PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Bizet-Georges Bizet's Carmen (1984)

Bizet-Georges Bizet's Carmen (1984)

If you create a user account, you can add your own review of this DVD

Released 18-Apr-2000

Cover Art

This review is sponsored by
BUY IT

Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Music Theatrical Trailer
Rating Rated G
Year Of Production 1984
Running Time 149:09
RSDL / Flipper RSDL Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Francesco Rosi
Studio
Distributor

Sony Pictures Home Entertain
Starring Placido Domingo
Julia Migenes-Johnson
Ruggero Raimondi
Faith Esham
Case Amaray-Transparent
RPI $39.95 Music Georges Bizet


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame None French Dolby Digital 2.0 (256Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio 1.66:1
16x9 Enhancement
16x9 Enhanced
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.75:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Dutch
Arabic
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

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    Sometimes, I'll volunteer to review a film without knowing what it is actually about, or whether the film will be of any particular interest to me. The Faculty was one such title, in that I volunteered to review it without knowing whether I would be able to watch the film without wanting to throw something at my television set (I didn't know at the time that The Faculty was helmed by one of my favourite directors). Then there was a certain esoteric-sounding film called Carmen, a title with a certain sort of romantic-sounding connotation. I honestly don't know what on Earth possessed me to put my hand up to review this particular title, except that I had no idea what the name Carmen meant, and that was how the name was written up for allocation. As it turns out, I had volunteered to give my opinion of Georges Bizet's Carmen, a film adaptation of the 19th-century opera from which some very recognizable musical themes are borrowed today. This particular version is the 1984 French production financed by Gaumont, which accounts for the somewhat unsettling fact that all of the characters of an opera set in Spain are speaking in French. This is something that has to be mulled over quite hard before it sits comfortably in the mind of a man who has as heavy a bias as I have against the French language. I also have a fairly strong bias against musicals, and even when I was a child, my feelings against them were quite disturbingly vocal. Still, given that this is arguably the most popular opera ever made, and that there is supposedly a wide difference between an opera and a musical, I figured that I may as well attempt to put aside these biases and try to evaluate the film on its own merits.

    Anyway, near as I can tell, the plot is set in the city of Seville, which I must stress makes me wonder why the cast is singing in French. By the way, I am quite aware that this is how the original opera was written, but this language foisting is a lot like insisting that the French will speak in German. In case you haven't quite worked this out from my audio transfer comments in other reviews, I consider French a weak language that sounds more like butterflies flapping their wings than a mode of speech. If you're going to set a film in a city of Spain, it isn't such a bright idea to insult them by insisting that all of the citizenry would be speaking in a language other than their very aggressive-sounding native tongue. Anyway, getting back the plot, it is rather secondary to the music, through which all of the story is told (it is an opera, after all). A young gypsy woman named Carmen (Julia Migenes-Johnson) somehow gains the affections of a French soldier named Don José (Placido Domingo), who in turn is inspired by his love for her to abandon his post, his family, and his honour. After many a song is sung about such things as the nature of Carmen's love (another well known composition that can be heard in recent films such as Trainspotting), a dashing toreador by the name of Escamillo (Ruggero Raimondi) steals the heart of Carmen, creating that love triangle that seems to be an integral part of musicals. Needless to say, Don José becomes a reckless, enraged man whose emotions eventually lead him to murder Carmen, whereupon the film ends.

    To be frank with you, after viewing this film, I really have no intention of going back to it. I was disappointed to say the least with this adaptation of the opera, in spite of the fact that I have never been to a real opera in my life. It is hard to listen to, hard to sit through, and even hard to look at. The actors are unpleasant to look at, the sets are unpleasant to look at, and my enjoyment of the music is hampered by a combination of those two problems. The packaging certainly doesn't make any false claims with its promise about Carmen being a great introduction to opera, but after this introduction, I don't believe I was missing much by being perfectly ignorant. I believe that those of you out there who are into opera will love this title, but those who do not are advised to look somewhere else for a film set to music on DVD. Perhaps whomever owns the rights to Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, a film I remember well from my childhood, could get their finger out and bring it to our beloved medium. It would make a much nicer option than this film.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

    For a sixteen-year-old film made by an obscure studio that Hollywood had little interest in until they elected to rip off one of its better productions, this is a very good and detailed transfer. According to the information I was given about this release, the film is the first in this region to be presented in the mail-slotting format, which basically entails black bars to the sides of the of the picture rather than at the top and bottom. These black bars were hidden by the overscan on my television, but they looked quite nice in the screen capture Michael sent me. The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, and it is 16x9 Enhanced. This allows the additional information at the top and the bottom of the picture to take advantage of the extra resolution, and reinforces my belief that all video transfers should be presented with 16x9 Enhancement regardless of their actual ratio.

    The transfer was very sharp, although some limitations of 1984 photography made themselves known from time to time. This is where the 16x9 Enhancement really makes a difference. Shadow detail was average, with details in areas of total darkness being little more than a black smudge, which makes it all the better that very little of this film takes place in darkness. At no point did I see any low-level noise creep into the transfer, which is probably the most obvious sign that a lot of care was taken in the process of transferring this film to DVD. Colour saturation was mildly variable, with the occasional instance of mild oversaturation and the occasional instance of noticeable undersaturation. Overall, I'd say the colour saturation is a reflection of the look of the film when it was originally exhibited in European theatres, and thus is not really any fault of the transfer process.

    MPEG artefacts were absent from the presentation, in spite of the fact that the transfer rate is consistently moderate and there were some shots that would have pushed the compression quite hard. Film-to-video artefacts were absent from the presentation, reflecting a transfer that was well taken care of during this part of the process. Surprisingly, there did not appear to be any film artefacts in this transfer, either, which suggests that Gaumont went right back to the original negatives and cleaned them up for this presentation. The Deluxe Collector's Edition tag on Columbia's releases might have been turned into something of a joke, but the Gold Standard Quality sticker is still worth something, given that this is the first disc I have seen in a while that bears it.

    This disc is presented in the RSDL format, but I was unable to locate the exact point of transition on two viewings. Since I am unable to watch this disc again due to the fact that I am not able to stomach the opera anymore, I will have to declare this to be a completely transparent layer change. If anyone emails me and tells me that I am lazy for doing this, all I can say is you try analysing a film of a genre that you have absolutely no interest in.

Audio

    Matching the age-defying video transfer is an age-defying audio transfer, although it could have benefited from the use of slightly more sound channels. There is but one soundtrack on this disc: French in Dolby Digital 2.0, with a bitrate of 256 Kb/s instead of the usual 192 Kb/s. According to some reports, the English subtitles default to on with this disc in certain players, but the hard-core fans of opera will be glad to know that the subtitles can be easily turned off. Just for a laugh, I went through all the subtitles available on this disc, paying particular attention to the Spanish and Arabic subtitles. This film is driven more by the music than anything resembling dialogue, so understanding what the characters are on about is a secondary consideration. For the purpose of this review, I will be talking about the one and only audio track with the default English subtitles enabled.

    What little dialogue there was was perfectly easy to hear, and fairly easy to make out if you have any understanding of French, which I don't and I do not have any interest in acquiring any. The music is the predominant concern as far as this disc is concerned, and the vocals are very easy to make out. Overall, this is one of the best-mixed soundtracks I have heard for quite some time, with every sound in its proper place and not intruding upon others. Audio sync was never a problem at any time, although it is hard to tell with dialogue that is in a language you do not understand. In any case, there didn't seem to be any problems with the operatic vocals or the occasional moments of speech that advance the story.

    The music in this presentation of Carmen was arranged and conducted by Lorin Maazel. It is an excellent arrangement of the traditional opera, adapted to the film in a manner that brings the action on the screen to life in a way that defies the considerable absence of dialogue. Since the film is heavily dependent on the music to an extent that I have never seen before, I'd have to say that this music is probably the best in terms of complimenting the on-screen action. It's just too bad that the film is about the music instead of vice versa, otherwise this would be a remarkable and unusual achievement. In any case, the music is what this film is about, and it is a well constructed arrangement of music at that.

    Being that this is a Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo mix rather than a surround mix, the surround channels had nothing to do. Likewise, the subwoofer sat in its corner and yawned. In the most fundamental sound terms, this is little more than an audio disc with some accompanying video. Not that this is particularly bad, it just could have been a little better.

Extras

Menu

    The menu is themed around the film, with stills from the film accompanying the menus themselves. All of the menus on this disc are 16x9 Enhanced.

Theatrical Trailer

    This is the theatrical trailer that was released in France to advertise this film all the way back in 1984. It is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, and does not appear to be 16x9 Enhanced. It is accompanied by Dolby Digital 2.0 audio in French.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 1 version of this disc misses out on;     Can you imagine viewing a 155-minute film on a single layer in the NTSC format? I don't even want to try. Region 4 is the clear winner here.

Summary

    Georges Bizet's Carmen is an interesting film adaptation of what is arguably the most popular opera ever made. If you're into opera, then this disc is worthy of addition to your collection. Otherwise, I recommend waiting for more musicals to come into the market.

    The video quality is excellent, and shows the value of 16x9 Enhancement even on video that is not designed with widescreen in mind. It is denied reference status only by some slight giveaways to the age of the source material.

    The audio quality is outstanding for a stereo mix, and the extra amount of data in the bitrate has done the transfer wonders. Again, it is denied reference status only by the age of the source material.

    The extras are limited in both quantity and value.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (Don't talk about my bio. We don't wanna know.)
Saturday, March 18, 2000
Review Equipment
DVDToshiba SD-2109, using S-Video output
DisplaySamsung CS-823AMF (80cm). Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL).
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum.
AmplificationSony STR DE-835
SpeakersPanasonic S-J1500D Front Speakers, Sharp CP-303A Back Speakers, Philips FB206WC Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Subwoofer

Other Reviews
The DVD Bits - Vincent C