BUY

General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer - 2.35:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 (3:55) Featurette - The Magnificent Rebel (11:51) Biographies - Cast and Crew Isolated Music Score
Rating
Year Released	1973
Running Time	144:24 minutes
RSDL/Flipper	RSDL (82:27)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region	2,4	Director	Franklin J. Schaffner
Studio Distributor	Allied Artists Pictures Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment	Starring	Steve McQueen Dustin Hoffman Victor Jory Don Gordon Anthony Zerbe
Case	Transparent Soft Brackley
RPI	$36.95	Music	Jerry Goldsmith

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	No	English (Dolby Digital 5.1, 448 Kb/s) German (Dolby Digital 2.0 mono, 192 Kb/s) Isolated Music Score (Dolby Digital 5.1, 384 Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Theatrical Aspect Ratio	2.40:1	Miscellaneous
Macrovision	Yes	Smoking	Yes
Subtitles	English German Danish Finnish Norwegian Swedish	Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes

    Papillon is the story of petty criminal Henri "Papillon" Charriere (Steve McQueen), who has been framed for, and convicted of, the murder of a prostitute and sentenced to life imprisonment. Along with an assorted bunch of criminals, including famed counterfeiter Louis Dega (Dustin Hoffman), he is transported to the French penal colony of French Guiana. Since Dega is somewhat despised by his fellow prisoners for his wealth and the fact that many lost their money on his counterfeit bonds, he strikes a deal with Papillon to protect him in exchange for funding his escape attempts. Life is harsh in the colony, and escape is discouraged by the fact that the first attempt is punished by two years in solitary confinement, with the second offence being punished by five years of solitary. Since Papillon has been framed, he never loses the desire to escape, resulting in plenty of time in solitary. Both Dega and Papillon are eventually transferred to the hell of all hells - Devil's Island. There are no bars in this jail as the strong currents and voracious sharks ensure enough of an escape deterrent - or at least so the authorities believe. Papillon never gives up, even on Devil's Island.

    Based upon the book by Henri Charriere, this is broadly speaking the true story of his life in the French penal system. It is an enormously powerful insight into the indomitable spirit of one man. Since it broadly revolves around just two characters, Papillon and Dega, the whole film lives or dies upon the work of the two leads. The film was not let down in any way. This for me is arguably the greatest performance from Steve McQueen. It is as fine a performance as one could expect, covering such a wide range of tone, from almost naive fresh prisoner to almost insane solitary confinee. His performance was matched by that of Dustin Hoffman, in a slightly less central role of the almost scatter-brained eternal realist. The direction from Franklin J. Schaffner is superb and despite the length of the film, and what is actually a difficult story to tell in a film, there is no real drop off in intensity throughout. But really it is the cinematography that stands out here - the uncompromising use of widescreen vistas to tell the story of one individual results in a visually memorable film.

   Whilst the story really is good, the quality of the cinematography and the performances elevate this film into the status of a classic. As an indictment of the French penal system, it serves its purpose well indeed. Whilst this is certainly not going to be to everyone's taste, this is a fine example of an epic from the early 1970s.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced. According to the generally authoritative Widescreen Review, the theatrical aspect ratio of the film was 2.40:1, which is very close to the transfer ratio. Note that the packaging is in error stating this to be a 1.85:1 transfer, although interestingly the review of the Region 2 version by DVD Review (which should be identical as this is a dual coded DVD) indicates a ratio of 1.85:1 for the release.

    Considering that the film is bordering on twenty-eight years old, the overall appearance of the transfer is most exemplary. Generally sharp throughout and extremely well detailed, there is little to complain about in terms of the clarity. Sure, there is a degree of edge enhancement that at times does get a little too much beyond the pale, most noticeably during scenes featuring an ocean background. However, I have seen worse. The most glaring example of the edge enhancement is around 136:48, where a slightly too large to ignore reddish/black shadow line is far too noticeable against the blue sea. Thankfully for a film of this age there is not too much of a problem with grain, although at times there is quite distracting pixelization of the background which occasionally also gets combined with grain, resulting in a rather distractingly poor image. Shadow detail is generally quite decent, although this is obviously a little wanting in the scenes when the solitary confinement cell is completely shuttered up for instance. Low level noise did not seem to be much of a problem with the transfer in general.

    The colours on offer here are a little muted, but that is a reflection of both the age and the location of the film. Whilst the palette may be a little lacking in saturation in general, a lot of the jungle scenes display a rather decent glossy vibrancy to them. The big problem here is the skin tones, where the colours do get just a little off - although quite how the skin tones of a prisoner after two years in solitary would look is perhaps hard to know. In general, the transfer could perhaps have done with a bit more depth to the blacks, but the overall result is not too displeasing. Certainly the blues of the ocean are in stark contrast to the rest of the film, but this is more than likely an intended contrast. There is no issue with oversaturation here and as a result of the general trend to undersaturated colours, you can obviously expect nothing in the way of colour bleed.

    Where this transfer starts to go seriously awry is in the actual mastering. The transfer is rife with periods of pixelization in the background, of varying degrees of blockiness and ugliness. Particularly noticeable examples can be found around 22:24, 54:42, 66:00 and 116:44, but this by no means an exhaustive list. The problem is especially compounded when there is movement in the image. There is a consistent problem with minor aliasing in the transfer, with railings being especially prone to the problem, that does become quite tiresome overall. There are also some rather ugly examples of the problem in the gendarmes' caps around 2:25 which really are hard to ignore. At times the pixelization of the background is compounded by shimmer and the result gets really distracting. There is also a fault in the print at around the 17:32 mark, on the extreme right hand side of the transfer that may be an issue if your display device is not prone to extensive overscan. There are naturally plenty of film artefacts in evidence overall, with some sections of the film being quite badly affected, whilst others are quite free of the problem. Overall, this is one of the poorer efforts to come from Columbia TriStar. I do wonder how much of the problem relates to the source material, but whatever the reason I am guessing that on a large screen display this is going to look very ugly indeed. On a smaller display device than mine, perhaps this will be a lot easier on the eye, but overall I found this to be an annoying transfer to watch - not exactly awful but with far too many transfer problems to make it something easy to watch.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming at 82:27. Whilst it comes at the end of a scene, and thus is not disruptive to the flow of the film, it is just a little noticeable.
 
 

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain
Film-to-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three soundtracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, a German Dolby Digital 2.0 mono soundtrack, and an Dolby Digital 5.1 Isolated Music Score. I only very briefly sampled the German and Isolated Music Score soundtracks, and stuck with the English default.

    The dialogue was clear and generally easy to understand, although naturally there were sections that by design are presented at a lower level and are supposed to be slightly more difficult to hear. Unfortunately there seemed to be a slight problem throughout the film with audio sync. It is not entirely distracting but there is just the odd occasion here and there when the transfer seemed out of sync enough to make you notice. This may be the result of some sloppy ADR work of course, rather than an inherent transfer problem.

    The original score comes from Jerry Goldsmith. Although the film seemed to be rightly devoid of any score for much of the time, the overall support the score gives the film is decent enough. I would not classify it as amongst the best that he has ever written though, even if it does end up doing its job well enough.

    The overall 5.1 soundtrack has to be considered a failure. The main issue is that despite this being a remastered soundtrack, the overall feel of the sound is very dated and on occasions quite congested. Indeed, at times it really sounds like a 2.0 soundtrack with nothing at all coming from the rear channels and most of the sound coming from the centre channel. Whilst appreciating that the film really is dialogue and silence-driven - there are extended sequences of silence during the film - I would have thought that the purpose of the 5.1 remaster was to add ambience to the sound picture. It fails the test in general, with the most obvious example being the scenes in the swamp around the 89:00 mark. Whilst there is lots of bird and insect noise, it is all coming from what sounds like the centre channel with nothing much from the front surrounds and nothing at all from the rear channels.

    Similarly, the purpose of the bass channel I would have thought was to add a bit of bass enhancement when required (such as the guillotine scenes), but apart from the engine room scene on the ship, the bass channel really does not give much support. Indeed, on a couple of occasions the overall sound picture has been utterly destroyed by grossly excessive bass reverb in the music score (around 20:20 is a bad example) that is completely out of character to the film. I really am most disappointed with the soundtrack, and would much preferred to have had the original mono soundtrack. After all, the film itself is not one that really requires much in the way of bass or surround channel support, being so heavily orientated towards dialogue and silence. Thankfully, there did not seem to be much in the way of distortion or other imperfections in the actual soundtrack.
 
 

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Theatrical Trailer (3:55)

Featurette - The Magnificent Rebel (11:51)

Biographies - Cast and Crew

Isolated Music Score

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (have a laugh, check out the bio)
14th January 2001