is still a fascinating look at the incredible effort taken to preserve and restore classic films like these. All film lovers will both be impressed by and grateful for the efforts depicted in this brief featurette.
• Two newsreels are offered, Dixie Hails Gone With the Wind (SD, 4 minutes) and Atlanta Civil War Centennial (SD, 4 minutes), both of which offer glimpses of premiere festivities for the film itself.
• The Old South, (SD, 11 minutes), a sort of documentary exposition of the cultural background of plantation life, this is probably too apologetic for the South's justification for slavery ("someone has to pick the cotton," to quote an incredibly racist song of days of yore), but is interesting at least from an historical perspective.
• International Prologue, (SD, 1 minute), another expository piece which acted as prelude to the foreign release of the film, offering some background on the Civil War.
• Foreign Language Versions, (SD, 3 minutes), gives us a compendium of snippets of foreign language versions of the film. "Demain est une autre jour."
• Movieola, (SD, 97 minutes), is a pretty lame made for television movie with Tony Curtis as David O. Selznick. Curtis simply doesn't have the look or feel for this legendary character, and the rest of this enterprise is similarly uninspiring.
• Finally five trailers from the original release and various re-releases are offered.
  

Disc Three:

Finally, on a standalone SD-DVD flipper, the enormous in scope When the Lion Roars three part documentary is featured. An exhaustive look at the history of M-G-M, hosted by Patrick Stewart, this all-inclusive overview is such an onslaught of archival film it's like a virtual who's who of Hollywood. Part One, "The Lion's Roar," delves not only into the studio's nascent years but more importantly the epochal relationship between its two titans, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg. Most Golden Age fans will most likely be more entranced by Part Two, "The Lion Reigns Supreme," which covers the era of the 1930's and 1940's, when M-G-M was the Tiffany of movie studios. The third part, "The Lion in Winter," chronicles the slow, sad decline of the studio and its many subsequent owners.

Disc Four:

As mentioned above, a standalone CD of Max Steiner's amazing score is also included. Pay attention to how effortlessly Steiner weaves folktunes in and out of his original underscoring.