Go West (1940)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio Short Film-Vintage Shorts: Quicker 'N A Wink,Cavalcade Of San Francisco Short Film-Cartoon - The Milky Way Theatrical Trailer-2:23
Rating	?
Year Of Production	1940
Running Time	77:02
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4,5	Directed By	Edward Buzzell
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Groucho Marx Chico Marx Harpo Marx John Carroll Diana Lewis Walter Woolf King Robert Barrat June MacCloy George Lessey
Case	?
RPI	Box	Music	Charles Wakefield Cadman Roger Edens Bronislau Kaper

    I think Go West was the first Marx Brothers film I saw. It certainly made an impression. I was a child, and I didn't understand all of the jokes, but I still found it quite entertaining, particularly the ending.

    This film has only the three main Marx Brothers in it. Groucho plays S Quentin Quale, a would-be sharp wheeler-dealer. Chico is Joe Panello, while Harpo is Rusty Panello, Joe's brother. Quale is trying to get a ticket on the train to go out West. He's $10 short of the required $70. He tries to sell a coon-skin hat to Rusty to make the extra money, but has some problems making change.

    Meanwhile, Terry Turner (John Carroll) is convincing a railroad company to run their new railway through Dead Man's Gulch. He wants them to buy it so he can marry Eve Wilson (Dianne Lewis) — his grandfather sold the putatively worthless gulch to her grandfather, so her grandfather hates all Turners. Terry's idea is her grandfather will forgive the feud if he makes lots of money on the sale of the land.

    There's a hitch: Red Baxter (Robert Barrat), the local saloon owner/gunslinger, has teamed up with John Beecher (Walter Woolf King), the railroad company's negotiator, to organise things so that the railroad will be forced to buy their land. Add in the fact that Mr Wilson has handed the deed to Dead Man's Gulch to Joe and Rusty because they've lent him money, and they have handed it over to someone else, and things get quite complicated.

    This film is particularly memorable for the climactic sequence, involving a steam train — if you have seen it, you'll remember it. If you haven't, well, you'll remember it afterwards...

    This is a fairly typical Marx Brothers film — lots of laughs, a few musical numbers (we get to see Groucho on guitar, as well as Chico on piano and Harpo on harp), and the boys helping out a romantic storyline in their usual zany way. Thoroughly recommended to existing fans, and to those who've never seen the Marx Brothers before.

Video

    This DVD is presented at an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced — that's close enough to the original 1.37:1 ratio.

    The image is reasonably clear, for a black-and-white film from 1940 — in other words, it's a bit soft. Film grain is visible, but not troubling. Shadow detail is quite limited, but looks acceptable. There is no low-level noise, though.

    There are no colour issues — that's because it's a monochrome film — well, at about 6:33 and 8:30 there's a little bit of false colour effect. The blacks are deep black; the whites are nice and white (very occasionally a touch over-hot). There's quite a decent range of greys, too.

    There are surprisingly few film artefacts for a film from 1940. That's not to say there aren't any. There are a fair few flecks and specks, the occasional scratch, but they are to be expected, especially in a screening print. This is definitely a screening print — there are reel change markings at 19:02, 37:14, 54:10, and 68:32 — but it seems comparatively well-preserved. There's some minor telecine wobble, most especially during the opening credits.

    There is some minor aliasing. There's some mild moiré, especially in the opening scene in the train station. There are no MPEG artefacts. There is no edge enhancement.

    There are subtitles in English and several other languages. I watched the English subtitles — they are rather accurate, easy to read, and seem well-timed.

    The disc is single-sided, single layer. No layer change, which is good. There seems to be enough room for this short movie, and the extras, on this layer.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The soundtrack is provided in English, Italian, and French. I only listened to the English. It's Dolby Digital 1.0 at 192kbps — this is definitely mono.

    The dialogue is clear enough, but it's not a high fidelity soundtrack. There are no slips in audio sync.

    The score is not credited to any composer, but the musical director was Georgie Stoll, and there are credits for three songs.

    The only speaker this disc will use is your centre channel.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    The shorts included with this movie are all from the same year (1940) — it's easy to imagine (if you are old enough) the shorts being screened before the film.

Menu

    The menu is static with music. It's simple to use.

Featurette: Quicker 'n a Wink (9:14)

    This is a Pete Smith popular science piece about the use of a stroboscope and high speed photography. It's black-and-white.

Featurette: Cavalcade of San Francisco (8:54)

    A colour short featuring James A Fitzpatrick, effectively a travelogue about San Francisco.

Cartoon: The Milky Way (7:58)

    A Rudolf Ising colour cartoon about three little kittens.

Theatrical Trailer (2:23)

    A classic trailer from the era.

    This film was released on DVD in Region 1 earlier this year as part of a 7 film collection, just like this one. This movie, in both regions, is one side of a double-sided disc (The Big Store is on the other side).

    The Region 1 version gets one more extra: Leo is on the Air: Go West — a radio broadcast which is really a trailer for the film. It plays (in fairly poor fidelity) for 13:47 while the menu is displayed — the Region 4 disc isn't missing much.

    The transfer on the Region 1 disc isn't quite as good as the Region 4, but it's not whole lot different. It runs 80:12, which is in the correct ratio to the R4 run time (77:02) for both to be telecine transfers from the same print. If they are, then the telecine of the Region 4 transfer was done on better equipment or by better technicians. The R1 shows a bit more jumpiness (more sprocket hole damage?), and is a bit darker than the R4. Both show about the same level of film artefacts, including the reel change markings (The R1's first reel change marks come at 19:49, again fitting with this being the same or similar screen print). The R1 also shows a very slight mis-sync of the audio intermittently.

    All up, I'd say the Region 4 is the better disc.

    A classic Marx Brothers film that's in good shape for a film that has almost reached retirement age.

    The video quality is decent considering.

    The audio quality is adequate.

    The extras are roughly what you might have seen before this film when it first screened.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall