656-657 Jubal and 3:10 to Yuma

[knives]

He's definitely referring to the lack of extras. We're getting the entry films of a major American director that because of genre and stars are sure to sell well (not to mention name recognition with regards to 3:10 to Yuma) and the extras are nearly not existent. What makes it extra infuriating is that there's a bounty of extras to be made/ had. Just in the source materials for each film you could easily have a good twenty minutes of extras let alone everything else. I'd love to have a Daves centric commentary on Jubal for example.

[Moe Dickstein]

I believe it was 50 titles they got from Sony so they have quite a bit to get through so unfortunately it seems some of them will be more bare bones...

[ianungstad]

What's the source for this "50" titles rumor?

[Moe Dickstein]

Someone I can't mention, but who is in a position to know.

[manicsounds]

I don't think anybody is complaining about the quality of the films themselves, just the lack of extras and the price gouging.

[Fred Holywell]

Restored and mastered by Grover Crisp for Sony, the film, in all of its Technicolor/CinemaScope glory, looks wonderful on the high-def format. Some sequences can look a little hot and blown out a bit but in general the colours look to be accurately rendered, retaining the film’s Technicolor look.

The color in Chris' "Jubal" screencaps looks surprisingly weak to my eye. I hope the color in motion is, as he says, "accurately rendered". Otherwise, it looks more like faded Eastmancolor, than glorious Technicolor to me.

[Moe Dickstein]

I believe this IS Eastmancolor folks. Perhaps prints were done in IB but to my knowledge there were never any three-strip Cinemascope titles...

[MichaelB]

I believe this IS Eastmancolor folks. Perhaps prints were done in IB but to my knowledge there were never any three-strip Cinemascope titles...

According to Cinetech, who handled the restoration, the OCN was indeed Eastmancolor - and here's the article in Post magazine that the Cinetech link refers to, which describes the Jubal restoration challenges in a fair amount of detail.

[Fred Holywell]

I don't believe any reference was made to 3-strip Technicolor. Cinemascope films weren't made in that process. But the company did handle the printing for Columbia's Cinemascope films (IB). The camera neg would, of course, been Eastmancolor. In his review, Chris refers to the "Jubal" BluRay image "retaining the film's Technicolor look", which, to my eye, it doesn't. Seen today, an original IB Tech print of "Jubal" should still look pretty great, color-wise -- it wouldn't fade. An EC print would likely look more like this BR (if that good) with weak, distorted color. (While Tech would have handled first run prints of "Jubal", second run or rerelease prints could well have been EC -- though they'd still retain the Tech logo.)

[Moe Dickstein]

Very cool article, there's also some stuff in there about Criterion and the work on the Rossellini War Trilogy on later pages

[Fred Holywell]

From the Wikipedia article "Color motion picture film", some info that may be pertinent to this discussion:

By 1953, and especially with the introduction of anamorphic wide screen CinemaScope, Eastmancolor became a marketing imperative as CinemaScope was incompatible with Technicolor's Three-Strip camera and lenses. Indeed, Technicolor Corp became one of the best, if not the best, processor of Eastmancolor negative [...] yet it far preferred its own 35mm dye-transfer printing process for Eastmancolor-originated films with a print run that exceeded 500 prints, not withstanding the significant "loss of register" that occurred in such prints that were expanded by CinemaScope's 2X horizontal factor, and, to a lesser extent, with so-called "flat wide screen" (variously 1.66:1 or 1.85:1, but spherical and not anamorphic). This nearly fatal flaw was not corrected until 1955 and caused numerous features initially printed by Technicolor to be scrapped and reprinted by DeLuxe.

[EddieLarkin]

Three strip neg filming basically ended with the dawn of Widescreen.

To be precise, with 1955's FOXFIRE (AR 1.85:1)

[Props55]

Thanks David and Fred for adding some clarity to this needlessly confusing issue. Yes, certainly by the time JUBAL went into production the use of Eastmancolor monopack was virtually 100% throughout the industry and each studio had its own lab capable of handling all its needs. Technicolor survived by servicing those studios (Universal, Paramount and even Warner after they abandoned "Warnercolor") and indie producers who wanted the extra quality and durability of their IB (dye transfer) release prints. To do so meant turning over the exposed camera original to Tech for processing and preparation of the YCM matrices. This allowed you to display the Tech logo on prints and advertising.

Meanwhile MGM started their own full service lab up to and including "Metrocolor" release prints and Fox (surely the biggest supporter of Tech previously) abandoned them to forge a long term association with DeLuxe General.

Columbia seems to have had the most schizophrenic post 3-strip relationship with Technicolor alternately using their own (definately 2nd tier) lab for fast and easy contact release prints and just as suddenly springing for the whole enchilada on a big budget or, as David intimated, for those producers, directors and cameramen who insisted on quality. This erratic attitude finally came to a head with the fiasco surrounding the preparation of US release prints of GUNS OF NAVARONE.

Based on the information posted above it seems clear that Columbia contracted with Technicolor to produce initial release prints but that surviving elements preclude any "true" restoration to its original IB Tech glory. It's a real pity that the best that can be done is to produce a super sharp but thin, parched Eastman palette blu-ray

[Props55]

Forgot to add FWIW that the Warner Archive disc of Daves' final western (one of this best IMHO) THE HANGING TREE is similarly a huge dissapointment by virtue of being mastered from an Eastman print. While I'm not really surprised that little effort was made for a title relegated to Archive Hell, I know that 35mm IB Tech (and 16mm as well) prints exist in private hands. Now that there seems to be a truce between the studios and the collectors market (what little there is left of it) as regards "no questions asked" cooperation with preservation issues it's a damn shame a better source could not have been found to produce what may be the only digital copy ever available to the public.

[Napier]

Jubal is under review at Amazon and not available during the 50% off sale.

[jindianajonz]

Best Buy has it half off with free shipping, though. I picked it up with a couple of others that Amazon wasn't discounting.

[Cash Flagg]

It's now $14.99 at Amazon.

[Fred Holywell]

DVDSavant's "Jubal" review is up now. He likes the picture well enough, though admits that "just about everything that happens is painfully predictable." His review of "3:10 to Yuma", which he seems to like even more (no big surprise there), was posted a few weeks ago. Of it, he writes, "The atmospheric 3:10 to Yuma knows exactly what it's doing..."

[zedz]

Well, Jubal was an extremely ordinary film distinguished for me by only two things: Rod Steiger's hysterically bad performance, the worst sort of show-offy methodist bullshit and completely at odds with the performances of everybody else; and the extraordinary bad faith of the ending which, after an hour of panic about the horrors of the lynch mob, winkingly indicates that there's nothing really wrong with a good lynching as long as it's the bad guy getting lynched. You know, the real bad guy, the identity of which is always completely self-evident except when it just seems that way.

Considering the wealth of other westerns out there begging for an upgrade or first decent release, it's a bit of mystery why Criterion invested resources on this sub-average example.

3.10 to Yuma is, at least, an iconic title, and a better film, though it still has its problems. Daves here has a strong eye for landscape and comes up with good discrete compositions, but he seems to have difficulty stringing them together coherently. The first indication was in the very first scene, in which a couple of point-of-view shots are inserted in the clunkiest way imaginable. They're from the coach driver's perspective and they're just tossed in there with no attempt at integration. In one of them, we're shown the driver, looking straight ahead, then a POV shot looking from left to right, surveying the scene, then back to the same shot as before, the guy looking straight ahead with no evidence of head movement.

That example stands out like a sore thumb, but the failures of the sequence at the end of film of the walk through town were much more damaging overall. We've spent a good portion of the film in the town, and this journey has always been understood to be critical, but the topography is just frustratingly vague. I still have no idea how Van Heflin manoeuvred Glenn Ford magically through that space, or even what sort of distance they had to cover and where the traps lay. There's a moment where it's revealed that Heflin is completely trapped, pinned down from two opposite directions! But he avoids certain doom by zipping around a corner real fast! Huh? How does that actually work? Where where those dead-cert snipers anyway? Why wasn't somebody covering the next stretch of the route? It all seems to come down to writerly convenience, and what should have been the dramatic highlight of the film just evaporates in lazy staging.

And I'm no wild west strategist, but wouldn't you think the first thing Heflin et al. would do when their hiding place has been discovered by the evil gang is hole up somewhere else? Preferably somewhere a lot closer to the train station. It's established that there's a chance that the gang won't even be back in time to beat the train, so why not buy yourself some time by making them have to look for you? A random stable or shed, under the railway platform - wouldn't anywhere be safer? And if you were even moderately smart, you'd leave a couple of well-armed guys barricaded in that hotel room to keep the gang in the wrong place until the train arrives. Hey Mr Butterball, I'll take that $200!

[ianungstad]

I bought this but haven't watched it yet.

As for why Criterion licensed it; I think it's as simple as Grover Crisp (at Sony) giving them a list of films that Sony has restored and asking Criterion what they wanted to license. I'm sure there are much better Westerns out there but not necessarily on offer by Sony.

[giovannii84]

I boycotted Jubal for lack of extras, but got '4:10 at Yuma'.

I don't understand why Criterion release films without extras. For me that's what appeals to me most about Criterion.

[dwk]

I wonder if they intended to release Jubal as a bonus films with 3:10 to Yuma (which would explain the lack of extras on both) and either changed their mind or Sony asked them to release them separately, so they released them separately.

[zedz]

One of the two extras on the Yuma disc is clearly intended to cover both films, so that sounds plausible. But on the other hand, a licensed studio title is a big deal and seems unlikely to be tossed away as a freebie. Maybe they'd intended to put out a Delmer Daves / Glenn Ford Westerns box but for some reason Cowboy fell through?

[knives]

Because Cowboy is awful?

[giovannii84]

A '2 Westerns by Delmer Daves Starring Glenn Ford' box would have been good.

Or alternative 'Cowboy' could have been a bonus on 'Jubal' (similar to Killers Kiss on The Killing)