Carousel (1956)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	Featurette-Movietone News Premiere Biographies-Cast & Crew Production Notes
Rating
Year Of Production	1956
Running Time	123:22
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Henry King
Studio Distributor	Twentieth Century Fox	Starring	Gordan MacRae Shirley Jones
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$31.95	Music	Richard Rogers Oscar Hammerstein II

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.0 (448Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.35:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    The story begins quite strangely, with Billy Bigelow (Gordan MacRae) polishing stars in heaven. Using a number of flashbacks, how he ends up in heaven is revealed. When on earth, Billy was a very good carousel barker, someone whose job is to call out and entice people to ride on the carousel. Here he meets Julie (Shirley Jones), who seems infatuated with him. Within no time at all Julie and Billy are married, even though Billy has a less-than-clean past. Married life does not fit well with Billy, and being bored and unemployed, he agrees to commit a robbery. Things naturally go wrong, and Billy ends up in heaven. He is given a chance to go back to earth and help his now grown up daughter, and perhaps correct some of the wrongs in his life.

    Overall, the story and characters just never interested me, and I could not relate to or get involved with the movie. Much like South Pacific, the songs are not catchy at all, and some seemed to go on for far too long. The dance sequences, such as those from around 39:00 to 44:00 and 100:00 to 109:00, are very elaborate but do not fit well within the movie. They do not serve to forward the story or enrich it in any way, but rather seem to be there only to add some music and dancing to the movie. They are well choreographed, but also drag on in length. Perhaps the only interesting thing was the use of the term "slut" during the film. This surprised me for a G-rated movie, and it also surprised me that a term like that was used in a movie back in the 50s.

    Again much like South Pacific, I did not enjoy Carousel as much other classic Rogers and Hammerstein musicals. The DVD transfer is of average quality, and should please fans of the movie.

Video

    The movie is presented at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, which is the same as the original theatrical aspect ratio. Again it is disappointing that the transfer is not 16x9 enhanced. The version of the movie shown is the Cinemascope 55mm print as indicated by the opening credit introducing this new form of cinematography. As the extras indicate, the movie was also shot using the Cinemascope 35 process, and so every scene had to be shot twice (in much the same way that Oklahoma! and South Pacific had to be shot twice due to the use of the Todd-AO process.

    The sharpness level throughout most of the movie is surprisingly good, with only a handful of scenes looking a little soft. Black levels are also quite good, although shadow detail is certainly lacking. There are some scenes where most of the frame appears totally black and it is hard to discern the people in the scene. It is nice to note that there is very little, if any, low level noise. Grain was also surprisingly absent for most of the film. The bright blue sky is usually a dead giveaway for grain, and those scenes in this movie appear quite clean and natural.

    There are no major issues with the colour, which is done fairly well. Items such as carnival balloons, costumes, and the carousel being particularly vibrant. Skin tones sometimes appear a little dull and muted, but generally they are natural.

    A constant throughout all current Rogers and Hammerstein DVD releases that I have seen to date is that the opening credits display variations in brightness as the credits are flashed on the screen. I am not quite sure why this occurs, but it is a common problem with all these releases. Also, in a similar manner to the South Pacific print, there seems to be a problem with the brightness level in scenes during the movie. One example occurs at 6:17, where the upper part of the frame appears to suddenly brighten and then darken again. A more obvious example is the fairly dark scene starting around 9:30 that exhibits a subtle flickering in brightness that is really quite distracting.

    Film artefacts are kept to a minimum, with the occasion white fleck and line across the screen. The worst example appears at 6:23, where a distinct white vertical line can be seen almost straight down the middle of the frame. Film-to-video artefacts such as edge enhancement and aliasing occur on a number of occasions, with aliasing being particularly distracting. Edge enhancement occurs against the usual culprits of dark objects against bright backgrounds. Due to the sharpness of the transfer, aliasing appears with anything that is striped, crossed, or patterned. A good example is exhibited around 30:15, as Bigelow walks around in his plaid pants. It was almost funny seeing his pants shimmer in that annoying manner!

    English subtitles for the hearing impaired are provided, and they are fairly accurate with only a few modifications.

    This is not a RSDL-formatted disc, and thus there is no layer change.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    Dialogue is sometimes hard to hear, mainly due to the score being quite loud at times. One example occurs early in the movie at 7:36, where Bigelow is yelling out to the crowd. The background musical score is so loud during this scene that it was very hard to hear what he was saying. In fact, I had to switch on the subtitles to understand it. Audio synchronisation was also average, with some scenes being noticeably redubbed. There was definitely some lip synching and ADR problems with this movie, but these aren't really a fault of the transfer.

    As with other Rogers and Hammerstein movies, the audio has some very good stereo separation across the front speakers. As I indicated in the other reviews, at times the stereo panning does seem a little excessive and unnatural, but this is the nature of the stereo recording popular in those days.

    The surround activity is subdued, with only a handful of occasions where the score is projected through the surrounds to perhaps created some aural depth. I believe the surround sound to be a mono signal. The subwoofer usage is also predictably subdued, only coming into effect on a small number of occasions to support the musical score.

    It should be noted that the bass heard on my audio setup is not a true .1 LFE signal, but is in fact a redirection of the bass from the main speakers. This is due to the fact that I have my speakers set to "Small", which effectively tells my receiver to redirect the bass to the subwoofer. When I set my speakers to "Large", bass was no longer redirected to my subwoofer. Therefore the Dolby Digital track is correctly labeled as 5.0, and not 4.1 as might be implied by the bass from the subwoofer in my setup.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Movietone News Premiere - 1:37

    This short clip shows the original TV spot introducing the cast, crew, and studio executives that walked down the red carpet at the premiere of Carousel. It is in black and white and presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1.

Cast and Crew

    This provides various notes about the background of the cast and crew. Mildly interesting, with nice clear text.

Production Notes

     This provides some information about the development of the movie. It was particularly interesting to note that Frank Sinatra was actually the first choice to play Bill Bigelow, but the stress of shooting each scene twice to accommodate Cinemascope 35mm and 55mm was too much for his voice. Gene Kelly was next in line, but his voice was also not up to the task, and so they opted for Gordan MacRae who had finished shooting Oklahoma!.

    I found Carousel to be quite boring. The story and characters just did not interested me in the slightest, and in my opinion this movie is certainly not up to the standard of other musicals such as Oklahoma! and The Sound of Music. I would recommend this only for die-hard fans.

    The video quality is satisfactory, but could have been better. The lack of 16x9 enhancement is disappointing.

    The audio quality is satisfactory, and replicates the theatrical soundtrack well enough.

    The extras are nothing particularly memorable.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall