The Rodgers & Hammerstein Collection

THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN COLLECTION [2014] [Amazon Exclusive Blu-ray Box Set] [USA Release] Experience Your Favourite Musical As Never Before!

Celebrate the world’s most beloved film musicals. ‘THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN COLLECTION’ and contains all 6 films now altogether on this Blu-ray Box Set for the first time ever! Each timeless film is in dazzling high definition for the ultimate home viewing experience. So every spectacular scene, every enchanting song, and every magical, memorable moment can be yours to cherish forever and share with your family.

FILM FACT No.1: Richard Rodgers: Awards and Nominations:  1946 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Music and Original Song for “State Fair” (1945) and shared with Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) for the song "It Might as Well Be Spring."

FILM FACT No.2: Oscar Hammerstein II: Awards and Nominations:  1942 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Music and Original Song for “Lady Be Good” (1941). 1946 Academy Awards®: Win: Best Music and Original Song for “State Fair” (1945) and shared with Richard Rodgers (music) for the song "It Might as Well Be Spring." 1947 Academy Awards®: Nomination:  Best Music and Original Song for “Centennial Summer” (1946) and shared with Jerome Kern (music) for the song "All Through the Day." 1952 Academy Awards®: Nomination:  Best Music and Original Song for “The Strip” (1951) and shared with Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby for the song "A Kiss to Build a Dream On." The nomination for Bert Kalmar was posthumous.

Image Resolution: 1080p (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio: STATE FAIR [1.37:1]; OKLAHOMA! [2.20:1 and 2.55:1] [Todd-AO and CinemaScope]; THE KING AND I [2.55:1] [CinemaScope 55]; CAROUSEL [2.55:1] [CinemaScope 55]; SOUTH PACIFIC [2.20:1] [Todd-AO] and THE SOUND OF MUSIC [2.20:1] [Todd-AO]

Audio: STATE FAIR: English: DTS-HD Master Audio Mono OKLAHOMA!: English: 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and English: 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio
THE KING AND I: English: 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono, French: Dolby Digital Mono and Music: 2.0 Dolby Digital
CAROUSEL: English: 4.0 DTS-HD Master Audio, Spanish: Dolby Digital Mono and Music: 2.0 Dolby Digital
SOUTH PACIFIC: English: 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English: 4.0 Dolby Digital, English: 2.0 Dolby Digital, French: 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish: 5.1 Dolby Digital
THE SOUND OF MUSIC: English: 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, English: 4.0 Dolby Digital, French: 5.1 DTS-HD, Portuguese: 5.1 Dolby Digital and Spanish: 5.1 Dolby Digital

Subtitles: STATE FAIR: English SDH, French and Spanish, OKLAHOMA!: English SDH, French and Spanish; THE KING AND I: English SDH, French and Spanish; CAROUSEL: English SDH, French and Spanish; SOUTH PACIFIC: English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Korean and Mandarin (Simplified) and THE SOUND OF MUSIC: English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish

Running Times: STATE FAIR: 100 minutes; OKLAHOMA!: 145 minutes; THE KING AND I: 133 minutes; CAROUSEL: 128 minutes; SOUTH PACIFIC: 157 minutes and 171 minutes and THE SOUND OF MUSIC: 174 minutes

Region: Region A/1

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Andrew’s Blu-ray Review: Most modern pop music, including the music for most newest Broadway shows, shows a painful lack of something that America once created in enormous quantities, especially melodies. Although the generation that most loved the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals, is well on its way to passing onto new generations who love these types of musicals and the popularity of those shows is still very strong. When I was in my early teens in the 1950s, I can attest to the fact that the music of all the shows in 20th Century Fox new Blu-ray Box Set entitled ‘THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN COLLECTION’ all became a part of everyone’s DNA film experience who had a love for these musicals at the time. Across the years families collected 45 rpm record sets, Long Playing Albums and eventually various video formats, including Betamax, VHS, LaserDisc and DVD of these films. They were a core of regular family viewing experience.

The 6 picture set includes: ‘STATE FAIR;’ ‘OKLAHOMA!;’ ‘THE KING AND I;’ ‘CAROUSEL;’ ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ and ‘and ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC.’ Only two have had previous Blu-ray releases; and these are presented with the same awesome brilliant image transfers. Now read on:

‘STATE FAIR’ was released by 20th Century Fox in a 60th Anniversary Edition DVD in 2005. Although not one of the 'super-productions' that would follow a decade later, ‘State Fair’ is a sweet, quaint musical of a novel previously produced as a non-musical film in 1933. Fox gave it the full Technicolor treatment, along with the top singing talent Dick Haymes and Vivian Blaine. Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews are dubbed. Curiously, Dana Andrews began his show business career as a singer but repeatedly declined to sing, as he wanted to be regarded as a serious actor only. After all, Dick Powell had recently succeeded in switching from crooning to straight drama; going the other way was not considered a smart career move. The 1080p transfer of the film ‘STATE FAIR’ is in remarkable great shape and has that candy-colour look of the 20th Century Fox musicals of the 1940s. It is not as sharp as one might expect, but there is definitely more detail present than on the inferior DVD release. The LPCM mono audio is really outstanding, but obviously not as dynamic as that on the newer films. The songs “It Might as Well Be Spring” and “It’s a Grand Night for Singing” made the biggest impact for my viewing experience. The attractive Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews are plonked right down in the middle of a storyline that relentlessly celebrates the joys of rural life. ‘STATE FAIR’ has the fewest of special features. All it offers the viewer four ways to watch the film. One can play the film straight through or play it in “Music Machine” mode, which skips from song highlight to song highlight. There is also the “Sing Along” mode, which adds lyric subtitles to the songs which you can then do a sing-a-long while viewing the whole film. With the all of the audio commentaries one can get good solid background information about the films in this Box Set, and sometimes we get some fairly critical comments, and we also get to hear overviews of the films origins via books or their stage performances and the way the films came together. The audio commentary on ‘STATE FAIR’ we get to hear from authors Richard Barrios and Tom Briggs and it is a fascinating insight into the background how the film came to fruition. The half-hour documentary “From Page to Screen to Stage” charts the ‘STATE FAIR’ musical's genesis and it became a film musical first before being adapted for the stage performances. Each Blu-ray disc also contains a wealth of visual extras like Still Galleries: often broken down into categories of ad art, behind-the-scenes stills and production stills showing sets, costumes, etc. The one thing missing on the Blu-ray disc of ‘STATE FAIR’ that was included on the DVD release is the presentation is the 1962 ‘STATE FAIR’ remake with Pat Boone and Ann-Margret and to some people and critics, they felt it was not as good as the ‘STATE FAIR,’ but the 1962 ‘STATE FAIR’ did have at least the wonderful singing artist Bobby Darin, and that helps to improve the film with his dulcet tones.

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‘OKLAHOMA!’ to some critics felt it tended to drag at times and again some critics felt the directors output slightly dull, but many of the musical sequences are brilliantly done and helped to improve the film. The main central ballet sequence motivated by Shirley Jones song “Out of My Dreams” is a totally marvellous mix of great choreography, staging and direction and its stylised painted sky backdrops looked like something from the Japanese film ‘Kwaidan.’ Song for song, ‘OKLAHOMA!’ has possibly the most memorable music interludes included in this film that I suspect everyone knows the words so well and will probably sing along with the actors performing in the film. Again, it is a good strong presentation, and especially viewing it in the Todd-AO process, which I preferred. Mike Todd pulled out of the Cinerama process and instead went onto make ‘OKLAHOMA!’ in both Todd-AO and CinemaScope because certain cinemas had the equipment, but it was to be the first film of a Road Show feature empire. The film in the Todd-AO (American Optical) film format was 65mm wide and had five perforations, Todd-AO also ran at 30 frames per second, to cut down on strobing, flicker and “chatter” during the showing of the film. Unfortunately, Todd-AO could not be adapted for normal 24fps theatre use, so Mike Todd was forced to simultaneously film a second standard CinemaScope version of the film. That second version is what had been seen almost exclusively since the late 1950s. The biggest news with this new Blu-ray box set is that the 30-frame Todd-AO version of ‘OKLAHOMA!’ is back as it should be seen, and this time looking and sounding totally sensational. The 2005 DVD was something of a disaster for Rodgers & Hammerstein fans. It contained both versions, but the Todd-AO transfer was of total awful quality, blurry and diffuse, it looked a total mess. Now, ten years later, scanners are so safe, so that the original negative for ‘OKLAHOMA!’ could be scanned, and the result is totally magnificent. The Todd-AO version was reportedly filmed first and its cameras occupied the best positions. It has been suggested that the quality of the daylight looks better and some of the performances seem fresher in the Todd-AO version, too. The cutting and framing differs between versions, and the Todd-AO cut is eight minutes longer. This Blu-ray disc may be the deal-maker that sells a lot of these boxed sets, although I must add that a stand-alone ‘OKLAHOMA!’ and it is rumoured that it might out sometime in the near future. The Todd-AO and CinemaScope versions occupy separate discs. The CinemaScope version looks good, but to me is nowhere near as impressive as the Todd-AO version. Both versions have excellent multi-track audio, and the Todd-AO listed as a 7.1 DTS-HD Master Audio sound track. Beyond the four playback options and galleries and trailers, ‘OKLAHOMA!’ is graced with two audio commentaries, one by Shirley Jones and one by Nick Redman; Ted Chapin and Hugh Fordin. There is a special feature Documentary comparing the two format versions, and the development of Todd-AO. Culled from a 1950s TV show special are two song excerpts from the show, sung by Gordon MacRae and wait for it, Florence Henderson and is really very good! Brilliant master producer Mike Todd pulled together resources that historically didn't mesh well with Hollywood, Broadway and the research and technical industry. For a year or so it seemed possible that the “new” Hollywood might convert to Todd-AO for special road show performances, and with a change to 30fps becoming normal even for standard films. As it happened, the industry would instead slowly lose interest in an expensive 65mm “big pictures.”

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‘CAROUSEL’ was also released in 1955. As every studio wanted its own proprietary format, 20th Century Fox came up with a king-sized CinemaScope system called CinemaScope 55, using an enormous negative with an anamorphic squeeze identical to standard 35mm CinemaScope. When the executives saw the improved quality of print-downs to 35mm CinemaScope, they abandoned plans for large-format projection, just as Paramount Pictures had with their own version of VistaVision. ‘CAROUSEL’ and ‘THE KING AND I’ were the only films shot in CinemaScope 55. ‘CAROUSEL’ is the most problematic of the Rodgers & Hammerstein features. Although it has some of the best series most their most beautiful songs, it is the least original and the least exciting visually. The repeat casting of Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae might seem a quickie follow-up to the previous showings, but in actuality, Frank Sinatra walked off the film set when he discovered that he'd have to shoot all of his scenes twice for the CinemaScope 55 and the 35mm version and for some unknown reason the 35mm version was abandoned during filming. Director Henry King seems defeated by a production that wastes beautiful New England locations by using them as static backdrops. Not helping are uninspired sets back in Hollywood sound stages that often simply look cheap. After an uninspiring prologue in a smoke and glass 'heaven,' the first earthbound scene is a marvellous, more or less dialogue-free story setup that brings together innocent factory girl Julie Jordan [Shirley Jones] and carousel barker Billy Bigelow [Gordon MacRae]. Billy Bigelow's boss Mrs. Mullin [Audrey Christie] insults Julie and fires Billy Bigelow over a flirting incident, while the marvellous main “Carousel Waltz” themed music reinforces the notion that an unquenchable love has been ignited. From that point forward ‘CAROUSEL’ is directed as if on remote control, with barely a thought given to anything beyond setting up of the great songs. The plotline slogs along like a can kicked down the road. It's best to concentrate on the quality of the musical arrangements and their delivery by the capable cast. Julie loses her job as well, marries Billy Bigelow and becomes pregnant. Egged on by his thuggish false friend Jigger Craigin [Cameron Mitchell], the chronically irresponsible Billy Bigelow goes through with a stupid robbery. Tragedy ensues. Sixteen years later in heaven, a miracle allows Billy Bigelow to return briefly to Earth to try to do one good thing for the daughter he never knew. The ending is a bittersweet tearjerker that verges on the slightly maudlin effect. Although Billy Bigelow barely showed his love for Julie Jordan, their problem seems to have been only a matter of bad communication, whereas he is really a softie enchanted by the idea of having a child. Although Billy Bigelow and Julie Jordan's life is one big mess up, but the message is, that it's okay because “You'll Never Walk Alone.” Prominent among the extras for ‘CAROUSEL’ is a carryover from the NTSC DVD Special Edition, especially the French film ‘LILIOM’ [1934] directed by Fritz Lang, and it is the film he made after his escape from Nazi Germany, en route to Hollywood and ‘LILIOM’ was originally conceived as the non-musical version of a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár and it was well-known in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ‘CAROUSEL’ and it is compared to what ‘Pygmalion’ is to ‘My Fair Lady’ a total revelation. The film ‘LILIOM’ special edition extra is in the 480i encoded on this Blu-ray, and is far better quality than what it was as a DVD extra. Due both to the needs of Broadway musicals and American entertainment in general, ‘CAROUSEL’ all but emasculates the original scenario of the ‘LILIOM’ film, which added a lot more satirical messages about class injustice to its story of a brutal relationship. In the film, we find Liliom (a young Charles Boyer) and are a much less romanticised heel, and are indeed bad news for Julie [Madeleine Ozeray]. They never marry and he refuses to work and they live in total poverty; the fact that she accepts his abuse makes him so ashamed that he hits her. He's soon pretending that he doesn't care, when he's actually crippled by self-loathing. There is no “wholesome” alternative couple; instead the carousel operator Mrs. Muscat cruelly tries to lure Liliom back, right in Julie's presence. In the film ‘LILIOM,’ our ignoble hero finds that heaven has a double standard just like on Earth. The wealthy dead get special treatment while he's forced to cool his heels. Instead of returning to a purgatory of star-polishing duty, Liliom's failed mission on Earth will result in an eternity spent in flames. The finale in the Fritz Lang film sees Julie finally being able to express her forbidden love and yes, complete with the un-PC idea of “hits” that feel like kisses and sheds a tear that shifts the heavenly balance in favour of the misunderstood rogue Liliom. The Fritz Lang's film is incredibly well directed, and has a depth of detail and atmosphere not found in the musical remake. As befits a French film untouched by the Hollywood Production Code, the show features some near-nudity. When Liliom is granted a kiss from Julie on a park bench, he proceeds to caress her breast. The 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár surely influenced Fritz Lang's film ‘Destiny’ [1921], with its story of a love that can alter the course of the stars. The black-clad emissary that escorts Liliom to heaven is also echoed in Jean Cocteau's mysterious art film ‘Orpheus.’ With the opening of the film ‘CAROUSEL’ where the carousel scene is staged on a much smaller scale than the old French film ‘LILIOM’ and the location shooting often lacks an even basic pictorial sense. Louise Bigelow's big ballet scene is staged on a tiny set, and without any of the dramatic lighting scheme that was so effective in ‘OKLAHOMA!’ The 4.0 stereo audio soundtracks reproduce the directional stereo feel of the original film. In addition to the feature ‘LILIOM,’ the four playback choices and still galleries, and the extras for ‘CAROUSEL’ include a theatrical trailer, a newsreel and a making-of documentary. Two deleted songs are heard as audio extras, illustrated with photos. And the TV excerpt has two more song presentations, sung by Mary Martin, John Raitt and Jan Clayton. An Isolated music score is also available. The full audio commentary with Shirley Jones and a well-informed Nick Redman brings forth some very interesting and intriguing questions and answers, instead of the usual vacuous fluff that we unfortunately have to endure with some Blu-ray disc audio commentaries.

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‘THE KING & I’ [1956] is the second and last CinemaScope 55 film release and was a massive success whose fame has burned bright for half a century. This time the solid source material was didn't need sanitizing either for the stage or screen; as seen in the popular Irene Dunne and Rex Harrison picture Anna and the King of Siam, the hints of a hot 'n' heavy romance between an English schoolteacher and an Indo-Chinese King remain in the censor-safe theoretical stage. The story is sound in all departments and the proud Anna Leonowens [Deborah Kerr] and her son have a rough time adjusting to work teaching the many children of King Mongkut of Siam [Yul Brynner]. Although a lively personality, the King's deeply rooted convictions place everyone under his paternal tyranny. Women are chattel and Anna's educated foreigner is only partly an exception. The friendship between sovereign and teacher grows until, in a private meeting in a vast royal reception room, she teaches him to dance the Polka. The major subplot sees Mongkut cruelly separating and punishing two of his 'possessions'. Tuptim [Rita Moreno] is one of his wives, gifted to him by another monarch. Lun Tha [Carlos Rivas] is a worker who brought Tuptim to Siam. They fall in love but under Mongkut's system of bondage have no rights. Anna tries to diplomatically leverage Mongkut's affections to help Tuptim, and to this end stages a Siamese version of “Uncle Tom's Cabin” as the royal entertainment. Except for some palace exteriors and a street scene ‘THE KING & I’ is entirely stage-bound, which is no disadvantage at all thanks to the marvellous sumptuous designs of John DeCuir. The fact that the vision of Siam is a dated stage construction also means little, as what we see is so visually pleasing. The design really comes to the fore, where costumes and masks convert Harriet Beecher Stowe's drama into a Siamese fable. As the representative of Western decorum, Anna glides through scenes in giant skirts that disguise the fact that she has legs. The contrast with the sensually costumed Eastern women couldn't be greater. Yul Brynner dominates the film in the role that both made and capped his career; and had been performing “The King & I” stage productions off and on until his death decades later. As for Anna, if Irene Dunne hadn't been too aged for the part she could have performed Anna and sung for her too, instead of being dubbed by Marni Nixon as was Deborah Kerr. Refined opulent and romantic, but minus messy sex complications. Deborah Kerr's Anna is the one that's remembered, and the role that most types her career. She and Yul Brynner were considered such a hot pairing that M-G-M quickly reunited them in the Cold War thriller ‘The Journey.’ As with ‘CAROUSEL,’ the transfer of ‘THE KING & I’ has some odd colour choices. Most scenes are dazzlingly and good viewing, especially the “Uncle Tom's Cabin” ballet sequence, but a great many moments in the film looked too blue. We understand seeing a blue tinge in the night scenes or with the stage performances sometimes occurs, but with the normal close-ups of Deborah Kerr face will suddenly turn bluish, even in the middle of a scene. It can only be attributed to the condition of the elements. The 4.0 stereo audio has no deficiencies and the voices and sound effects come across very directional, appropriate for a classic 1950s stereo sound mix. With the Audio Commentary with Michael Portantiere and Richard Barrios contribute in giving us some informed and lively commentary about the film ‘THE KING & I,’ and another audio track contains a two-channel stereophonic isolated music score for your enjoyment. We also get to view Five documentaries that cover the history of the ‘THE KING & I’ film and the play, the story of the stage version, and a quick look at Darryl Zanuck's promotions for the CinemaScope format, the genesis of the musical scenes and a ten-minute overview documentary of the creative teaming of Rodgers and Hammerstein. One of the other Special Features is a half-hour pilot, and presents “Anna and the King” TV special show, and with an audio commentary by its Anna, Samantha Eggar. We also get an extra audio song presentation, plus TV excerpts from the stage version with Patricia Morison and Yul Brynner. We also get to view roughly ten minutes of ‘THE KING & I’ related newsreels are well presented. Finally, we get to view a special restoration extra that gives us an idea of the huge volume of work required to re-master ‘THE KING & I’ from original CinemaScope 55 materials.

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‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ [1958] brings us to another Rodgers & Hammerstein film musical in which the screen purposely changes colours, which was another huge box office success, and the film had to wait out a particularly lengthy Broadway run so that the film version could be made. The two discs included in this new set are identical to the earlier release. I am very impressed that 20th Century Fox went to the trouble to reconstruct the film's much longer version by fifteen minutes with the Road Show version. Even though the sound quality isn't as rich as it should be and the added footage is sadly pale and faded in certain scenes that slightly spoils the viewing enjoyment and it is presumably the only surviving positive print available, which we will never know if there is a better negative available, which we are very grateful to see the extra story detail and additional scenes throughout this version of the film. Some people are still not sure about the film's colour experiment, which still seems to attempt to visually suggest moods normally achieved through sensitive direction, but I personally loved it. But some of the tints works well, especially when the colour-wheel seams do not show. The ever-changing matte paintings of the fantasy island Bali Hai look even better when cast in different colourful hues. But Joshua Logan's overall direction looks slightly stagged, letting his locations and the stage-like imagery do all the work instead. ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ is billed as filmed in Todd-AO, but this time the 30 frames-per-second film speed was dropped, leaving ‘OKLAHOMA!’ and  ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ as the only other films that was actually shot in the original Todd-AO format. According to –authority authors Robert E. Carr and R. M. Hayes, the cameras that were actually used were fitted with Panavision lenses, which mean that the film is really a standard 65mm production. This was the biggest Rodgers & Hammerstein hit of all time, and one of the most popular films of the 1960s period and a total triumph for director/producer Robert Wise, and ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC was restored several years ago after a complex 8K scan job, and released as a 45th Anniversary Special Edition Blu-ray and the transfer is worth a little discussion of its own, which you can find out that information via the internet. Four years ago at an industry film restoration convention in America, 20th Century Fox treated the attendees and lucky hangers-on to a rare comparison test footage. In the Linwood Dunn Theater at the Academy's facility on Vine Street, they first projected a reel from ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ in the restored 70mm format. It's difficult to believe that any Blu-ray image presentation could possibly approach the detail and clarity of the 70mm print that the people viewed; and the only other film that people compare this film to, is the more impressive big format of David Lean's ‘Ryan's Daughter’ in the 65mm [Super Panavision 70] format. Then they put up an uncompressed 4K theatrical video projection master of the same for the ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ scene. On this Blu-ray disc ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ looks absolutely marvellous and stunning at the same time, with the image resolution just good enough to convey some eye-popping clarity that I remembered from viewing the cinema screenings and the colours throughout the film are very accurate. The extras for ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ give you an interactive picture-in-picture experience. It also gives you a choice of several trivia-track choices to see if you can give the right answers in knowing the film ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC.’ You also get the bonus of a karaoke feature. With the Audio Commentary, Robert Wise contributes one audio commentary, and a second track gathers statements from Dame Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, who was a real good sport, despite his put-downs of the film over the years. Like the other film titles, this Blu-ray disc also contains the four viewing modes like “Music Machine” and “Sing Along” special feature. Accessed via the internet you can experience a four-minute piece with Laura Benanti, an actress in a recent Broadway revival of the show.

Finally, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment's Blu-ray of ‘THE RODGERS & HAMMERSTEIN COLLECTION’ is totally awesome and is also one of those monster box sets that a good number of years ago would come in a big gift wrapped box that would not likely be able to fit on the average bookshelf. Instead you get all 8 Blu-ray discs packed into a very tidy and neat Blu-ray case package. The back of the Blu-ray Cover layout only gives a minimum of information about the Blu-ray discs inside. For confirmed Rodgers & Hammerstein musical fans, the big draw here is of course the marvellous 30fps Todd-AO version of ‘OKLAHOMA!’ and the image transfers of ‘SOUTH PACIFIC’ and ‘THE SOUND OF MUSIC’ are just as good, if not perfect, but the higher frame rate makes ‘OKLAHOMA!’ really pop out of the TV screen so much brighter and clearer with more information per second, and the fast motion in the dance sequences is much less blurred. As a teenager, I remember very well playing  the Long Playing records of all the films in this box set, and I find it hard to believe that I can now actually see the amazing presentations of the all the films, in totally high quality imagery that is totally equal to what I saw when I went to see these films in the cinema and I feel these films look far more superior now, and look even more stunning and thank goodness with the help of computer high definition technology in cleaning up these prints and making sure we have the right audio soundtrack. I originally had this box set on the Region 1 DVD set and looked reasonably good at the time, but this Blu-ray box set surpasses all of my expectation and it has now gone pride of place in my Blu-ray Collection. Very Highly Recommended!

Andrew C. Miller – Your Ultimate No.1 Film Aficionado 
Le Cinema Paradiso 
United Kingdom