South Pacific - Restored Roadshow Version on Blu-Ray

I don't review movies here very often, much less ones that are 50 years old, but South Pacific is a different story. I remember loving this musical as a child and was delighted when it became available on Blu-Ray disc in HD.

First of all, if you never saw the film during it's original roadshow engagement, which I did, you haven't seen the full film. It was a 3 hour event that had about 18 minutes trimmed from it for general release. That 18 minutes might not seem like much, but it was far from fluff material.

In the restored Blu-Ray version, the film gets a letterbox treatment even with an HD monitor. Shot in Todd-AO, once billed as the successor to Cinerama, it is spectacular in it's scope. The crystal clear vistas of the South Pacific are stunning. Shot in 65mm, any visible film grain is almost imperceptible except in scenes with a very low light level.

The film's director, Joshua Logan, tried a risky technique of using multiple colored filters on the camera to approximate the theatrical effects of stage lighting. Later he regretted this decision, and since it was an in-camera effect, it was permanent. Personally, I have always liked the color shtick. The rich hues accentuate the emotional tone of the songs and give the musical numbers a surrealistic quality.

I won't go into the plot, since everyone knows it well, however I did find why this film was one of my favorites as a prepubescent yet-to-be-out gay kid. The abundance of bare chests and hunky male physiques are astounding. Today this film might get a PG rating for all the man-skin. Back then people figured it was just hot on the islands and guys never wore shirts.

Add that to the musical numbers where the guys are dancing with each other or even more obviously dressed in drag, and it's a homoerotic treat! I have yet t9o watch the numerous extras included with the two disk set, but I feel pretty sure they will be good.

The only distracting thing was the replaced scenes from the roadshow version. This cut had been lost. No negatives or printing elements were known to exist, and so the restoration relied on an old print found in London and scraps of workprint to replace the missing scenes. Because of this, the quality of these scenes is obviously of poorer quality. Still once I got used to this anomaly, it became invisible.

The sound track is a treat. Multi-channel digital sound reproduces the multi-track analog sound used for Todd-AO to perfection and I found myself singing the songs days after watching the film.

If you have never seen South Pacific, or if you only remember it from Television, you should not pass up this restoration. Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi and Ray Walston never looked or sounded so good!