The Four Minute Mile (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio Introduction-David Williamson (Writer) Notes-Film Background Biographies-Cast Trailer-A Thousand Skies, Picnic At Hanging Rock, Dawn!, The Games
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	152:55
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (90:24)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Jim Goddard
Studio Distributor	Centre Films Umbrella Entertainment	Starring	Richard Huw Nique Needles Adrian Rawlins John Philbin Michael York Lewis Fitz-Gerald Tracey Mann Robert Burbage Adrian Dunbar Richard Wilson Mark Pennell Ralph Cotterill John O'May
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$24.95	Music	None Given

    Scripted by David Williamson, The Four Minute Mile is a tele-movie that recounts the famous sporting battle between England's Roger Bannister and Australia's John Landy, who both fought to become the first man to break through the four-minute mile barrier.

    In 1945, the record for the mile stood at 4 minutes 1.4 seconds. This record was to stand for another eight years, amid a commonly held belief was that it was humanly impossible to run a mile in under four minutes. Media and public interest swelled, as Bannister and Landy both edged closer to this goal during the early 1950s.

    Sir Roger Bannister (Richard Huw) will be forever remembered as the man who first achieved this remarkable goal, crossing the finish line in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds.

    However, what added a great dramatic element to this well-known story was his rivalry with Australia's John Landy (Nique Needles). Prior to Bannister's achievement, Landy had been considered the favourite to first achieve this milestone in human achievement.

    With a seemingly fairly accurate recreation of events, and extensive use of file footage and period radio broadcasts, this tele-movie tells this story, when world sports were dominated by an amateur athletic ethos, and the concept of gentleman sportsmen.

Video

    The transfer is severely limited by the dated source material, and it is very, very grainy.

    The transfer is presented in the (then) television aspect ratio of 1.33:1, full frame.

    The image is often soft, and can even appear blurry at times. The black level is poor throughout, and often appears a murky grey. The shadow detail is also poor, and the image seems to have an unnaturally high contrast.

    The colour seems adversely affected with age, and usually appears washed out.

    Apart from the excessive grain, the image also suffers from MPEG artefacts, and pixelization is evident throughout. Indeed, the image almost resembles one of those MPEGs that arrive in one's email. There was even some break up of the image at times, such as at 86:47.

    Film-To-Video Artefacts such as aliasing are not a problem, but some telecine wobble was evident, such as at 0:53 during the opening titles.

    Artefacts in the source material caused by age and dirt also appear throughout.

    No subtitles are present on this DVD.

    This is a Dual Layered disc, with the layer change placed at 90:24. The feature is divided into 18 chapters.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    As a 1980s television production, not surprisingly there is only one audio option on this DVD: English Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s).

    The overall audio is quite flat, but the dialogue quality and audio sync are fine.

    The orchestral musical score suits the production well, but its use did appear to be rather sparse.

    Not surprisingly for this production, the audio is not surround encoded, and thus there is no surround presence or LFE activity.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    There are a few extras.

Menu

    A simple menu with audio.

Introduction-David Williamson

    Respected screenwriter David Williamson introduces the production.

Notes-Film Background

    Five pages of text

Biographies-Cast

    Text-based bios for:

• Richard Huw
• Nique Needles
• Michael York

Aussie Trailers

• A Thousand Skies

• Picnic At Hanging Rock

• Dawn!

• The Games

    The Four Minute Mile has been released on VHS in Region 1, but I can not find an R1 DVD listing of it.

    A dated but still enjoyable tele-movie for those interested in the subject.

    The video quality is very disappointing.

    The audio quality is very limited.

    There are a few extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall