Eating Raoul (The Criterion Collection)

I have a dream. I have a dream that, one day, I will not have to sadly report that yet another DVD technican on crack has butchered a five-star movie. As much as I love Paul Bartel's "Eating Raoul", I have already returned my copy for a full refund, and here is why: Columbia/TriStar (a major film company who should know better) took a movie that was NOT shot in widescreen, and s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d the image without properly matting it. As a result, tall and leggy Mary Waranov looks about three feet tall (and just as wide) because of the horizontal compression. My fellow reviewer who timidly stated that there is a "slight" problem with the picture is being much too kind and forgiving. The movie is NOT WATCHABLE and this transfer is NOT ACCEPTABLE to anyone who has even an inkling about proper screen ratios. In case you think I'm the one on crack, I did an "A/B" comparison with my s-vhs full screen copy taped from cable, and it is far SUPERIOR to the DVD version! When are film studios going to get over this presumption that every film ever released has to be in "widescreen", even when it was not the director's oriignal intent (witness the DVD version of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"-it is available in "Full Screen" only, because THERE ARE SOME FILMS THAT MORE ACCURATELY RETAIN THIER ORIGINAL ASPECT IN FULL SCREEN PRESENTATION!!) This is also a shameful insult to the memory of the late great Paul Bartel, whom I am sure would not have allowed this, had he still been alive to supervise the DVD transfer. Buyer beware.

This long awaited DVD is an incredible disappointment. The major problem that makes this unwatchable is that somehow this movie has been stretched horizontally to fit a widescreen TV. The result makes everything look distorted. I don't know what the original aspect ratio was but this presentation is an abomination. I tried running it on my computer software to manually adjust the picture dimensions. The film does appear to be wider than the standard screen size but not the ratio as presented on this DVD.

And to top it off the print appears to be something of the VHS quality (i.e. poor) with color and resolution deficiences. There appears to be a gash in the screen as if the video was shot from a movie screen with a tear in the top middle. The sound appears to have been mono that someone has doctored up by added fake stereo and reverb, then steering the dialog from side to side. Warning: Listening to this may cause sea sickness.

Sony should be sued for selling this junk. I probably will be returning my copy. One thing for sure: if you are unable to manually adjust the aspect ratio with a computer, do not buy this. I will be anxiously waiting for this to be remastered - this is a good and funny film.

Even though one has a feel for the ending, it is still spine-chilling. A superb vehicle for black humour. A classic.