The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner (1962)

[darrenburnfan]

I pre-ordered this new BFI release at £11:99 from HMV Online a month ago and it arrived this morning, in advance of its official March 23rd release date.



I thought others may like to know about the transfer quality before they decide to buy it. Well, considering the cover says how it's remastered using the finest materials and such, I am a bit disappointed with it. The picture quality is excellent and presented in the correct aspect ratio, but the sound quality leaves a lot to be desired. For the first half of the film, the sound level is pretty low and fuzzy, the dialogue coming across as though the actors were speaking through a comb with tissue paper on it and you have to turn the sound right up on the television to hear it at all. This means that words spoken loudly can be heard, but any words or parts of words spoken softly are very indistinct. In fact, the sound level and quality does go up much further, but not until the last third or so of the film. I have tried this DVD on all three makes of player I have and it sounds as bad on all of them.



Oddly enough, the sound quality and level on the "making of" documentary which is one of the extras is excellent and it makes me wonder how the BFI could issue a copy of the film with such crappy sound quality on DVD, yet the excerpts from the same film on the extras is 100% better. Best to not waste your money on this one until BFI recall all the recently released copies and replace them with a transfer that's worth the money.



When Channel 4 ran the film some years ago, the sound quality was far better than on this new DVD of it and even my old pre-recorded video copy had far better sound.

[julian_craster]

Interesting what you say about the sound.....Tony Richardson was a pioneer in terms of

recording sound on location, even if the clarity was not always perfect. He was criticised for this at the time, but it was I think, preferable to the then 'boxy' artifical sound of post-dubbing



Of course, microphones and recording techniques have improved dramatically over the last 45 years...

[darrenburnfan]

Yes, but the sound was okay on the original film, Julian. It's just been badly transferred to this DVD. I had the same problem a few months ago when I thought I'd replace a set of videos with the DVD box set version. The sound was terrible on them, even though they were the same films as were on my old videos. I took them back and got a refund.

[dpgmel]

That is disappointing

[John Hodson]

Odd; there is absolutely nothing wrong with the sound on the Blu-ray transfer.

[darrenburnfan]

Maybe they're trying to get people to buy the Blue Ray version by making the sound on the standard DVD version inferior. Well, apart from the fact that a Blue Ray disc wouldn't, as far as I know, play on any of my DVD players, I have no intention of upgrading my system just for the sake of one film. The equipment I already have will do me fine for the forseeable future.

[marker]

Thanks for the warning i was just on the point of ordering it, I wont bother now