703 The Freshman

[Matt]

The Freshman



Harold Lloyd’s biggest box-office hit was this silent comedy gem, featuring the befuddled everyman at his eager best as a new college student. Though he dreams of being a big man on campus, the freshman’s careful plans inevitably go hilariously awry, be it on the football field or at the Fall Frolic. But he gets a climactic chance to prove his mettle—and impress the sweet girl he loves—in one of the most famous sports sequences ever filmed. This crowd-pleaser is a gleeful showcase for Lloyd’s slapstick brilliance and incandescent charm, and it is accompanied here by a new orchestral score by Carl Davis.

Disc Features

- New 4K digital transfer from a restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive
- New orchestral score, composed and conducted by Carl Davis, presented in uncompressed stereo on the Blu-ray
- Audio commentary featuring director and Harold Lloyd archivist Richard Correll, film historian Richard Bann, and film critic and historian Leonard Maltin
- On-camera introduction to The Freshman by Lloyd and a clip reel, both from Harold Lloyd’s Funny Side of Life (1966)
- Three newly restored Lloyd shorts: The Marathon (1919), with a new score by Gabriel Thibaudeau, An Eastern Westerner and High and Dizzy (both 1920), with new scores composed and conducted by Davis
- Harold Lloyd: Big Man on Campus, a new visual essay on the film’s locations by silent-film historian John Bengtson
- Conversation between Correll and film historian Kevin Brownlow
- Footage from a 1963 Delta Kappa Alpha tribute to Lloyd, featuring comedian Steve Allen, director Delmer Daves, and actor Jack Lemmon
- Lloyd’s 1953 appearance on the television show What’s My Line?
- One Blu-ray and two DVDs, with all content available in both formats
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic Stephen Winer

Criterionforum.org user rating averages

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[movielocke]

is the commentary new or a carryover?

I really like that we're getting a few shorts with each feature.

[domino harvey]

Pretty sure it's a carryover. High and Dizzy is one of my favorite Lloyd shorts and I'm thrilled to see it in HD but it belonged thematically on Safety Last. Sad we're not getting the Sin of Harold Diddlebock though

[manicsounds]

dvdbeaver

[Drucker]

Is this the first Criterion silent in 1080p?

[greggster59]

Criterion's City Lights is in 1080p.

[FrauBlucher]

Hhhmmm, I wonder why this got the 1080p treatment.

[CSM126]

...Because the frame rate was compatible?

[FrauBlucher]

I guess I'm looking for a tech explanation. Why would the frame rate be more compatible for this and not Safety Last or some other silent? Were frame rates different from film to film back in the silent era?

[tenia]

Were frame rates different from film to film back in the silent era?

I think it varied between 18 and 22 fps, with some movies having variable frame rates from shot to shot.

[Drucker]

I guess I'm looking for a tech explanation. Why would the frame rate be more compatible for this and not Safety Last or some other silent? Were frame rates different from film to film back in the silent era?

In short yes. Passion of Joan of Arc was likely 20fps and some of Dreyer's early films are 16 fps I believe (would have to check my DVD). Battleship Potemkin is 18fps, as is Coeur Fidele. Etc. etc.

[MichaelB]

I guess I'm looking for a tech explanation. Why would the frame rate be more compatible for this and not Safety Last or some other silent? Were frame rates different from film to film back in the silent era?

In a word, yes.

In several words, it wasn't until the coming of sound in the late 1920s that the notion of a standardised frame rate really took hold - but the need to synchronise image and sound led to 24fps being adopted as the norm - which is why most post-1928 silent films will run at that speed and are therefore ideally suited to a 1080p transfer.

Before that, the speeds could be anywhere between 16fps and 24fps, or even faster - so whether or not you can achieve a viable 1080p transfer largely depends on whether the framerate permits the regular interpolation of duplicate frames to fake a 24fps transfer and therefore permit a 1080p encode (because the Blu-ray format doesn't allow for variable framerates - if you want a progressive transfer, it has to be 24fps).

In the case of MoC's The Birth of a Nation (16fps), the BFI's Battleship Potemkin and MoC's The Passion of Joan of Arc, they were able to achieve this by the following formulae:

The Birth of a Nation: OODOODOODOODOODOODOODOOD
Battleship Potemkin: OOODOOODOOODOOODOOODOOOD
The Passion of Joan of Arc: OOOODOOOODOOOODOOOODOOOOD
(Those cryptic-looking lines represent one second of the Blu-ray presentation, with O being an original frame and D being a duplicate of its predecessor)

But when you deal with framerates like 19fps, 21fps, 22fps or 23fps, things get messier. At 23fps, you can probably get away with very slightly speeding it up to 24fps, and the chances are that no-one will notice, but with the other speeds it's much harder to fake a progressive encode because you can't repeat frames with the necessary regularity to make playback appear smooth. However, interlacing effectively doubles the framerate (albeit at the price of an interlaced image), giving you more options to create a comparatively seamless viewing experience.

Does that make sense?

As for The Freshman, I don't know what the framerate is, but presumably it's something like 20fps or even 24fps. Does anyone know the exact running time of the Criterion disc?

[EddieLarkin]

DVDBeaver have reviewed it and state 1:16:56.445 as the runtime. I don't think Criterion have ever done 24p interpolation so I assume the framerate will be 24fps, though I guess that might be down to previous Criterion silent films always being odd frame rates (Safety Last is 22fps I believe), thus making interlacing the better option.

As for City Lights, that was 1080p because it's technically a sound film, and thus runs at 24fps anyway.

[Jerricson098]

I believe "The Freshman" is at 22 fps. As for the musical score, I'm bothered on why Criterion didn't include Robert Israel's score.

[manicsounds]

blu-ray.com, 5 stars across the board.

[Joe Buck]

Forgive me if this has been discussed elsewhere but now that the Criterion combo pack experiment is over will The Freshman get a re-release in separate forms with the traditional casing? It's the packaging that delays my purchase of it. I like uniformity. Don't we all?

[swo17]

I like uniformity. Don't we all?

Yes. Which is why every time Criterion puts out a new release, I buy another copy of Border Radio.

[domino harvey]

Went through the whole set last nite, the picture quality on the feature is unreal-- one of the best silent film transfers I've ever seen. Gorgeous! As ever, though, the feature, while pleasant, remains a little too in the shadow of Chaplin's the Gold Rush, which did the "Sympathetic dope doesn't realize he's being played" thing to much better effect, and it's not nearly as funny as Lloyd's best shorts (of which one is included, High and Dizzy, and it towers over all the other Lloyd works included). I had never seen the Marathon or An Eastern Westerner before, but the first was pretty slight and the second didn't fare too much better though it does have some inspired subtle physical comedy from the bad guy during the poker sequence. I had trouble making it through the Brownlow and Correll conversation, as it is just the two of them fawning about hanging out with their idol over and over-- I don't blame them for being enthralled with the experience, but I like a little emotional distance from critics in special features like this.

[hearthesilence]

I was first lead to this film as a kid by Bugs Bunny - loved Warner Bros. cartoons growing up (both old and new), and I came across a book detailing the influence silent comics had on them. One that stuck out was a joke where Bugs Bunny thought all that was left of him after a tremendous fall was his bare skeleton. Apparently it was inspired by a similar gag in The Freshman, where it goes by in a flash, but Lloyd sells it better and it's hysterical.

This transfer does indeed look fantastic, but take a look at the notes - they used the UCLA restoration from 1998, which harvested nearly two-thirds of the film from the international version. Apparently this was one of those pictures that used a second camera to produce a second negative, which means everything from that camera is at a slightly different angle. (The best, surviving materials for the U.S. release is apparently further removed from the OCN.)