Butley (1973)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio & Animation Interviews-Cast-Sir Alan Bates (Actor) Interviews-Crew-Simon Gray (Writer) Interviews-Crew-Otto Plaschkes (Executive Producer) Featurette-Interview With Edie Landau (Executive In Charge Of AFT) Trailer-American Film Theatre Trailer Gallery (5) Notes-AFT Cinebill For Butley Gallery-Photo-Stills Gallery-Poster-2 Notes-Article - "Simon Gray And Butley"
Rating
Year Of Production	1973
Running Time	124:00 (Case: 129)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (111:42)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Harold Pinter
Studio Distributor	3DD Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Alan Bates Jessica Tandy Richard O'Callaghan Susan Engel Michael Byrne Georgina Hale Simon Rouse John Savident Oliver Maguire
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	None	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Umbrella Entertainment are in the process of releasing the 14 films in the American Film Theater series. This was an ambitious attempt to film contemporary theatre productions in the early 1970s, as films rather than as filmed stage plays. Conceived by Ely and Edie Landau, the series was intended to be funded by on-going subscriptions, but due to problems with getting the subscriptions to the subscribers the project eventually failed.

    But in the three years during which the project existed, the Landaus were able to attract some of the finest directors and performers on the stage in some excellent plays. All were paid about $25,000, and despite this low fee actors of the calibre of Katharine Hepburn, Lee Marvin, Fredric March, Maximilian Schell, Paul Scofield, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and many others performed in the films. Directors ranged from John Frankenheimer to Joseph Losey, Arthur Hiller, Peter Hall and Lindsay Anderson, and the plays came from the pens of Edward Albee, Eugene O'Neill, Bertholt Brecht, Harold Pinter and even Robert Shaw (yes, the actor from Jaws).

    This entry in the series was based on Simon Gray's 1971 play and was directed by Harold Pinter, his first feature film as director. Ben Butley (Alan Bates) is a lecturer at a London college. After a morning in which he cuts his face with a blunt razor (leaving him wearing a scrap of bloodied tissue a la Norman Gunston), he spends the day in his office effectively destroying his relationships with his colleagues, wife and students.

    Butley has recently separated from his wife, Ann (Susan Engel), and has gone back to rooming with colleague and former student Joey Keaston (Richard O'Callaghan). Keaston is a homosexual just returned from Leeds where he has had a few days away with his boyfriend Reg (Michael Byrne). Butley is dependant on Joey for emotional support, but as far as one can tell from the play Butley is not sexually attracted to him (don't believe what you read on the IMDb, which also gets the year of production wrong).

    Butley is a specialist on T.S. Eliot (a tattered photo of the poet, looking like a thinner version of Winston Churchill, hangs over his desk), but his attempt to write a book about him has stalled. He spends too much time drinking and reading nursery rhymes. Meanwhile an older colleague Edna (Jessica Tandy) has had her book about Herrick published. Edna thinks that Butley has stolen a student from her, a radical named Gardiner. Butley also has problems trying to put off a student wanting him to review her essay (Georgina Hale).

    What plot there is stems from Butley's personality, character relationships and histories being gradually revealed to the audience. In terms of linear plot, there is not that much to reveal. Virtually the whole play takes place in the office Butley shares with Keaston, apart from a few dialogue-free scenes tacked on by Gray for the film version. The dialogue is brilliant throughout, with a lot of very funny one-liners.

    What is also superb about this film is the performances. Alan Bates won a Tony for this role when the play moved from the West End to Broadway, and he is utterly convincing and finally moving as the lead character. O'Callaghan, who survived being in a couple of Carry Ons, is likewise excellent, a fine foil for Bates. Tandy (who one must remember was English) is very good in a relatively small role, and the instantly recognisable Byrne is also a standout. Pinter's direction is very discreet and the play unfolds at a steady pace without any dull or unnecessary sequences.

    It is a pity that the transfer is not up to scratch, as this is a superb film which still packs a punch after more than thirty years.

Video

    The film is transferred in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. I believe that the original aspect ratio was 1.85:1, so only a small amount of the image is missing.

    The transfer is reasonably sharp, and any lack of fine detail seems to be due to the original material. Colour looks a little washed out, and flesh tones vary considerably, but otherwise is acceptable. The bright blue eyes of Tandy and Byrne are quite noticeable in this transfer. Black levels are good, but shadow detail is lacking - Bates' hair looks like an amorphous mess most of the time. Contrast is satisfactory.

    The severe problem here is that the film seems to have been warped when it was transferred. The top quarter of the frame seems to wobble slightly throughout much of the film, and on cuts the distortion is severe. Like the reviewer of the Region 2 release, I watched some of these sequences on a frame by frame basis and the frame immediately before a cut seems to stretch vertically. This is very noticeable and is annoying. While I was able to watch the film through it may be difficult for many viewers to adjust.

    You will note also that the disc includes a 124-minute film plus about 100 minutes of extra features, and as a result of fitting all of this onto a dual-layered disc, some compression artefacts are visible. These include posterization, chroma noise and low level noise.

    No subtitles are provided, which is more annoying than usual because the film is dialogue-driven.

    The disc is RSDL-formatted. The layer change is not very disruptive, placed at an edit at 111:42.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    The sole audio track is Dolby Digital 2.0 mono.

    The audio, like the video, is problematic. Dialogue is clear throughout, but the audio sounds distorted in the louder passages. Even at normal levels the sound is boxy and lacking in fidelity. There is no music and few effects, so it is the voices that suffer most. There are also a few passages where there are regular dropouts of the sound.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    A copious selection of extras, all in 1.78:1 and 16x9 enhanced unless noted otherwise. The interviews all feature clips from films in the AFT series, with a bit of repetition.

Main Menu Audio & Animation

    The main menu has some slow-motion footage from the film and some generic jazzy music.

Interviews-Cast-Sir Alan Bates (Actor) (30:06)

    An interview that must have been conducted not long before Bates' death in 2003. He talks engagingly about his roles in Butley and In Celebration, a later film in the series, as well as his work on the stage in plays by the Angry Young Men.

Interviews-Crew-Simon Gray (Writer) (22:06)

    Gray talks about the casting of Bates, his relationship with the director, the writing of the additional material and the creation of the original play.

Interviews-Crew-Otto Plaschkes (Executive Producer) (21:46)

    Plaschkes discusses the series in general on which he was the executive producer. The interview does not go into Butley in any depth.

Featurette-Interview With Edie Landau (Executive In Charge Of AFT) (22:26)

    Edie Landau worked with her late husband on the AFT, conceived out of their ownership of a New York television station in the early 1960s and their experience in making a film about Martin Luther King. The interview covers the reasons the project eventually failed, the ease of casting (with emphasis on Katharine Hepburn) and how they obtained rights to the material.

Trailer-American Film Theatre Trailer Gallery (13:45)

    Trailers for Butley and The Man in the Glass Booth in 1.33:1 and the rest in 1.78:1, being The Iceman Cometh, The Homecoming and A Delicate Balance. All but The Man in the Glass Booth look like they are taken from original prints struck in the 1970s, because they are in poor condition.

Notes-AFT Cinebill For Butley

    This is a series of text screens comprised of what must have been the programme notes for the original screenings. There's an interview with Harold Pinter, a somewhat pretentious essay by Erich Segal and a droll account of college days by the humorist Robert Benchley (which allows me another Jaws reference, as his grandson wrote the novel).

Gallery-Photo-Stills

    A series of still photographs from the film, which mostly look like production stills.

Gallery-Poster

    A single screen that shows two posters for the film.

Notes-Article - "Simon Gray And Butley"

     Several pages of what amount to biographical notes about the playwright by Michael Feingold.

    The Region 4 seems to be a direct port of the UK Region 2 release. A review of that release indicates the same video and audio problems.

    The US Region 1 comes from Kino and includes basically the same extras as the Region 4, with the addition of something called The American Film Theater Scrapbook, which seems to be an on-disc extra, not a booklet. I have not been able to find any reviews of the Region 1, so I can't tell whether the same transfer problems exist. However, given that the extracts in the interview material have the same problems, and the interviews are also included on the Region 1, I would conclude that the Region 1 is no better than the Region 4. The 14 Region 1 releases of the film collection are available in three box sets or separately.

    An excellent play transferred to film with superb performances.

    The video and audio quality are disappointing.

    Some useful extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall