For Pete's Sake (1974)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Audio Commentary-director Filmographies-Cast & Crew Theatrical Trailer Trailer-Sleepless in Seattle; The Way We Were
Rating
Year Of Production	1974
Running Time	86:19
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Peter Yates
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Barbra Streisand Michael Sarrazin Estelle Parsons Molly Picon William Redfield
Case	?
RPI	Box	Music	Artie Butler

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Hindi Portuguese French Audio Commentary German Audio Commentary Italian Audio Commentary Spanish Audio Commentary Dutch Audio Commentary	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    For Pete's Sake is a screwball comedy, a genre that has arguably disappeared today. It is a Barbra Streisand vehicle, as admitted in the commentary by director Peter Yates, intended to show that Barbra could act as well as sing.

    Henrietta "Henry" Robbins (Barbra Streisand) is married to Pete (Michael Sarrazin). They are reasonably happy, but money is really tight, as is shown as we follow Henry through her day, trying to make money selling plastic over the phone, running short of cash in the supermarket (note the appearance of a young Vincent Schiavelli on checkout), arguing with the bank over a bounced cheque, and so on. It doesn't help that they must entertain Pete's brother Fred (William Redfield) and his wife, the loathsome Helen (Estelle Parsons). Helen is of the (loudly announced) opinion that Pete married too young to the wrong woman, one who doesn't manage money well. Henry feels dreadful about this, and is determined to do the right thing, for Pete's sake.

    All this is setting the stage so we understand why Henry is so eager to help when Pete gets a tip for the commodities market (pork bellies — interesting that this is the same commodity that got Eddie Murphy started in Trading Places...) — all he needs is $3000 and they can be rich (I wish the commodities market was that simple!). They try for a bank loan, but get rejected. Pete gives up, but Henry continues, trying avenue after avenue to find the money. She eventually goes to a loan shark, and gets the money. Unfortunately, the loan shark wants his money back before the pork bellies deal comes through, so her contract gets sold.

    We see Henry trying all manner of ways to repay the loan — starting out credibly, and getting increasingly silly (well, it is a screwball comedy, after all). It's fairly entertaining comedy, but never reaches the heights of What's Up, Doc, let alone the great screwball comedies of earlier years.

    Barbra Streisand's performance is one of the weaker parts of this film — she's hamming it up too hard, and her strong accent becomes increasingly hard to take as she gets louder. It's not all her fault, though — I think the director has to accept quite a lot of the blame.

    There an interesting little cameo in a chandelier shop — look closely, it's Stuart Wagstaff (and the man in the cinema is Martin Erlichman, Barbra's manager). Also, it's strange how the photo frames in the hallway of the apartment are empty.

    The ending tries a little too hard, but that's no problem — screwball comedies are not renowned for clever endings.

Video

    This transfer is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. Given that the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, that's pretty close.

    The image is a little bit soft, and beset with fine grain and some background shimmer. Shadow detail is only fair, with shadows dropping off into black quite quickly. There is no low-level noise, though.

    Colour is pretty good, with natural looking skin tones, and a wide variety of colours on display — a yellow taxi looks well-saturated, but some reds come out a bit too orange. There are no colour-related artefacts.

    There are some small film artefacts, but they're never big enough to be troubling.

    There is some aliasing, but it is ameliorated by the softness of the image. There is some minor moiré, too. There are no MPEG artefacts.

    There are subtitles in English, and seven other languages. The commentary is subtitled in five languages, but unfortunately those don't include English, so if you want a subtitled commentary I hope you can read German, French, Spanish, Italian, or Dutch. I only watched the English subtitles — they are accurate enough, easy to read, and well-timed to the dialogue.

    The disc is single-sided and single layered. There is no layer change, which is good, but the disc is consequently restricted in space, which isn't. It's possible that the picture is a little over-compressed, and that's the reason for the fine grain and the background shimmer.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in five languages, including English, which is the only soundtrack I listened to (well, plus the commentary). It's a Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, not surround encoded — to be honest, it sounds essentially mono.

    The dialogue is mostly clear enough, although a few words are a bit difficult to make out. There are no obvious slips in audio sync.

    Artie Butler's score plays up the screwball comedy angle. It's reasonable, but nothing special. Barbra Streisand sings the opening theme song.

    The surrounds and sub-woofer get the night off with this straight 2.0 soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is static and silent. It's simple to use.

Audio Commentary — director Peter Yates

    This commentary is a bit sporadic, with some long gaps. He talks about how much he liked the cast and working with Barbra, and some of the details of selecting locations, a little of the background behind the movie, and so forth. Not a scintillating commentary.

Filmographies

    Two pages for each of:

• Peter Yates (director) — he directed Krull, The Deep, and Bullitt
• Barbra Streisand
• Michael Sarrazin
• Estelle Parsons

Trailers

• For Pete's Sake (2:44)
• Sleepless in Seattle (2:30)
• The Way We Were (2:25)

    This film was released on DVD in Region 1 quite some time back, in early 2001. The Region 1 disc is one of those double-sided efforts that are much more common over there, with the full-screen version on one side, and the widescreen on the other. Reports vary somewhat, but it sounds like the widescreen transfer is at least as good as on this disc. It has the commentary, just as ours has, but I get the impression that the commentary isn't subtitled. Unless you are desperate for a full-screen version of the movie, there doesn't seem to be a compelling reason to choose either version.

    For Pete's Sake is a comedy that doesn't quite fly, on a decent DVD.

    The video quality is good.

    The audio quality is reasonably good.

    The only significant extra is the commentary.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall