My Voyage to Italy

[hearthesilence]

Finally saw Martin Scorsese's documentary, great film, definitely my favorite among all the documentaries he's done so far.

Unfortunately, the Buena Vista DVD is OOP. It's a two-disc set (the film is already divided into two parts, so they didn't have to 'split' it to accommodate this), and to my understanding, both discs are dual-layer discs. Truth be told, I had to see this as a DVD rip that was apparently taken from the Buena Vista mastering.

Fortunately, the film remains faithful to the original aspect ratio of each clip, and on the Buena Vista DVD, anything that was widescreen was anamorphic. The transfers for the clips are also good - I haven't done a back-to-back comparison, but the clips of Rossellini's Journey to Italy look better than the VOD stream I rented on Amazon's On-Demand service. (I don't just mean resolution, I mean contrast, levels, etc. like it was transferred from a better print.)

Mr. Bongo recently reissued this on DVD in the UK. It's dirt cheap but it blows. The movie is a full four hours, and they crammed it all on to ONE disc. (Dual-layer of course - no way it would've fit on a single layer disc.) On top of that, the widescreen clips are apparently letterboxed into a 1.33:1 frame, i.e. they are not anamorphic.

Such a shame, I hope someone reissues this, preferably on Blu-Ray. FWIW, used copies aren't too pricey - the original retail price was apparently $40, and you can find used copies for about $20.

[ellipsis7]

In 2004 Amazon sold the Buena Vista MY VOYAGE TO ITALY double DVD new for €20.99, according to my account history...

[TMDaines]

Thanks for the advice on the Bongo's disc. It's been removed from my wish list now.