Show Boat (1951) (DVD)

This is a visually beautiful movie! The scenery and the costumes are wonderful! The story is also compelling as are the wonderful songs and the equally wonderful singers. A lot of musicals are either funny or sad, but this one covers both and deals with the issue of a woman who is passing as a white woman and who has married a white man, which was illegal at the time.It's a wonderful show, though, and who can't resist "Ol' Man River" sung by William Warfield!

Hope I can keep a VCR to play it

OMG this 2021 bluray release is beyond stunning!!! I think this movie has been unfairly judged and criticized over the years. Showboat is one of the oldest book musical. It's a beautiful musical that has been performed in many versions and variations on stage for generations. Songs and scenes have been cut, substituted, and added depending on the production. The DVD release of this movie was in such poor condition it was hard to enjoy or appreciate anything about it. The film was so dirty and dark in some scene, while others suffered from terrible color bleeding and saturation. BUT now all that has been restored and the details and textures pop. The clarity is mind blowing. It is a feast for your eye. This is just as remarkable to watch as the new 4K releases of The Wizard of Oz and Spartacus. It's like watching a totally a NEW film. When you see the sparkle of the river against the textured wood of the boat, or the bright colored satin of the opening costumes...you'll be moved. And the foggy Ol' Man River scene used to be so dark and hard to watch...now it's a visual highlight. The impressive stero sound option makes the orchestrations sound much fuller. As a bonus you get the Showboat scene from Till The Clouds Roll By. It shows what Lena Horne would have been like if the studio had the guts to cast her as Julie. They really should have...Ave Garden is beautiful and her acting is very nuanced. She has a sexy speaking voice and gives a beautiful heart breaking performance, but this should have really been Lena's role. The two actress were dear friends (and roomates) and when Lena Horne found out she wouldn't be playing the part she encouraged (her fellow southern friend) Ave Gardner to do it. Ave worked hard on learning to sing Julie's two songs but in the end the studio decided to dubbed her...which was devastating to the actress. Her versions of Can't Help Loving That Man and Bill are included as bonuses. Honestly, I love her sultry renditions of both songs. The studio should have used her recordings. If you enjoy MGM musicals, you'll love this. If you are a cinephile and appreciate mind blowing restoration, you'll also love this. If your an Ave Gardner fan, you'll love this. Now that the movie is restored to it's optimal glory you can really focus on the beauty of the cinematography and the handsome performances of this first rate cast. No one does a musical like MGM.

I enjoyed everything, characters, storyline, very interesting stuff.

Warner's have done a fantastic job with restoring this great musical. On our 77 inch OLED screen it was eye-popping gorgeous. The image was rock steady with none of the usual tiny judder you used to see at the movies. The image was razor sharp and the Technicolor print was vivid and a delight to see. The film was shot with an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 which meant on a 16:9 TV there would be black lines down either side of the screen, but by using our Oppo Blu-ray player Zoom feature, we were able to watch this fantastic musical with no black edging. There was negligible head chopping, and it was a delight to see this highly enjoyable musical as a full screen image on a 16:9 TV.My only wish with this restoration is that Warner had put a bit more effort into restoring the stereo soundtrack. When Show Boat was first released in 1951 stereo sound was in its infancy and MGM must be commended for recording it in multi track sound. It would have been nice if Warner had restored the sound into a 5.1 or 7.1 soundtrack. During the viewing of Show Boat our 7.1 surround Sound decoder produced ambient sounds from the surround speakers. In my home recording studio I can easily take a stereo track and split it into an effective multi track sound. The reason I mention this is on the stereo soundtrack of Show Boat, vocals occasionally get lost in the musical instrument sound. With multi track sound all vocals could have been on the centre front channel over coming the above small problem.I still find Show Boat to be as emotionable as it was, when I first saw it back in 1952 as a 13-year-old boy.I am super pleased to have this fine musical in my library.Highly recommended.

This has got to be one of the most stunning home theater movie musical experiences ever - and I have the 4K of The Wizard of Oz and some of the other amazing transfers like The Harvey Girls and Good News. The opening sequence alone, played with the stereo soundtrack, is alone worth the disc - along with William Warfield's rendition of "Ol' Man River", and the whole movie looks like it was filmed yesterday. The Technicolor pops off the screen - in fact I turned my color DOWN 5 notches because it was almost too much. The writing of the movie, especially viewing it post-2020, is weak and concentrates too much on the marital problems of the lead couple while only scraping the surface on racial issues - and shamefully cuts the characters of color to almost nothing. And yes, it's a shame that Lena Horne did not get the role of Julie, but MGM was thinking with money in its eye and knew her casting would not be accepted in the south. The superior 1936 version handles the racial issue much better. This is to be expected in a 1950's film, and for pure eye and ear candy with costumes, settings, cinematography and orchestrations, this can't be beat. Fortunately, the mini-version of Showboat is from Till the Clouds Roll By, including Lena Horne as Julie, is included here in HD, so we can have a taste of what might have been. Highly recommended.

I was disappointed in the older DVD release of Showboat. It was colourless and any movement in scenes created annoying distortions in the picture. This newer Blu-ray release fixes everything! Bright colours, improved sound and very fresh looking.

4Ｋリストア版。とにかく高画質で驚く。とくに発色がすばらしい。

Showboat is a spectacular early 1950's MGM musical. This long overdue restoration is incredible, excellent picture quality and audio. The film is 70 years old, but there's not a scratch, flicker or dust mark to be seen. Superb work by the restorers! Like all musicals of this era it won't appeal to everyone. The underlying storyline, that of the effects of racial injustice is very unusual for the era and handled differently to how it would be today.

This version suffers from very poor sound quality which exaggerates the now annoying vibrato the female singers considered to be fashionable at the time the film was made. The DVD comes over as more harsh sounding than my old VHS tape.That said, the second half of the film is very moving and a reflection of the potential quality and strength of this musical when well performed. PBS in the USA televised a performance by the New Jersey State Opera some years ago, which was the best performance I have seen. Sadly I have never seen this version available in video format. If it languishes in a vault somewhere, it should be rescued and put on sale.I find the complete CD version recorded some years back, infamous for including the n word from the original lyrics, too stuffy and lacking emotion. It is of academic interest only and lacks the "soul" inherent in the story on which the musical and movie was based.Thus sadly this DVD seems to be all that is available in English of what remains as a record of a potentially great musical drama. Only the second half of the film brings this off successfully. I hope somebody produces a restored version of the film with the sound track cleaned up.

The quality of this transfer is truly astounding, bright vibrant colours and even a simulated stereo soundtrack - along with the original mono. Don't listen to the commentary it is just a list of people he met in Hollywood and no details about the film, you know "That scene took us ages to light" etc. However worth every penny if you like the music. The recently issued Blu Ray of the 1930s version is also worth buying. By the way the download quality, despite saying HD is not a patch on the disk. This shows that "buying" a film by download will never replace a circle of plastic!