The Silver Screen Oasis

I noticed the "choppiness" to Up the River, too---something which may have been TCM's fault because earlier a poster at the message boards over there noted the same thing occuring during Meet John Doe.

MissG,

The choppiness of the print looked like it was in the print. There were too many jump cuts (splices) indicating lost or excised footage at some point. Even the ending seemed very abrupt.

The choppiness made the film hard to watch for me. I did enjoy seeing Bogart when he was so young and I did enjoy the interaction between Tracey and Hymer, especially when they are leaving Bogart's mother's house.

The print may be all that exists. Fox had a huge vault fire in 1936 that destroyed not only most of their negatives but their fine grain duping negs as well.

It was after this devastating fire that Fox learned the valuable lesson of not storing their negs and their fine grains in the same location.

I agree that's what it seems to be, but then what was the case with Meet John Doe? Even the worst prints I've seen of that movie, including what's aired previously on TCM, never had that kind of choppiness. Poor image quality yes, but not so much of a splicing issue. That's the only reason I suspect it still might be a transmission problem. I might take out my dvd of Up the River tonight just to compare.

TCM has had a very serious problem lately with audio synching, to the piont that entire movies are ruined because the audio is a split second behind the image and that is really distracting on top of their usual pixelation problem. Digital broadcasting has so much going for it but it is a step down in so many other ways.

I noticed a problem during "Two Rode Together." It was enough to make me stop the recording. There was also a slight problem during "The Iron Horse" but it was better.

Was it the same kind of problem? If so, then it's definitely a transmission error because those jumps don't occur in the prints of 2 Rode Together and The Iron Horse.

Did anyone see "When Willie Comes Marching Home"? What a weird little film from Ford. My initial thought was that just about anyone could have done this one. That's not a bad thing except there didn't seem to be anything Fordian about it.

One thing that did strike me funny was when Dailey gets to Europe and goes through all hs goes through only to heave no one believe him. (We certainly seem to buy it as it happens in the story.)

In its way it reminds me of "Gideon of Scotland Yard." Almost a throw-away. If you didn't know it was Ford you never would have guessed.

Not really surprised that many not be familar with it.