I wish I could have mustered a stronger liking for the movie, but my feelings toward it are more those of simple admiration than any sort of genuine enthusiasm.
"Northside" moves along at a healthy clip, but it is so unrelentingly serious, it quickly becomes oppressive. True, it's meant to be an exacting story without much sentimentality, and Stewart's character is supposed to be cynical and sarcastic. Nevertheless, it's a little hard to take such well-intended earnestness for close on to two hours. There is also an inevitability about the proceedings that diminishes much of its mystery; I mean, we pretty much know how it's going to end and just wait for it to play out. Still, as a kind of police procedural, it works fairly well, even if the work of this particular investigative news journalist seems more exaggerated than it would be in real life and despite the story's being based on real-life events. And the whole movie appears overlong and begins sagging in the middle, where we get more detail than we probably need.
The police, almost to the man, try to stall McNeal's investigation at every turn, which seems a mite implausible, determined to keep a "cop killer" in prison and cover up any possible malfeasance on their part. Stewart's showdown with his publisher, the State's Attorney's Office, the Police Commissioner, and even the Governor seems equally far-fetched. The movie takes its time, but it finally gets into true noir territory by the last half hour, where dark streets, dark alleys, dark staircases, and dark rooms prevail. At last, things wrap up with some rather unlikely last-minute coincidences that seem more than a trifle corny but give the film a good sense of finish.
I wish I could have mustered a stronger liking for the movie, but my feelings toward it are more those of simple admiration than any sort of genuine enthusiasm. I could appreciate what it was trying to do, yet I never sensed it had any real heart. Its obsession with objectivity, to the point of its having little or no musical score, left it too cold for me to respect on anything more than a practical level. Viewing "Call Northside 777" was like looking at pictures of trees and flowers in a magazine rather than enjoying them in my own backyard. The movie never fully drew me into its world because its world was too sterile for me to want to enter.
Video:
The screen size is the stock 1.37:1 ratio of the day, rendered here at 1.33:1, and it is in black-and-white, as a majority of films still were in 1948. A high bit rate secures the best possible object delineation and B&W contrasts, but it also points up vividly some of the flaws in the old print. It appears that Fox may have cleaned up a good print or found an exceptionally excellent one, but there is no indication they did a complete frame-by-frame restoration on it. As a result, we see more clearly than ever the occasional scratches, flecks, lines, and age marks to be found, as well some small but sharply etched grain. So, it's a first-class mastering of a merely good print, but nothing like a completely new renovation.
Audio:
The sound in English is available in its original 1.0 monaural or a new Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track. I found this odd, because the film has virtually no music beyond Alfred Newman's opening-credits score, and everything else is dialogue. The dialogue is, however, given a better sense of air and space through the stereo's added resonance, so every little bit helps. Unfortunately, although the sound is very clear and the dialogue easy to hear, it is also a tad hard and edgy, with a slight background noise audible at all times.
Extras:
There isn't a whole lot in the way of extras. The main thing is an audio commentary with authors and historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. They present a series of facts about the film in a no-nonsense, straightforward manner, which in its way underscores the semidocumentary approach of the film itself. Beyond that, there is only a Fox MovieTone News reel, "Motion Picture Stars Attend Première of 'Call Northside 777'"; twenty scene selections; a theatrical trailer; English and French spoken languages; and English and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Shots:
For people who have never seen "Call Northside 777" before and especially for Jimmy Stewart fans, the film can provide a respectable two hours' entertainment. But the movie's fundamental predictability and its unremittingly impassive narrative style made it for me a onetime affair.
The police, almost to the man, try to stall McNeal's investigation at every turn, which seems a mite implausible, determined to keep a "cop killer" in prison and cover up any possible malfeasance on their part. Stewart's showdown with his publisher, the State's Attorney's Office, the Police Commissioner, and even the Governor seems equally far-fetched. The movie takes its time, but it finally gets into true noir territory by the last half hour, where dark streets, dark alleys, dark staircases, and dark rooms prevail. At last, things wrap up with some rather unlikely last-minute coincidences that seem more than a trifle corny but give the film a good sense of finish.
I wish I could have mustered a stronger liking for the movie, but my feelings toward it are more those of simple admiration than any sort of genuine enthusiasm. I could appreciate what it was trying to do, yet I never sensed it had any real heart. Its obsession with objectivity, to the point of its having little or no musical score, left it too cold for me to respect on anything more than a practical level. Viewing "Call Northside 777" was like looking at pictures of trees and flowers in a magazine rather than enjoying them in my own backyard. The movie never fully drew me into its world because its world was too sterile for me to want to enter.
Video:
The screen size is the stock 1.37:1 ratio of the day, rendered here at 1.33:1, and it is in black-and-white, as a majority of films still were in 1948. A high bit rate secures the best possible object delineation and B&W contrasts, but it also points up vividly some of the flaws in the old print. It appears that Fox may have cleaned up a good print or found an exceptionally excellent one, but there is no indication they did a complete frame-by-frame restoration on it. As a result, we see more clearly than ever the occasional scratches, flecks, lines, and age marks to be found, as well some small but sharply etched grain. So, it's a first-class mastering of a merely good print, but nothing like a completely new renovation.
Audio:
The sound in English is available in its original 1.0 monaural or a new Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo track. I found this odd, because the film has virtually no music beyond Alfred Newman's opening-credits score, and everything else is dialogue. The dialogue is, however, given a better sense of air and space through the stereo's added resonance, so every little bit helps. Unfortunately, although the sound is very clear and the dialogue easy to hear, it is also a tad hard and edgy, with a slight background noise audible at all times.
Extras:
There isn't a whole lot in the way of extras. The main thing is an audio commentary with authors and historians James Ursini and Alain Silver. They present a series of facts about the film in a no-nonsense, straightforward manner, which in its way underscores the semidocumentary approach of the film itself. Beyond that, there is only a Fox MovieTone News reel, "Motion Picture Stars Attend Première of 'Call Northside 777'"; twenty scene selections; a theatrical trailer; English and French spoken languages; and English and Spanish subtitles.
Parting Shots:
For people who have never seen "Call Northside 777" before and especially for Jimmy Stewart fans, the film can provide a respectable two hours' entertainment. But the movie's fundamental predictability and its unremittingly impassive narrative style made it for me a onetime affair.
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[release]15277[/release]