Greens are vivid and the red and orange hues of fires deliciously cartoonic and bold. The colours are, of course, thick and rich. There are some great scenes when characters are simply seen strolling through the trees, a couple of branches even pop down in front of us, and two sequences when Fonda does his macho stride towards inevitable confrontations that sing out with depth and integrity. Tracking shots through the woods, gun-barrels poking into our faces, trees being felled right towards us and a fantastic use of deep-focus camera-work that literally pronounces characters and objects with a startlingly overt sense of depth and visual spatiality. To be honest, there are many occasions when it looks as though Hathaway had actually been filming the thing for just such an effect. In fact, that 3D reference is wholly pertinent as Lonesome Pine is actually an incredibly three-dimensional movie. I don't, for one second, presume that the remastering engineers have chosen to ignore it and remain convinced that they have probably done the best that they can with the existing elements.īut, blissfully, this hallucinogenic state of affairs does not persist, and Lonesome Pine actually settles into a vibrant, sharp and vivid image almost immediately afterwards. That bad 3D impression that I've mentioned before for when the three strips have become misaligned - the BD of Quo Vadis exhibited this as well - is just one of those unavoidable things that can happen with such vintage titles, I suppose. The early three-strip Technicolor - understandably, I might add - produced a very blurred and ghosted effect during the opening titles that was actually uncomfortable to look at. At first, this 1.37:1 image looked absolutely horrible.
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