Love Story
Studio Home Entertainment (Sterling)
Cast: Ali MacGraw, Ryan O’Neil, Ray Milland
Extras: Commentary Track, Featurette, Theatrical Trailer
Rating:
If there ever has been the epitome of a romantic movie, Arthur Hiller’s ’Love Story’ is it. Not before and not since has a love story had more heart and emotions, and in all honesty, I dare anyone to watch this film without a sniffle. It simply gets to you, no matter how rough you may appear.
Captured in beautiful pictures, ’Love Story’ is more of a visual love poem than a traditional film, and it is great to see that Paramount has prepared a beautiful anamorphic widescreen transfer of this unforgettable movie for this DVD. Mostly free of nicks or blemishes, the transfer is generally clean and very stable and shows only a hint of grain. However, the imagery has dated quite a bit. The earth-tone color schemes, the glaring 70s contrasts and color accents date the film more than you may wish, but fortunately the overall presentation quality on this DVD is so good that you will quickly forget about it and dive into this story head over heels all the way to the final, weeping minutes.
Like the video presentation, the film’s monaural Dolby Digital audio track gives away the film’s age. Over-compressed, it always sounds flat with very limited dynamic range, and a narrow frequency response that results in a thin, almost tinny sounding presentation. The audio has been cleaned up and no notable background noise or hiss is evident, but still, the sonic limitations of the productions are extremely obvious and should have been addressed.
The DVD features an audio commentary track by director Arthur Hiller, which is a mixed bag. While informative and insightful, his somewhat incohesive speech pattern makes it hard to follow his comments at time. Interspersed with numerous lengthy pauses, this commentary is sadly not very entertaining.
The disc also contains a 15-minute featurette called ’Love Story – A Classic Remembered’ and the film’s trailer.
