Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Theatrical Trailer
Rating
Year Of Production	1958
Running Time	103:48
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Richard Brooks
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Elizabeth Taylor Paul Newman Burl Ives Jack Carson Judith Anderson
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$36.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Pan & Scan	English Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (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	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a screen adaptation of a Tennessee Williams play, and it shows. The dialogue is extremely artificial, stilted, and melodramatic. I don't admire Tennessee Williams' work, but I'm forced to admire the performances of the actors here - they do an amazing job of selling the dreadful dialogue. To put it another way - I don't like this film because of Tennessee Williams' writing, I like the film despite it. OK, the plotting is good - he can take credit for that.

    Elizabeth Taylor plays Maggie, who calls herself Maggie the cat, dancing around on a hot tin roof - she's dancing around with sexual frustration. Paul Newman is Brick Pollitt, her husband, a retired football star who is trying to drink himself into oblivion. Burl Ives is Big Daddy Pollitt, Brick's father, who dotes on him. Elizabeth Taylor's performance is magnificent. Newman's performance is difficult to judge in the first half, because he is drunk and unreacting, but it picks up as the movie progresses until he is Taylor's equal in the end. Burl Ives is marvellous - he makes a great curmudgeon. The rest of the cast is excellent. The casting agency did a surprisingly good job at choosing five fat ugly children who actually look like Madeleine Sherwood.

    I suspect you must watch this film twice to really appreciate it. I did. The first time through, I didn't really understand Maggie's character, nor Brick's. One seemed shrewish, the other boorish. The second time I knew what was behind their behaviour, and it let me appreciate the interaction between them, especially the non-verbal interaction.

    With the exception of the opening scene, which takes place the night before, the entire film takes place in a single day. It's an eventful day.

    This film was made in 1958, and it shows quite clearly in two areas. The cars are hideous - great monsters of things with bonnets and boots as big as the passenger compartments, and Elizabeth Taylor's clothes are very much a product of their time. The bra and girdle she's wearing must be horribly uncomfortable, and that's the first full-length slip I've seen that has a zip on a side-seam. Women today should be grateful for what they don't have to wear. I also noticed, with some amusement, that at least two people in the film (one of them being Elizabeth Taylor) had blue-black hair - I thought only Superman had hair that colour.

    There are 32 chapter stops, but you can only choose 8 of them from the scene selection menu. You must choose one, then press Chapter Skip to get to the chapter you want.

Video

    This movie was made in 1958 - that's even older than me. That would be an excuse for a fairly poor quality video transfer, but that's not what we get. This is an impressive effort.

    The movie is presented on a double-sided disc, with a different aspect ratio on each side. The cover claims that the film is presented in 1.85:1 aspect ratio on both sides, with one being 16x9 enhanced, and the other not. This is not true. On the widescreen side, the aspect ratio is 1.78:1, 16x9 enhanced. On the standard side the aspect ratio is 1.33:1, and it is not 16x9 enhanced. Warners have given us the option of viewing the same movie is two different ways, and making up our own minds whether we prefer widescreen or Pan & Scan. That's nice. I watched the widescreen version all the way through twice, and sampled the Pan & Scan version extensively.

    The image has good sharpness, with adequate shadow detail. There's no edge enhancement. There's what looks like some low-level noise in the backgrounds, but I suspect it is actually fine film grain. The one really soft shot is the location shoot near the start, when they are greeting the airplane.

    The colours are fairly strong, but subtly inaccurate. This is normal for films of this period; I think it has something to do with the film stocks available at the time. I have a suspicion that the colour may have been slightly enhanced in the transfer. It doesn't harm the appearance of the film.

    There are some minor film artefacts - flecks, hairs, and marks. There are two single-frame flaws that are barely visible at normal speed. The biggest is at 71:53, where the leftmost sixth of the frame is discoloured brown. There is no visible aliasing. There is some shimmer on Big Daddy's suit, and some wavering of colour on the backgrounds in a few places. There are no significant MPEG artefacts.

    There are lots of subtitle tracks, including two in English: one normal, and one for the hard of hearing. I sampled both English tracks. Both feature the same transcription, which is somewhat abbreviated from the actual dialogue, but essentially accurate. The font is easy to read, and the subtitles are white with a black border, so they stand out well against any background.

    The disc is double sided, single layer. That means no layer change on either side.

Video Ratings Summary

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

Audio

    There are three soundtracks: English, French, and Italian, all mono. I only listened to the English.

    Dialogue is clear and fairly easy to understand, despite the Southern accents. I noticed a couple of lapses in audio sync, but I'd put them down to sloppy ADR, rather than any mastering error..

    The score is contemporary for the period when the film was made. There's some suitably smoky sax behind the opening titles. I can't tell you who wrote the music, because there is no music credit on the cover, nor in the film credits. This film was made before the time they started to list every person involved with the movie..

    The soundtrack is straight Dolby Digital 1.0. Pure mono. No surrounds need apply. No subwoofers admitted. No problem - this movie is completely lacking in explosions.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menus are static and silent.

Theatrical Trailer

    This is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced. It has a few more film artefacts than the feature, but it's fine. Don't watch it before watching the movie for the first time, because it gives away the ending.

    The Region 1 and 4 discs are essentially identical, even to the artwork on the cover. 

    Cat On A Hot Tin Roof is a classic movie on a very good DVD.

    The video quality is very good for a film of this age.

    The audio quality is quite good for a mono soundtrack.

    The extra is basic.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall