Funny Girl (1968)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Dolby Digital Trailer-City Main Menu Introduction Menu Animation & Audio Featurette-Barbra in Movieland Featurette-This is Streisand Music Highlights Filmographies-Cast & Crew
Rating
Year Of Production	1968
Running Time	148:54
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (67:39)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	William Wyler
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Barbra Streisand Omar Sharif Kay Medford Anne Francis Walter Pidgeon
Case	Custom Packaging
RPI	Box	Music	Jule Styne

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 5.0 (448Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 5.0 (448Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 5.0 (384Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 5.0 (384Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 5.0 (384Kb/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 French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Funny Girl is (loosely) based on the life of Fanny Brice, a woman who starred in the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1920s and 1930s as a comic performer. I don't know how accurate this portrayal is, but at least the names are authentic (there really was a Fanny Brice, a Ziegfeld, and a Nicky Arnstein). I suspect that much of the rest is, umm, musical licence.

    This film opens with the camera following a woman wearing a leopard skin outfit (this film was made in 1968, long before the new consciousness about fur; there's even a credit for the furrier!) into a theatre, the marquee of which has Fanny Brice's name in lights. It isn't until she reaches a mirror that we see it is Barbra Streisand. She talks to herself, saying that Mrs Strakosh was wrong. Flashback some years, to Mrs Strakosh saying it. Now Fanny Brice is a young woman, trying to get a job on the stage of a local night club. She doesn't do very well. She gets fired from that chorus, gets a job in another song and dance number, this time on rollerskates — this one is actually rather funny, with the well-meaning Fanny Brice managing to topple all the other performers. However, the stage manager, a friend, gets her an opportunity to wow the audience by herself, and she manages to pull it off. Somewhat later, she gets an opportunity to audition for Ziegfeld (Walter Pidgeon, in superb form), and gets the job.

    There are some interesting scenes of confrontation between Fanny Brice and Ziegfeld, and she defies him on her very first night in a Ziegfeld show. One gets the impression afterwards, when she says she will obey him, that she means it like a cat: that is, she'll obey every order to do whatever she already intended to do.

    There are a lot of musical numbers in this show, and they are mostly very good ones. The only one sung by Omar Sharif, You are Woman, I am Man, reveals why this was his first, and I think last, musical performance — his voice is a bit thin. Almost all of the songs feature Barbra Streisand, which is fine by me — she gets plenty of opportunities to unleash her voice.

    Barbra Streisand's performance in this movie is impressive, all the more so for it being her first film. She has to carry the film, and she does so effortlessly. She is in almost every scene of the entire two and a half hours. It probably helps that she is playing a New York Jewish singer and comic performer. Omar Sharif does quite a good job as Nicky Arnstein, but his part is quite a bit smaller than hers.

     This is a really good musical, with touches of drama, comedy, and pathos. The film might be 35 years old, but it plays perfectly well today. Recommended.

Video

    The main feature ends with credits for the restoration work. It's not altogether surprising that a film of this age required restoration, and they appear to have done a rather decent job of it.

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and is 16x9 enhanced. That's the original aspect ratio for an anamorphic Panavision film, so we're not complaining.

    The picture is mostly quite sharp and clear, with the exception of a number of early close-ups of Barbra Streisand, close-ups that received the old soft-focus filter — it's a bit silly, really, watching intercutting of nice sharp close-ups of Omar Sharif with soft-focus Barbra. The two-shots show her nice and sharp, however. Shadow detail is fine. Film grain is no problem. There is no low level noise, despite there being plenty of opportunities for it to show up.

    By the way, don't panic about the screen being completely black for the first four and a half minutes — that's the overture, and used to play while people were settling down in the cinema. At least they show a slide saying intermission during the two minute break that starts at 89:20. It would have been sensible to show a slide during the overture.

    Colour is not perfectly rendered, I suspect, but it's more than acceptable, and colours are consistent. There are some nice rich colours on display, including some lovely deep reds. There's no colour bleed or over-saturation.

    There are plenty of small film artefacts: spots, flecks, chips, and so forth, but nothing large — it looks like the restoration work confined itself to the larger flaws, leaving behind the small ones — call it the patina of age, and appreciate the fact that none of the film artefacts is large enough to interfere with enjoying the film.

    There is little aliasing, no moiré of significance, and no MPEG artefacts. Clearly this film transfer was done with real care.

    There are subtitles in twenty one languages, including English. I only watched the English. They are easy to read, and single lines are positioned in the black bar, either above or below the picture. They are well-timed to the dialogue, and fairly accurate. I was disappointed to note that they subtitle only the dialogue, and none of the lyrics.

    The disc is single sided, RSDL; the layer change is at 67:39. It's quite a good layer change, and not at all disruptive.

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. I only listened to the English, which is in Dolby Digital 5.0, but I'm not sure why. Pretty much the entire soundtrack is rendered through the front three speakers (left, centre, right), with the centre getting by far the biggest workout. Even so, the sound is quite decent, with the musical numbers coming through well.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible, as is the singing. There are no blatant audio sync glitches, although you might spot a few slight slips in the lip-syncing on the songs.

    The music is courtesy of Jule Styne, while the lyrics are from Bob Merrill. Walter Scharf supervised and conducted, and Herbert Ross directed all the musical numbers. There's plenty of experience there.

    The subwoofer gets nothing to do from a 5.0 track, and the surrounds don't get a whole lot more.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    All the menus, except for scene selection, feature music. The menus are easy to navigate.

Featurette: Barbra in Movieland (10:09)

    This featurette was shot during the making of the movie, and is rather a sweet little piece told from the point of view of the caretaker of an abandoned railway station. His station was invaded for ten days for the filming of the Don't Rain on My Parade number. It's a lot more interesting than the average behind-the-scenes piece. The caretaker even got a small part in the film.

Featurette: This is Streisand (5:34)

    This was also shot around the time of making the film, but it's a rather more conventional promotion. It takes the path of promoting the film by promoting the star.

Music Video: Song Highlights

    This is twelve pieces taken straight from the film, with no effort to smooth the opening or closing. Useful if you wanted to show someone one of the listed songs, but that's about it. At least they are 16x9 enhanced. The songs are:

• I'm the Greatest Star (1:27)
• I'd Rather be Blue Over You (2:19)
• Second-hand Rose (1:09)
• His Love Makes Me Beautiful (2:30) (the bridal piece)
• People (2:45)
• People (reprise) (1:13)
• You are Woman, I am Man (4:10)
• Don't Rain on My Parade (3:00)
• Sadie, Sadie (3:49)
• The Swan (2:25)
• Funny Girl (2:34)
• My Man (2:16)

Filmographies

    These are abbreviated filmographies for William Wyler, Barbra Streisand, Omar Sharif, and Walter Pidgeon. Unsurprisingly, given the talent involved, there's been some heavy editing to get the lists down to two pages apiece.

    This film was released in R1 on DVD towards the end of 2001, so we've had a bit of a wait. As far as I can tell, however, we've not been disadvantaged by the wait — the Region 4 disc has the same features (except for production notes and trailers) as the R1. It sounds like their transfer is as good as ours, so you can pick either version with confidence.

    Funny Girl is a very good musical delivered on a DVD that's surprisingly good for the age of the film.

    The video quality is very good, despite the frequent small film artefacts.

    The audio quality is good, but not stellar. The important thing is that the musical numbers sound fine.

    The extras are limited, but not bad.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall