Pre-Order Topaze (1933) (Blu-ray) Available for Preorder (1 Viewer)

[Ronald Epstein]

The link below will take you directly to the product on Amazon. If you are using an adblocker you will not see link.

 

[JoeDoakes]

Hooray! A fantastic film, never released on DVD

 

[bujaki]

Barrymore is superb; Loy looks magnificent in those revealing gowns; and there's the unforgettable Monsieur Latour-Latour, fils.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Watched my copy tonight.

Can anyone answer a question?

Just before the end of the film (at 1:17:35, to be precise) the 4:3 image shrinks to a 4:3 image which does not reach the top nor bottom of my display's screen. It also develops rounded corners. This stays this way for a few seconds and then becomes a bit larger--but still with black bars on all four sides for the duration of the film (just another minute or two).

All this happens just after Barrymore's character of Professor Topaze gives his final speech at his former school.

 

[Mark-P]

Watched my copy tonight.

Can anyone answer a question?

Just before the end of the film (at 1:17:35, to be precise) the 4:3 image shrinks to a 4:3 image which does not reach the top nor bottom of my display's screen. It also develops rounded corners. This stays this way for a few seconds and then becomes a bit larger--but still with black bars on all four sides for the duration of the film (just another minute or two).

All this happens just after Barrymore's character of Professor Topaze gives his final speech at his former school.

I picked this up at the last Kino sale but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. So I queued it up to check out what you are seeing. My explanation is sloppy mastering. The reason for shrinking the image in that one scene was obviously because the words on the marquee in the background were right up against the edge of the frame so they windowboxed it to prevent overscan from cropping the lettering. And then when they returned it back to normal, they forgot to slightly zoom the image to crop out the rounded corners. I would say the entire raw transfer had rounded corners, but until the very end the image was "properly" matted to have square corners.

 

[Mike Frezon]

And check out the funky fx in the final scene (I believe it's a pull-back from the front of the movie theater) having to due with that sign on the left side of the screen. IIRC, the sign says "twice daily." It must be the 1933 version of CGI!

Thanks, Mark, for giving it a look!

If it's just a straight up mistake...that's too bad.

 

[Matt Hough]

I just got around to watching this one this afternoon. I thought I had seen it decades ago, but I don't think this was the Barrymore film I was remembering because nothing about it seemed familiar.

Professor Topaze reminded me quite a bit of Emil Jannings' teacher in The Blue Angel at the beginning. Very different from many Barrymore movies of the period, and a great change of pace for him. I enjoyed it.

I thought overall the image quality was very good except I thought the contrast was just a touch light. Didn't this movie used to be in the public domain? Seems like I remember seeing it all the time on cheap VHS cassettes in markdown bins.