The Red Beret (1953)

[darrenburnfan]

Bingo! I've just had the same email. The Red Beret is on its way! (Hey, that rhymes!)

[paul clifton]

lol



bet you mine gets here first yeah baby

[paul clifton]

Mine landed today. Picture and sound very good. Pity its full frame. I know it wasnt shot in widescreen but it still looks like part of the picture is missing

[darrenburnfan]

You've been lucky to get it so fast, considering you live about 200 miles further north than me. My DVD's sent from Guernsey by MovieMail usually take two days to reach me. So I'm expecting mine on Monday.

[darrenburnfan]

My copy arrived this morning (Monday, October 5th). I've just run it and I'm very pleased with it. How completely different in acting, scoring, photography and style compared to some of junk that passes for feature films these days. This was worth going to the pictures to see. This is the original British version (Colour by Technicolor on the credits, instead of the Americanised Color by Technicolor) and the transfer has excellent picture and sound quality. Why Sony don't give this DVD a general release instead of selling it exclusively through Movie Mail, I don't know. I'm sure it would sell.



A pity about the DVD cover being in black and white (with a red tinted beret) when the film was in colour. But maybe Sony couldn't track down any colour stills from the film to use on the cover. No extras, except a scene selection and subtitles if needed. However, once again, as on the version run on Channel 4, Stanley Baker's voice in needlessly dubbed by another actor (probably John Van Eysen) , while all the other actor's voices are left undubbed.



Way back in the mid-1970's, long before I had a VCR, I recorded this film on audio cassette (and still have it) off Associated TeleVision on the evening of Sunday, March 2nd, 1975 and oddly enough, Stanley Baker's voice wasn't dubbed in the version they ran. Does anyone know why the other versions have his voice dubbed? Below, two frame captures from the DVD. TOP: Alan Ladd. BOTTOM: Alan Ladd; Leo Genn and Donald Houston.

[paul clifton]

No idea why they dubbed Stan the mans voice. Im pleased with the dvd though. Just need Yesterdays enemy now. I see it was meant to be released today. It now says on the website, Usually despatched in 4 weeks??? Bloomin heck whats going on

[Steve Crook]

name='darrenburnfan']My copy arrived this morning (Monday, October 5th). I've just run it and I'm very pleased with it.

This looks like a good time to repeat what I've written elsewhere on this forum:



The Red Beret (1953) is the thinly disguised true story of some of the early raids carried out by the Parachute Regiment in WWII. Alan Ladd is the focus, playing a Canadian because the US hadn't joined the war by then, and Ladd is the main box office attraction.



The first part of the story based on the wartime raid on the German radar station at Bruneval. The raid was a combined services operation and the 2nd Battalion of the 1st Parachute Brigade was led by Major John Frost (Major Snow in the film, played by Leo Genn). An RAF radar expert, Flight Sergeant C.W.H. Cox (Sergeant Box in the film, I said it was thinly disguised) accompanied the raiders to tell them what to take back to England.



The second part sees the Paras on a raid behind enemy lines in Tunisia. As in the real thing, the raid itself was a success but then they had difficulty getting back to their own lines. In the film they have Major Snow getting wounded by a mortar round. In reality John Frost got back from this one OK, and from the landing on Sicily. It was at Arnhem that he was finally wounded by a mortar round after he'd led the small force that actually got to the "Bridge too far".



The plan for Arnhem had envisioned the whole division of 9,000 men holding the bridge for two days until XXX Corps got there. John Frost and 700 other men held the bridge for 3-4 days!





John Frost - now that's what a real "Boy's Own Adventure" heroic type should be like

See the Wikipedia page about him for more information or read his autobiography "A Drop Too Many" and the follow-up autobiography to cover his later life, "Nearly There"



Steve

[paul clifton]

Yeah I knew that they had based some of the action on certain raids. Both my great Uncles served as Paras in WW2. Doug was killed in Singapore age 19. Bill his Brother was killed over El Alemein where thew plane he was in was blown up. I have there service records and medals etc and the Paras have always intrested me since

[darrenburnfan]

Very interesting info about Major Frost. I wonder what he thought about Leo Genn's thinly disguised portrayal of him and two of the raids he led during the war when (and if) he saw The Red Beret.

[paul clifton]

I have just compared Sonys release against the one shown on CH4. Sonys must be zoomed in too much as the CH4 version has about 2 inches of picture visible around the screen. Top, bottom and sides

[Steve Crook]

name='darrenburnfan']Very interesting info about Major Frost. I wonder what he thought about Leo Genn's thinly disguised portrayal of him and two of the raids he led during the war when (and if) he saw The Red Beret.

He doesn't mention it in either of his autobiographies. But he certainly saw Tony Hopkins portraying him in A Bridge Too Far, John Frost was an advisor on the film



He apparently told Hopkins off for running from house to house even though he was under fire. According to Hopkins, on the DVD, Frost told him that a British officer would never have run but would have shown disdain for enemy fire by walking from place to place. Hopkins claims he tried but as soon as the firing started, instincts took over and he ran as fast as he could



Steve

[JamesM]

name='paul clifton']I have just compared Sonys release against the one shown on CH4. Sonys must be zoomed in too much as the CH4 version has about 2 inches of picture visible around the screen. Top, bottom and sides

But how big is your screen?

[darrenburnfan]

name='paul clifton']I have just compared Sonys release against the one shown on CH4. Sonys must be zoomed in too much as the CH4 version has about 2 inches of picture visible around the screen. Top, bottom and sides

I should have to transfer my old video of The Red Beret to DVD-R to be absolutely certain, but I have just compared a frame capture taken off the video with the same frame captured captured from the Sony DVD and as far as I can see, there is very little difference. It's certainly not as bad as the DD DVD of Sea Of Sand.



The aspect ratio of The Red Beret on the actual film would have been 1.37:1, while the DVD is transferred at exactly 4 x 3, or 1.33:1. So there would be a very slight loss of image information at the sides, but nothing crucial.



You will be able to see the full image that's on the DVD when played on your computer, but an ordinary television set has a slight overscan, so that a slight amount of the picture is lost at the top, bottom and sides of the inside of the cathode ray tube. This was much worse when television screens had rounded corners, instead of the square corners they have these days.

[paul clifton]

My tv is 40 inch ws. I tried it on my computer and the image is definatley smaller on the Sony release. Like you say, nothing drastic but its defo got 2 inch missing round the edge. Oh yes, Sea of Sand was a nightmare. The Daily Mail version is a cracker

[darrenburnfan]

Here are the same frames captured TOP: off the video done on Channel 4 in March, 1999 and BOTTOM: off the new Sony DVD. Yes, there is slightly more image area on the Channel 4 version, particularly at the top, bottom and right hand side. But no one would notice unless they could see the video and DVD playing side by side. Also, video images tend to be brighter than those on DVD's.

[paul clifton]

Yeah it may not bother most but it really annoys me lol

[paul clifton]

Have you any idea why in some parts of the film the actors seem to be portrayed in front of a screen with scenery on?? It happens a lot through the film. Is it just to save time and money on location shooting etc?

[Steve Crook]

name='paul clifton']Have you any idea why in some parts of the film the actors seem to be portrayed in front of a screen with scenery on?? It happens a lot through the film. Is it just to save time and money on location shooting etc?

Was anything moving in the scenery behind them?



It sounds like either rear projection of just standing in front of a backcloth (they can be painted or an enlarged photograph). They are used quite often, but they are usually done so well that you don't notice them.



Steve

[darrenburnfan]

The process used to be known as Blue Screen or Travelling Matte. For an example, in the first couple of minutes of the film, Tim Turner and Leo Genn are talking to Alan Ladd in the training section which was filmed in something that looked like a big aircraft hangar. Tim and Leo were obviously filmed delivering the dialogue in medium shot filmed against a blue background and then the activity in the hangar superimposed around Tim and Leo where the blue backcloth in the studio would have been. The problem with this system was always that you got an outline around the actors in the finished print, which isn't all that noticable in The Red Beret...amazing, really, considering it was filmed in 1953. What gives the game away here is that the foreground (the actors in close up) and the background are both in focus, when the background, if the scene had actually been filmed in the hangar, would have been at least slightly out of focus.



Oddly enough, the long shots of Tim and Leo in the training hangar don't use Blue Screen, but are filmed while the actors actually were in the hangar. Why it was done like this is a mystery, but it's possible that the dialogue scene between Tim, Leo and Alan, was put in after location filming had ended and so they had to use the Blue Screen technique to make it look as though the dialogue was actually being spoken in the hangar.

[paul clifton]

cheers for that. yeah its very noticable at the start aint it. Also at the end after the battle. You can actaully see a fuzziness around Alan Ladds beret. Almost looks computer generated lol



cheers for the info