Customer Reviews

The Thin Red Line [VHS]

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I worked on this film in 1966 as camera operator for Director of photogrphy Manuel Berenguer ASC. Mr. Berenguer got an Oscar nomination for the best B/W foreing film.Been aware of the difficulties we went through in the actual filming, for which the audience is oviously not aware, and seen the final result on the screen, I'm convinced that this version from Marton is far better than the last version.Is very unfortunate that the DVD copies does not by far mach the original release print, picture and sound quality.

I recently viewed this film and it is a forgotten masterpiece. Fortunately with Terrence Malik's remake, this film has been resurrected. It conveyed the horrors and brutality of war and the inner conflicts which reside in man; then there is the "thin red line". The book is a masterpiece among war novels and this film depicts only a small section of the book. The combat scenes were realistic, yet without the gore. Andrew Marton's direction was sharp and truly heightened the dramatic intensity especially in the scenes between Warden and Dullea. Although I have yet to see Malik's remake, I am happy I was able to catch this version and will wholeheartedly recommend it.

I will only grant that Simitar did something half right with the release of The Thin Red Line since they didn't bother to letterbox it. That aside, the pan and scan transfer is done rather well, keeping up with the activity onscreen. The disappointment over the lack of widescreen is also mitigated somewhat by the extras on this DVD. They include a trailer, brief bios and abridged filmography of Jack Warden and Keir Dullea, info on Guadalcanal(geography, history. etc.), and documentary footage of Marines fighting on Guam and Tarawa, but I don't recall seeing any on Guadalcanal(contrary to the jacket description). BTW, the audio is Dolby Digital 2.0, not PCM. Given the tendency of sixties war films towards wider and louder spectacles, I think this low-budget film is vastly underrated. It certainly is "serious-minded but flawed" as the Amazon reviewer noted, but I believe it succeeds more than it fails in bringing to life the conflicts in Jones' novel. This is thanks mostly to the capable performances of not only Warden and Dullea, but also Ray Daley and James Philbrook, who played Captain Stone and Colonel Tall. Interestingly enough, James Jones wrote director Andrew Marton and commented on "how marvelous I thought were the combat scenes in the film." Spain may not be Guadalcanal, but the black-and- white photography obscures that. I'll leave debates of accuracy to those who have actually seen Guadalcanal. Followers of spaghetti westerns will recognize the terrain pretty quickly though.

Personally, I like this film better than the more recent remake. Very strong performances especially by key actors Warden and Dullea. I do have a problem, however, with the overall quality of the film as transferred to the DVD format. Sound quality is very poor (there are times when you can barely hear the dialogue over the background hiss) and visuals are likewise spotty. This could have used a little bit of "cleaning up", although I'm really not sure if this is possible given the age and relative obscurity (hence probably not properly taken cared of) of the film. This should just have been released in cheaper formats (e.g. MPEG-1 / VCD or VHS) due to the very minimal (if any at all) "added value" in terms of audio/video quality in DVD format. I hope they eventually come out with a better, cleaner version for DVD though.

This is one of the best war movies ever made, and it far surpasses it's 1998 remake. Based on the book, it takes place during the battle of Guadalcanal. Excellent acting, script, and solid action scenes round this out. It not as popular as others like The Longest Day, but it's just as good. Check it out. You won't regret it.

The movie shown at the top of my page is THE THIN RED LINE released in 1964. Yet the 940 reviews that appear beginning on the same page are for THE THIN RED LINE that was released in 1998.

Both movies are based on the same book (James Jones's novel of the same name), but they are very different movies. Not to be confused! Although it is easy to make that mistake here because the reviews concern a different film.

Upon viewing The Thin Red Line in the theater, I went and rented this older film. It turns out that it is a magical and heartfelt tale, much different than the story of the recent film.

I thought I remembered this as being a good movie when I was a kid. Upon seeing this movie again, some thirty-five years later; I was wrong. The acting is terrible and the story has more than a few technical flaws that really irked me. Such as the soldiers with no grenandes hanging from their web gear (they magically appear during the battle scenes), or only one BAR in the entire company, and no one wearing bandoleers of ammo for their M-1 rifles. And one of the biggest faux's was the use of German MP-40's (9mm subguns) by both the Americans and Japanese (In the Pacific War?).

A cheaply made movie (technically speaking) for only the psychological impact. I guess I'm just used to more realism than was displayed in this movie. If you've ever seen bad acting when a soldier is getting shot - a la "Hell Is For Heroes," then you're really going to laugh at the way guys die in this movie. Ugh! I'm donating my video to the local library.

This was a film that was not affraid to be controversial. While not a great work, it was typical of war films being made about WW2 in the late 50s, early 60s. Some of these films were not affraid to look at the more gritty, nasty aspects of combat. It is significant in a lot of these films the strain often shown between commanding officers and their men. In this case the blood and guts quality of the CO versus his subordinate. The US army of the time often didn't have much time for sentimentality. Films like this were willing to show that.

The combat scenes are intense for their time, but not overly graphic. Its interesting that the army is portrayed here instead of the Marines. Most Pacific war flicks usually portray the Marines versus the Japs. Here we see what the army often had to do after the Marines moved on to another island.

This is a hard hitting film for its time, with little real plot other than the strains and stresses of combat on the various characters. The 1998 re-make was probably a more vague and poetic film. Certainly its scenery is much more vivid than what you get here. Its also a lot slower moving! The music is a tense score from English composer Malcom Arnold whose work is evident in many films of this period. This is your classic B&W war film for the time it was made in. Take it or leave it!

This film was very true to the James Jones novel of the same title, and a better treatment than the current adaptation of the novel that received an Academy Award nomination as best picture. It does not include all of the incidents or characters in the novel (and neither does the 1998 film), which would be difficult in a 2-hour movie. The quality of the audio and video (black and white) on the VHS tape I received was very poor, indicative of the VHS tapes being rushed into production by the interest generated by the 1998 movie. The acting performance by Jack Warden as Sgt. Welsh in the 1964 film, was vastly superior to that of Sean Penn in the 1998 movie.