Crumb (1994)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Main Menu Audio Featurette-Crumb In American Splendor Theatrical Trailer Trailer-American Splendor, Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends, Angry Kid
Rating
Year Of Production	1994
Running Time	120:19 (Case: 119)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Terry Zwigoff
Studio Distributor	David Lynch Madman Entertainment	Starring	Robert Crumb Aline Kominsky Charles Crumb Maxon Crumb Robert Hughes Martin Muller Don Donahue Dana Crumb Trina Robbins Spain Rodriguez Deirdre English Peggy Orenstein Beatrice Crumb
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	David Boeddinghaus

   Zwigoff assembles his film from three elements: private interviews with Crumb, his wife, ex-wife, former girlfriends, colleagues, and critics; footage of Crumb going about the business of living, drawing, complaining, and meeting with friends and family; and Crumb’s artwork. This is not a product of the Michael Moore school of documentary-making: Zwigoff keeps himself as far in the background as possible, never appearing on screen and asking only a handful of barely audible questions. His presence as filmmaker is instead felt in the way he edits his material together, enabling the different strands of it to speak to and illuminate each other. Vitally important is the award-winning camerawork of Maryse Albert, which captures the nuances and telling details of people and artwork alike.

   Crumb himself emerges as a very difficult man, full of contempt for almost everyone and everything around him – including himself, as his self-deprecation and astonishingly naked and honest artwork show. Politically charged critics like Deirde England find him hard to pin down. Is he a progressive, as his vehement dislike of mainstream capitalist America might imply? Or a reactionary, as his allegedly racist and sexist (and undeniably fetishistic) comics suggest? Crumb seems in fact to be, as art critic Robert Hughes says, a complete outsider. He is uncomfortable with other people, full of nervous laughter and pained expressions. He makes cutting, sometimes brutal remarks that suggest a man so used to wryly captioning his caricatures that he has forgotten he is talking to his subjects. Only in his work is Crumb happy (there, and when getting a piggyback ride from a woman with shapely, powerful legs). Crumb confesses to a reporter that he is inwardly compelled to draw, unable to avoid revealing strange truths about himself in comic form. By channelling all the bizarreness of his damaged childhood and odd sexuality into his art, he produces work that is often creepy and borderline nuts, yet maintains his sanity in the everyday world. His talented, tragic brother Charles, who looms over both Crumb the man and Crumb the film, is unable to do the same; his comic books seem by contrast merely to illustrate his decline into madness.

   Crumb is not ultimately a film with an argument or a position to put, but rather an honest exploration of its subject. A sequence presenting Crumb’s wordless polemic "A Short History of America", showing the progressive despoliation of the country by urban blight, illustrates his personality without advocating his perspective. One can view Crumb and come to many different conclusions about the man and his work, from adulation to opposition, intrigue to revulsion; it inspires long thought and rewards rewatching. See it.

Video

   The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, essentially the same as the theatrical ratio of 1.37:1. It isn’t 16x9 enhanced, nor need it be.

   The image is somewhat soft at all times, though not annoyingly so. Given the entirely natural lighting, a lot of this film is quite dark; shadow detail is not great, but that is the source and not the transfer. There is no low level noise.

   Colours are fairly muted, giving the film a look that is both dated and authentic. There are some minor cross-colouration problems with the many comic panels shown – just enough to muddy the image a little.

   Outside of the black regions, this is a very noisy film. Grain is rife, as is posterisation and pixelisation; the image is slightly but constantly shimmery as a result (for instance, the blue shirt at 34:05). There is a very noticeable telecine wobble over the title credits sequence, although this may derive from the source material. Film artefacts are common but not overpowering. Finally, this is an interlaced transfer, taken from a cheap source.

   The subtitles are extremely accurate, very readable, and perfectly placed. Kudos!

   The cover incorrectly states that this is a dual-layered disc.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

   There is a single audio track available, in English and transferred in Dolby Digital 2.0 at 192Kbps.

   The dialogue is usually quite clear – only Terry Zwigoff’s occasional questions, and the mumbled speech of Crumb’s mother, are hard to decipher. However, there is sometimes a little crackle in the voices, particularly in the scene on the rooftop at 63:30. There is a bit of hiss, although it is never obtrusive. There are no problems with dialogue synchronisation.

   All the music on the soundtrack comes from Crumb’s obsessively extensive collection of early blues records. It’s terrific stuff – Crumb claims that it’s the only thing that lets him feel any love for humanity – but it has come directly from his carefully kept, yet very old, 78rpm vinyl records. Thus there is a lot of hiss, some crackling, and even slight mechanical noises from the turntable. It’s not clean, but it’s a perfect accompaniment to the movie.

   There is no surround usage at all, nor even any difference between the signal to the left and right front channels. This is as close to mono as Dolby Digital 2.0 can get, but nothing more is needed.

   There is no dedicated information for the subwoofer, so all it’s going to get is redirected bass from the front channels.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are a couple of not-very-exciting extra features here.

Menu

Trailers: American Splendor (2.13), Rocky & Bullwinkle Season One (1:06), Angry Kid (0:36)

Trailer: Crumb (2:47),

Crumb in American Splendor

   The Region 4 version of this disc misses out on;

• Nothing

• American Splendor-related material
• Trailers for Rocky & Bullwinkle and Angry Kid

   The video quality is bearable for a movie shot so cheaply, but less than could have been achieved.

   The audio quality is very faithful to the source material – which is itself far from perfect.

   The extras are pretty minimal.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall