Silent Movie (1976)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1976
Running Time	83:47
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Mel Brooks
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Mel Brooks Marty Feldman Dom DeLuise Sid Caesar Bernadette Peters
Case	?
RPI	?	Music	John Morris

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

    This is yet another Mel Brooks movie, starring himself and regulars Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise and Bernadette Peters. In addition, there are numerous guest stars including Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Anne Bancroft, Marcel Marceau, and Paul Newman.

    Film director Mel Funn (Mel Brooks) is trying to recover from his alcoholism and stage a career comeback. Together with his friends Marty Eggs (Marty Feldman) and Dom Bell (Dom DeLuise), they manage to persuade the Studio Chief (Sid Caesar) to allow them to make a Silent Movie, but on condition that they secure some big name stars to appear in the film.

    As they drive around Hollywood trying to sign up the big stars, mega-conglomerate Engulf and Devour is trying to acquire Big Pictures Studios and they definitely do NOT want Mel and his friends to succeed!

    What follows is your typical Mel Brooks film consisting of a mixture of slapstick, funny situations and clever dialogue (rendered in old fashioned black and white frames on screen of course).

Video

    This is a widescreen 16x9 enhanced transfer, presented in the intended aspect ratio of 1.85:1 based on a 35 mm film print.

    Given the age of the film, the transfer is not too shabby, with good black levels, reasonable contrast, and fairly well-saturated colours, though both detail and colour saturation are probably quite a few notches below reference quality.

    Grain is noticeably present, though at bearable levels. I also detected slight edge enhancement and some occasional Gibb's effect artefacts.

    There are several subtitle tracks present, including Dutch, English for the Hearing Impaired, French, German for the Hearing Impaired, Italian, and Spanish. I was curious as to why an English subtitle track was necessary (after all, this is a Silent Movie!) but discovered that it is mostly used to transcribe foley effects as well as descriptions of background music (such as "joyful instrumental music").

    Part of the fun of the film for lip-readers is that occasionally the on-screen dialogue title cards don't really reflect what the characters are saying - they appear to be "sanitised" versions of the words actually spoken.

    This is a single-sided single-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There is only one audio track present: English Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded (192kb/s).

    I doubt that the original theatrical print had surround sound (it was probably released with a mono optical audio track) but the music and foley effects appear to be in stereo so the soundtrack may well have been remixed for surround.

    In any case, engaging Dolby Pro Logic II created a pleasant ambience mainly for the background music in the surround channels. I did not notice any instances of panning of foley effects to the surround channels.

    There is only one word of dialogue in this film, and it's spoken by a very unlikely member of cast. The audio seems synchronized to the video for this one word.

    The background music (by John Morris) seems to be a parody of the Hollywood orchestral style.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    This is a fairly bare bones release.

Menu

    The menus are 16x9 enhanced but static.

Theatrical Trailer (1:53)

    This is presented in 1.85:1 (16x9 enhanced) and Dolby Digital 2.0 (192kb/s). There are a fair number of both white and black film marks in the source.

    There is censorship information available for this title. Click here to read it (a new window will open). WARNING: Often these entries contain MAJOR plot spoilers.

    This title has yet to be released in Region 1.

    Silent Movie is yet another classic Mel Brooks film, given the bare bones treatment.

    The video transfer quality is acceptable.

    The audio transfer quality is mediocre.

    The only extra is a theatrical trailer.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall