Customer Reviews

His Girl Friday [VHS]

5 star:		(56)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

This is one on my favorite movies of all time. The dialog is fast, funny and SMART. Plus, the gender treatment is fascinating, and not dated in the slightest. But . . . WARNING! Avoid the D3K DVD at all costs. It is truly the most horrendous digital transfer I have ever encountered. The picture is fuzzy and the dialogue almost incomprehensible. I have a five-year-old VHS copy of a TV broadcast of the movie that has much better sound/picture quality. To make things worse, the feature menus on the DVD are poorly designed, so that you cannot tell what you are selecting. And the makers had the audacity to have a whole menu with the credits for production of the DVD. I can't believe how mad I got trying to use this DVD.

Luckily my friend had another version I could compare (and eventually buy). The "His Girl Friday/Cary Grant on Film" version is superb in comparison: Dialog is crisp, picture sharp. It has a bonus documentary, Tony Curtis introduction and the trailer. And IT COSTS LESS than the D3K. This version is a winner.

Avoid this product at all costs. This great movie is ruined on this disc. The image quality is awful and continuously blurred. The sound quality is equally fuzzy. It's like watching a movie with your head wrapped in cheese cloth.

Amazon should stop selling this disc on the grounds of defective merchandise.

I'm sure you know that this classic movie is great. The DVD itself, on the other hand, is not what I've come to expect regarding restoration and remastering and whatnot. Bottom line is, the quality was as bad as the "bargain bin" VHS tapes of old movies that I quickly learned to avoid. In particular the sound was badly degraded, with a hiss that made it difficult to understand the dialog towards the beginning (that improved somewhat, but it was still bad). That's particularly annoying because I could clean it up better than that myself, with a trivial application of "Cool Edit" shareware! Clearly, this is a direct scan of poor quality original and zero work went into presenting it. The picture, too, is full of flickering spots and the whole thing has a soft out-of-focus look to it. If you just have to have this film in your collection, be resigned to the poor quality. If you're just looking, ask yourself if it's cheap enough for the lousy job.

A long-time favorite movie of mine, "His Girl Friday" is overdue for a thorough restoration. With its release on DVD, I hoped I'd see Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell looking crisp and sharp and hear their crackling dialogue with new clarity. Alas! This DVD appears to be a pirated copy made from a defective video tape. I was unable to tolerate more than five minutes of the fuzzy, ghostly spectres that flickered across the screen or the hisses and burbles that issued from the apparitions in place of dialogue. I seriously question the honesty of the manufacturer. An outrage.

TedReinert@nyc.rr.com

July 16, 2002

This is a great film, but my object here today isn't
to write about how much smarter this film is than most
contemporaray comedies, or to praise Howards Hawks,
Rosalind Russel or Cary Grant, alas, but to warn anyone
thinking of buying a DVD version of 'His Girl Friday' to

AVOID AT ALL COSTS THE VERSION PUT OUT
BY "HOLLYWOOD CLASSICS COLLECTION"
(MADACY ENTERTAINMENT).

It is an awful transfer, grainy, worn-out, and
unprofessional. It probably gets a lot of nibbles by
having a low price. Don't be fooled. Pay the extra
ten bucks, or whatever, and get a responsible version
of this knock-out comedy.

OK, we all know that 'His Girl Friday' (aka 'The Front Page') is a terrific movie which belongs in every DVD collection. But there are some really bad, almost unviewable versions out there. Fortunately, I chose the right version, and it's a clean crisp image, tightly-focused sound -- a joy throughout. So if you want 'His Girl Friday', make sure you get the Laserlight DVD version, complete with a Cary Grant biog documentary and an unvelievably hokey intro from Tony Curtis on a bad day. I got the Laserlight disc from Amazon for around $7 -- the really bad dubs other reviewers have complained about from other companies cost more! I've found Laserlight transfers of old films are generally ok -- their cheapie Hitchcock transfers of 'The Lady Vanishes' and 'The 39 Steps' are almost as good as as Criterion in image, though pretty scratchy in sound. For a budget label, they do a good job compared to the absolute garbage put out by Madacy and others. So remember -- 'His Girl Friday' has to be from Laserlight or you're wasting your money and buying something totally unviewable. And no, this is NOT a paid ad! Just trying to steer people towards a good edition of a classic comedy. If Laserlight wants to thank me, they could prepare a DVD edition of my favourite of all Billy Wilder comedies, 'The Major and the Minor' with Ginger Rogers and Ray Milland. Love those 1940s comedies!

You get what you pay for. This recording is worse than mediocre in terms of sound and picture quality.

DON'T BUY THE DVD! I was given this as a gift and I was astonished at just how bad the quality of this DVD is! The sound is awful for the most part and visually it's gauzey and fuzzy; I literally could not believe that the VHS version could be so much superior! If you haven't seen this movie, you MUST (on the VHS)- it's a terrific , rollicking classic which is quickly paced with realistically overlapping dialogue and unbelievably great performances (one could say that this film is a lesson in screen acting!) Rosalind Russell is BEYOND great and Cary Grant is a MARVEL. Once you begin watching, you won't take your eyes off this unique, unforgettable film.

This transfer suffers from the same problems reported by other Amazon shoppers for the D3K edition of "Charade". It seems like D3K masters their discs from broadcasts by Encore or AMC. Unless you've got to have it, wait for some else to do a better job or buy the VHS.

"His Girl Friday" is one of my all-time favorite movies and I was looking forward to having a copy on DVD. I had read the reviews on here at Amazon about the D3K release and just figured people were exaggerating about the poor quality. I mean, it's DVD, it's gotta be great, right? Wrong. This version is awful. The sound is scratchy and the picture quality is worse than anything I've seen, even on VHS. As a matter of fact, my VHS copy is far superior. Even if you really love this movie, I suggest you wait until someone does a better job of restoring it. The only reason I give this DVD version one star is because it's still a wonderful movie.