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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Donovan's Reef (1963)

Donovan's Reef (1963)

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Released 5-Aug-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Romantic Comedy Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1, 16x9 enhanced, Dolby Digital 2.0 (2:35)
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 1963
Running Time 104:11
RSDL / Flipper RSDL (55:06) Cast & Crew
Start Up Programme
Region Coding 4 Directed By John Ford
Studio
Distributor

Paramount Home Entertainment
Starring John Wayne
Lee Marvin
Elizabeth Allen
Jack Warden
Cesar Romero
Dorothy Lamour
Case ?
RPI $24.95 Music Cyril Mockridge


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)
Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.85:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
Slovenian
Swedish
Danish
Norwegian
Finnish
Dutch
Bulgarian
Icelandic
Portuguese
Hebrew
Greek
Croatian
Arabic
Turkish
Romanian
Serbian
Czech
Polish
Hungarian
German
Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    Back to John Wayne once again! Am I complaining? Not a chance. He might not have been a great actor, and he rarely made classic films, but he certainly was a star and made the sort of films that could be watched over and over again. Usually nothing too taxing on the brain and, by the latter stages of his career, quite formulaic and therefore with a comfortable degree of familiarity. I know - I have seen many of them over the years. It has, however, been a fair old while since I have seen Donovan's Reef, and a delightful, easy-on-the-brain romp it is too.

    The place is Haleakaloha, a paradise in Polynesia somewhere. Three Americans, naval survivors of the Second World War, have made their home there. Well, at least two have: Michael "Guns" Donovan (John Wayne), the owner of Donovan's Reef, and Dr William Dedham (Jack Warden), the island's only doctor. The third is Tom Gilhooley (Lee Marvin) who returns to the island to celebrate his birthday - which happens to be the same day as Guns Donovan's - in an unusual manner. He is a part owner it seems in Donovan's Reef. But Doc Dedham has a story, and it involves Boston and a long family history of which he has no desire to be a part. Turns out that his family are the proud owners of a shipping line dating back to 1763, and Doc Dedham is the sole beneficiary of the ownership of that fine institution by will - with the usual proviso that he is proved to be of good Bostonian character. Doc also has a daughter that he has never met: one Amelia Dedham (Elizabeth Allen), who sets out for the South Pacific in search of her father and to try and deny him his inheritance. One slight problem is that Doc has never told her about his local family - three children from his wife, who happens to be the local princess. With Doc away helping out on a neighbouring island, the imminent arrival sees Guns, with the aid of local governor Marquis Andre de Lage (Cesar Romero), and Tom concoct a plan to hide the Doc's local kids from his rather up-tight Boston daughter - at least until things can be explained in their own good time. Cue the arrival of Amelia and the fun begins - and the sparks begin to fly. Andre is well enamoured with the $18 million Amelia is worth, but he is not in the running. Seems that the Bostonian blue blood soon develops a liking for the South Pacific and one certain non-local inhabitant thereof.

    Yes, the story is nothing special but a fine cast carry it off with a high degree of fun. There is plenty of by-the-book stuff here, with the bar room brawls for instance, but who really cares? All that matters is that it is a bit of fun. This was the last of the films that John Wayne and director John Ford worked on and it was a fair blast to end their collaboration with. The Duke does what he has to do and can hardly be faulted: this easy-going role was the sort of thing that he was born to play and he does it so well. Lee Marvin gets to perfect the role that he went on to win an Oscar for in Cat Ballou - the drunk. Jack Warden gets to stretch his legs a bit as the Doc and Elizabeth Allen plays the softening up-tight Bostonian to perfection. The supporting cast is a treat and whilst John Ford was not a great devotee of the widescreen format, his direction here makes plenty of good use of the beauty of the shooting location (Kauai, Hawaii).

    With some genuine fun, some jokes that have still survived the forty years since the film was made, and some nice stuff to look at, Donovan's Reef might not be the best film The Duke ever made, but it is certainly one of his more enduring. For those fans of the film, this is probably as good as you have seen it in years.

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Transfer Quality

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1, which accords well with the original theatrical ratio, and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is generally quite sharp throughout, with just a few instances indicating that the transfer is perhaps too sharp - it shows up some of the matte work (such as in the opening sequences on the boat with Lee Marvin). There is a bit of light grain around but nothing that truly impinges upon the clarity of the presentation. In all other respects, this is rather nice indeed. Shadow detail is pretty good and low level noise is thankfully not an issue here.

    The colours generally come up very nicely indeed, with a delightful dash of bright tonal depth to make good use of the vibrant transfer. The Technicolor presentation is in nearly every aspect very good. The only issue is some slight colour bleed, such as at 1:28. Otherwise, saturation is at the high end of the scale but nothing over the top. Flesh tones can be a little on the heavy side, but this is probably as intended.

    The only noticeable issue with potential MPEG artefacts in the transfer is some loss of resolution in a moving pan shot at 3:51. I have not yet been able to categorically decide whether it is source related or not, but on the balance I would suspect so. There is a minor issue with aliasing in the transfer, but again nothing that is really going to detract from the film. A good example is seen at 23:08 on the collar of the coat. For a film of its age, the film artefacts are perhaps not as bad as they could have been, indicating that some decent work has been done to clean this film up.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD with the layer change coming rather obviously at 55:06. Since I normally cannot detect layer changes, that gives you some idea how obvious, and mildly disruptive, this one is.

    There is a plethora of subtitle options on the DVD. There is nothing much wrong with the English efforts.

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

Audio

    There are five soundtracks on the DVD, although most of us will be concerned with only the first one: an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The others are all Dolby Digital 2.0 efforts too: French, German, Spanish and Italian. Naturally I stuck with the English soundtrack.

    Despite the limitations of the soundtrack, there is nothing much that we could complain about. The dialogue comes up well enough and there are generally no problems understanding what is being said. Audio sync seems to be spot on, but just once or twice there was just a hint that the ADR work was awry.

    The original score comes from Cyril Mockridge. It is not the greatest score ever put together, but adds into the film the necessary musical support to keep the mood up to the mark.

    There is plenty to be happy with about the soundtrack in overall terms, considering the age of the source material. Thankfully there is little here in the way of hiss, and there is equally not a whole heap of problems with blemishes and the like. Whilst the original soundtrack is mono, and therefore it is to be presumed that this too is a mono effort, it has been mixed here in such a way as to make it sound rather better than straight mono. The overall sound is not as frontal as perhaps I would have expected.

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

Extras

    Not much here at all.

Menu

    Almost without point since the DVD plays straight into the film.

Theatrical Trailer (2:35)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, it is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. If nothing else it serves to illustrate how good the feature is, as it features slightly hissy sound, a grainy appearance and plenty of film artefacts. It also is not in the same league as the feature as far as colour goes.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    From the available reviews of the Region 1 release, it would appear that we have the same as they do - barring some differences in soundtracks and subtitles.

Summary

    By no means a masterpiece, of which John Ford did make a couple (How Green Is My Valley for instance), but a most enjoyable no-brainer romp. A superb cast does everything right and the DVD brings to the film its best outing in years. Something a little different for The Duke, this really is a great film to enjoy and is well worth checking out.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Ian Morris (Biological imperfection run amok)
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDDenon DVD-1600, using S-Video output
DisplaySony Trinitron Wega (80cm). Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationYamaha RXV-795
SpeakersEnergy Speakers: centre EXLC; left and right C-2; rears EXLR; and subwoofer ES-12XL

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