When HD televisions first came to the market, a small but vocal group of luddites complained that they were “too sharp” – a charge usually accompanied by the vague assertion that the make-up in old Hitchcock movies would be rendered visible by higher resolution standards. This accusation suggests a limited understanding of film history. After all, for more than a century, movies were presented almost exclusively on photographic film, a medium offering a far higher degree of visual information than any home video format. (Good luck convincing anyone who’s seen Ben-Hur projected from 70mm film that your £4.99 Blu-ray is unduly sharp.)
If watching old movies on contemporary formats is a surreal experience, I suspect that has more to do with cultural shifts than technological ones. This week, Steven Spielberg’s 1971 breakout film Duel is released on Blu-ray, after years as a staple of afternoon television programming. It’s a far better-looking movie than I remember, with a scorched desert palette reproduced here in rich, deep tones by a pristine digital transfer, but it’s also a considerably more anxious proposition than it once seemed, with a thick vein of masculinity-in-crisis running through its centre like a pair of 12-inch tyre tracks.
Dennis Weaver plays the illustratively named David Mann, whose subjugation at the hands of shifting 1970s gender roles is writ large after a maniacal (and macho) truck driver attempts to run his Plymouth Valiant off the road. As a full-scale war ensues between the two vehicles, David must shake off the effete ways that have rendered him socially impotent – if the make-up is ever visible on Weaver’s face, it’s only to drive home some vapid point about the vanity of contemporary manhood – and reassert his primordial masculinity. It all seems rather silly in 2015; but then maybe it’s not the pictures that got sharper, but the audience.
Universal, Blu-ray
Also out this week
Birdman Oscar bait with middle-aged white misanthrope.
Unbroken Oscar bait with courageous historical war hero.
Apollo 13 Yesteryear Oscar bait with doomed but plucky astronauts.
