Review of They Shoot Horses Don`t They?

Introduction

This is one of those great, if morbid, films from the late 60`s that still have a grain of relevance today.

Set during the Great Depression this film details the phenomena of the Dance Marathon and its impact upon the utter hopelessness people felt.

It is fair to say that this film is often unjustly overlooked today in light of Sydney Pollack`s later films in spite of the fact that it netted an astounding 9 academy awards.

This was the break through film that hailed Jane Fonda as one of the shining actresses of the seventies giving, as she does, an excellent portrayal of the bitter and resentful Gloria. This is also one of the rare films where some of the best and most involving acting comes from the myriad of supporting cast.

Video

The disk is presented in 4:3 pan and scan version cropped from the original wide screen print, what`s worse is your and given a set of credits at the start of the film that are still in widescreen.
To be brutally honest I find this kind of practice (as Disney did with its recent release of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang) to be really unacceptable, especially if a widescreen print is available as is proven by the apparently excellent Anchor Bay US region 1 issue.

In this case the quality of the video is little better then that of VHS and leads me to think that the same source was used, this is very lightly considering the budget nature of the title.

The menus are simple and functional but offer very little to say `wow` about.

Audio

Audio for the most part was clear and listenable.

It is billed as Dolby Stereo but is in fact a mono signal recorded on both the left and right tracks as it was originally recorded.

Features

The extras are really a bit thin on the ground and are all static in nature (biographies, trivia and note are common place).

It is a real shame that some of the excellent commentaries that exist for the title could not have been included.

Conclusion

This film does have a real power to move you and make you think and that is a rare quality in modern filmmaking.
If you have never seen it then I would strongly recommend that you do but maybe not using this DVD.

The content is first rate but the DVD and presentation is second rate at best, this is such a shame considering the alternative versions available and the huge swaths of information are available about the film.