Johnny Cash-The Man, His World, His Music (1969)

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General		Extras
Category	Documentary	Menu Animation & Audio Audio Commentary Music Highlights-Jukebox DVD Credits Featurette-Review (2:06)
Rating
Year Of Production	1969
Running Time	69:42 (Case: 80)
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Robert Elfstrom
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Johnny Cash June Carter Carl Perkins
Case	Click
RPI	$34.95	Music	Johnny Cash

    When you consider the fact that such musical non-entities as Will Smith, Britney Spears and a host more wannabes have already appeared on DVD-Video, it makes little sense at all that a genuine legend such as Johnny Cash has thus far not made an appearance. After all, very few musicians in any genre have had the chart success of this man, and over as long a period of time as he has. Although notionally a country singer, Johnny Cash a.k.a. The Man In Black really never fitted the mold of just a country singer and was one of those rare individuals able to work successfully in a number of genres. It is hard to argue with something like 1,500 songs, well over 100 singles in the country charts, almost fifty singles in the Billboard Top 100 pop chart and more albums than most artists can poke a stick at. He has recorded with some of the very best in music. Yet despite this, for some reason he always strikes me as someone who has never truly received his just due in the eyes of the public. He hardly ever seems to be mentioned when discussing great country music artists, let alone just great music artists in general. But frankly that is what he is, and it is when you return to something like this documentary and listen to him perform his own great songs in his own inimitable style that you realise just how great an artist he is. There is nothing quite so enjoyable as sitting back and revisiting classics such as Folsom Prison Blues, Ring Of Fire and Ballad Of Ira Hayes, amongst many more.

    Don't be fooled by the 2002 copyright date on the slick cover - this is not recent material by any stretch of the imagination. Filmed in 1968 and 1969, when Johnny Cash was arguably at the peak of his public acceptance, this is of the nature of a home movie with excepts taken from various live appearances added in. It is not really a coherent documentary but the rather rambling way it is done probably captures more of the true nature of the man than if it were to be presented any other way. The movie material includes visits to places in Johnny Cash's past - a past that was very hard but one in which he is deeply reverent and deeply proud. We see some of his old haunts as well as meet people from his past. We also get to see material filmed during recording sessions, including one with Bob Dylan. But the important stuff here is really the live performances, which are the essence of the man and his art. He was famed for them, most especially his prison concerts (his album At Folsom Prison is still one of the greats of country music), and this documentary really captures this important aspect of his musical life.

    The downside is of course that it is thirty three years old and a lot has happened in those thirty three years. As a result, this can really be nothing more than a brief introduction to one of the most influential country artists of the last century, an introduction that really leaves you with a taste for much, much more.

Video

    If you are to enjoy this programming, you will need to be very tolerant of some of the gross problems it contains. This is not well preserved material at all and at times could be counted amongst the worst looking stuff I have seen on DVD - and that includes all those old 1920s and 1930s films I have seen. Indeed, at times some of those old films look better than this.

    The transfer is presented in a 1.33:1 Full Frame aspect ratio, befitting its television documentary nature. The programme was released theatrically in the United Kingdom but I do not believe that it ever had a widescreen presentation. The transfer is of course not 16x9 enhanced.

    There really is little complimentary to say about this transfer. At times the transfer is extremely soft in definition, very much lacking in detail. Shadow detail can be atrocious. At one stage, around 23:05, the detail is so poor that the screen actually just looks completely black! Even at the best of times there is something lacking in the shadow detail department. Grain is an ever-present problem to varying degrees - extremely poor as at 26:33 to more generally not pleasant as at 3:00. Clarity as you might imagine varies from woeful to adequate. Low level noise is almost a constant underlying threat. It should be pointed out that the live performances tend to be poorer in most respects than the other filmed stuff, but no aspect of the transfer really provides any sort of satisfaction.

    The colours here are similarly quite varied and to a large extent are severely understated. Whilst there is the odd instance of almost oversaturation to be seen - notably in some of the red lit concert sequences - the general trend here is for washed-out colours with no serious tone to them. The blacks can be quite intense at times, usually when they should not be, but overall there is little consistency in them. Even considering the age of the material and the way it was filmed - some would be poor even by home movie standards - this is sub-standard in just about every way.

    I suppose we should be grateful that there are not much in the way of significant MPEG artefacts in the transfer. The lack of resolution sometimes seen is a combination of lousy focus and inherent source material limitations. There are however a veritable truckload of film-to-video artefacts, with the usual issues of aliasing bedevilling things like guitars and microphones. There are also some indications of moiré artefacting such as at 8:13 and 13:10. Indeed, moiré artefacting can be found in the menus for the jukebox! But not even this can prepare you for some of the problems that are presented by the film artefacts! From the opening seconds, the predominant black highlights all the myriad of spots, speckles, nicks, scratches and whatever else so readily that it does become quite difficult to concentrate on the programme. Some of the concert material would rank as amongst the worst I have ever seen - and that includes some of those dreaded Avenue One releases. The overall impression is one of a blatantly cheap release rather than one where some effort has been made to correct some of the grosser aspects of the source material. It is almost as if the word restoration had not been found in the dictionary.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD apparently, but I will have to get back to you with the layer change point.

    Rounding out a decidedly sub-standard transfer is the lack of any subtitle options - all the more irritating as sometimes the dialogue in the programme is quite difficult to understand.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three soundtrack options on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack, an English Audio Commentary in Dolby Digital 2.0 and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack. I listened to the 5.1 soundtrack in its entirety, most of the Audio Commentary and briefly sampled the Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The dialogue and vocals are somewhat variable in quality and sometimes are quite difficult to hear and comprehend. There is an issue with audio sync, which on occasions seems to be very marginally out. Given the nature of the source material, this is possibly an inherent problem but it sure had me getting just a little annoyed. Once I noticed the occasionally out-of-sync nature of the programming, whenever it cropped up thereafter, it became a little more obvious.

    Most of the music comes from Johnny Cash of course and is the entire point of the documentary. There is one contribution from Carl Perkins doing Blue Suede Shoes - it was originally his song by the way, not Elvis Presley's - and in general there is plenty of terrific stuff to revel in here.

    Basically the Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack is extremely poor. It lacks any sort of clarity to it, is woefully inconsistent with rear channels dropping in and out of use with gay abandon and presenting a generally quite echoic, recessed, body-less sound that makes it difficult to listen to. The low frequency channel occasionally bursts forth with some overemphasis of bass, which of course is quite a foreign element in the man's music. Listening to the full 5.1 soundtrack is one heck of a slog, believe me. The Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is significantly better as it has a much better, fuller sound that has some degree of body to it. It might suffer somewhat from a bit of top end distortion and there are a few dropouts here and there (possibly due to bad recording and/or editing) but is by far the more preferable way of listening to the programme.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

    We are talking about a legend of not just country music but music in general. Surely something better than this could have been assembled?

Menu

    Possibly one of the worst set out efforts ever to grace a Region 4 DVD! It simply lacks any reasonably sensible structure and gives the distinct impression of being tossed together by a kindergarten class during a free art session. There is audio enhancement to all menus although that for the main menu seems to be the opening few seconds of the programme that repeats far too quickly. There is also some animation enhancement but truly it does not enhance the whole deal all that much. Whilst it looks like there are lots of extras on the menu, several of these are nothing more than shortcuts to the relevant place in the programme (that is, chapter selections). Might have been a good idea in theory overall but in reality it leaves a bit to be desired.

Audio Commentary

    Ain't no Audio Commentary on this DVD! What this actually is is a collection of voice-overs offering some notes on the man or his music, available only for a selection of songs. As far as I can tell, even selecting the relevant option in the Audio Options menu does not seem to work. The only way I found to access this was from the Jukebox, of which more anon. Whether I am doing something wrong or not I do not know, but for my money this is infuriating more than anything else.

Review (2:06)

    This is a brief but informative introduction to the man and the programme from someone I recognise but cannot remember the name of! It is presented in the same manner as the main programme albeit only with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound.

Jukebox (a.k.a. Music Highlights)

    This offers access to twelve songs in the programme (Ring Of Fire, Blue Suede Shoes, Folsom Prison Blues, Five Feet High And Rising, Remember The Alamo, Orange Blossom Special, Were You There When They Crucified My Lord, The Long Black Veil, Jackson, The Walls Of A Prison, Big River and The Ballad Of Ira Hayes) which will have a brief voiceover offering pertinent remarks about the song, the inspiration or the man. This is I believe what is referred to as the Audio Commentary. Whatever it might be, it is not exactly adequate.

DVD Credits

Film Credits

    Noteworthy for the misspelling of the director's name.

    Unfortunately, I am unable to locate any reliable reviews for the Region 1 release, but I would suspect that it would in most respects be similar to the Region 4.

    Where does one start with this woefully unacceptable DVD? An absolute shocker of a video and audio transfer at times does everything possible to mar what should have been a very welcome DVD of a genuine legend of popular music of the last century. The programme itself is extremely worthwhile but in the presentation here it would only be hard-core fans of The Man In Black that should take the plunge. Since miracles have been performed to restore feature films way older than this, in every way this video and audio mess is unacceptable in the general scheme of things and earns a deserved place in the Hall of Shame. It is not the worst I have ever seen but even the most cursory of restoration work could have and should have improved this immeasurably.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall