Thieves' Highway

[domino harvey]

Release Date: 5th October 2015
Format: Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD (UK ONLY)
Starring: Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese, Lee J. Cobb, Barbara Lawrence
Directed by: Jules Dassin

Synopsis:

Thieves’ Highway was made during a remarkable run of noir pictures that confirmed its director, Jules Dassin, as one of the genre’s major forces. Following on from Brute Force and The Naked City, with Night and the City and Rififi soon to follow, it more than deserves its place in such hallowed company.

Returning from the war to discover his father has been crippled in an altercation with a brutish mob-connected kingpin, Nick Garcos puts aside thoughts of settling down and instead focuses them on revenge. He buys an old army surplus truck and hits the road – a 36-hour non-stop to San Francisco and, he hopes, a little justice…

Starring Richard Conte as Garcos and Lee J. Cobb as the object of his hate-filled intentions, Thieves’ Highway is as tough as film noir gets. Adapting his own novel, A.I. Bezzerides (who would later bring Kiss Me Deadly to the big screen) created a slice of pure pulp poetry.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

New 4K digital restoration by Twentieth Century Fox
High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
Uncompressed Mono 1.0 PCM Audio
Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
The Long Haul of A.I. Bezzerides, a 55-minute documentary portrait of Thieves’ Highway author and screenwriter, featuring contributions from Bezzerides, director Jules Dassin and writers George P. Pelecanos (The Wire), Mickey Spillane (Kiss Me Deadly) and Barry Gifford (Lost Highway)
The Fruits of Labour, a new video essay about the genesis, production, reception and politics of Thieves’ Highway by Frank Krutnik, author of In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity
Selected scene and character commentaries by Frank Krutnik
Theatrical trailer
Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
Collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Alastair Phillips (co-author of 100 Film Noirs), illustrated with original production stills

[MichaelB]

Beaver.

[aox]

I'm not sure, but it seems that most of the Arrow BD caps look soft to me and lacking in some detail.

[andyli]

That is because it is compared with the Criterion DVD, which was artificially sharpened, with large and ugly digital noise (not grains). To my eyes the Arrow blu-ray looks perfectly natural and beautiful.

[nitin]

although it's still a massive improvement, this looks to have been low pass filtered by Fox (like My Darling Clementine) before they gave the master to Arrow.

[MichaelB]

It look gorgeous in motion. It was an absolute pleasure to edit the extras for this title.

[MichaelB]

More screengrabs are attached to the DVD Compare review, which says this about the transfer:

Thieves’ Highway looks very good on this Blu-ray disc. The 35mm monochrome photography is crisp and with a strong level of fine detail present throughout, and it also displays some excellent contrast with very strong range within the mid-tones which shows off the film’s chiaroscuro photography. When Nick and Rica are out walking at night, for example, the light picks them up on the city streets like the spotlight on a stage, and around them the light fades off into deep shadow. It’s a big improvement over the film’s previous DVD releases, which displayed strong evidence of edge enhancement and digital sharpening. By contrast with those presentations, Arrow’s release has a pleasingly filmic look throughout, which is carried over by the characteristically superb encode that ensures the film has the organic grain structure one would expect from 35mm film.

[hearthesilence]

Very happy to hear that, Michael. I've been hoping to get a Blu-Ray upgrade on this for a while.

This was actually the first film I had ever seen from Dassin, and at the time I only knew that he had been blacklisted. If this was the film that sealed his fate in Hollywood, at least it was a great one. Small consolation, but it builds up a righteous anger that digs deep under the skin, and when I saw it, it especially made an impression given the economic climate.

[Gregory]

I believe what did him in was not his films but rather several of those who cooperated with HUAC naming him. Then he continued looking for work in Europe but people were afraid to hire him, his passport was revoked, and he was adrift until he got to do Rififi.

One of those who named names was Lee J. Cobb who not only starred in Thieves' Highway but had been one of Dassin's closest friends. Immediately afterward, Cobb lied to Dassin's face about having cooperated, and the latter just couldn't believe that Cobb would have done it and was extremely broken up about it. Cobb, according to some accounts, later felt great remorse for what he'd done.

Anyway, agreed on all the anticipation for this.

[hearthesilence]

I was about to finally pick this up, but was alarmed to see this in blu-ray.com's review:

NOTE: There appears to be a mastering error. On my release there are multiple dropped frames/skips that can be seen at 00.52.07, 00.52.17, and 01.22.47. At the moment I do not know how many discs are affected, but I have a final market version of this release. I have sent a request for additional information and will update our review when I receive it.

UPDATE: Arrow Video have confirmed that the errors mentioned above are present on the element Fox used to produce their master. (Fox scanned a fine grain positive at Cineric, New York, NY).

Was this an error in the transfer, or if a physical master was delivered to Arrow, a problem with the media? Wondering if there's any way this can be corrected or are we generally SOL unless Fox does a new transfer?

[Cash Flagg]

That's not a mastering error, it's a reviewing one (a crate of apples to anyone who can correctly surmise which reviewer without having to read the review in question). The whole issue is discussed in the film's Blu-ray.com thread, in particular posts #26 and 37.

[hearthesilence]

Glad to hear that! Anyway it's only 8 quid on Amazon, so will probably spring for it now.

[MichaelB]

That's not a mastering error, it's a reviewing one (a crate of apples to anyone who can correctly surmise which reviewer without having to read the review in question). The whole issue is discussed in the film's Blu-ray.com thread, in particular posts #26 and 37.

Indeed. That review is very possibly the low point of Svet Atanasov's career, and the fact that he still refuses to correct a factual error that was pointed out to him within hours of its original publication speaks volumes in itself. He's so pig-headedly stubborn that he could easily pass for the distaff side of Dr Millar's splicing experiment in O Lucky Man! - logically, there must have been one.

As Cash Flagg says, it's not a mastering error or even a problem with the media - it's Production Code censorship that was carried out way back in 1949, something that can easily be discerned from the fact that the music plays continuously over the jump-cuts in a way that clearly wouldn't be the case if it was a question of print damage or a mastering fault. I assume the cut footage was destroyed and couldn't be reinstated, which is why you'll see the same issues in every print regardless of whether you saw it on 35mm in 1949, Criterion's DVD or Arrow's BD.

So you can buy with complete confidence, especially at that price.

(Full disclosure: I edited some of the extras.)

[Orlac]

His head will explode if Criterion does a BD of the same master.

[tenia]

His head will explode if Criterion does a BD of the same master.

There's already the Sullivan's Travels jurisdiction for that. Juxtaposing his Arrow and Criterion reviews is quite telling. Same master, Criterion just performed additional clean-up, yet, 58% of his Arrow PQ review text is talking about issues and limitations, but only 31% for the Criterion one is doing so.

[Orlac]

I got banned on BD.Com when I called him out on this.

[hearthesilence]

How Trump like of him!

[Costa]

I got banned on BD.Com when I called him out on this.

hahahahaha..
Don't worry.
Some of us who dared to discuss a different opinion on certain Criterion blurays, went that road too!

[hearthesilence]

I never go on BD.com's message board, but I just noticed from another thread that he keeps a big American flag as his avatar. And he bans anyone who calls him out on bullshit? This is like the Fox News of home theater reviewing, what a complete asshat.

[tenia]

I never go on BD.com's message board, but I just noticed from another thread that he keeps a big American flag as his avatar. And he bans anyone who calls him out on bullshit? This is like the Fox News of home theater reviewing, what a complete asshat.

When there were the terrorist attack in Paris last November, he put a crying Marianne as avatar. During a heated argument with Torrente about the French Lizard with a Woman Skin, some of Torrente's posts against Svet were deleted. He called Svet for getting counter-posts deleted while having one of France freedom's allegory as avatar... and got banned. \:D/

[MichaelB]

if you have moderator powers and are also prone to get into heated arguments, you should be honour-bound not to censor any conversation in which you take part unless there are clear and unarguable breaches of the T&Cs.

Some of the mods here can be pretty combative at times, but I've never once been the slightest concerned that, say, Mr Sausage or Domino Harvey would either delete or modify posts to make them look better. And I've certainly never done this myself with my more limited moderator powers here, and nor would I.

[Costa]

sorry for this offtopic post:

Spoiler

MichaelB you seem like a sensible, logical person and always open to discussion.
I'm not sure if you have ever worked on color timings, but I would genuinely be interested in making a discussion on the tealing that plagues a considerable amount of Eclair and Ritrovata restorations, without being insulted continuously and being called bad names as it's usually the case at the other forum.
I can't find any relevant thread here and I'm not sure if and where I should start one.

But I'm really interested to find out what is going on here, if I am in error, or if there is indeed a problem here.
One of the latest Ritrovata restorations just released on Bluray is one of my favourite movies, Indochine.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/188799