Grand Prix (HD DVD)

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But there are also the exaggerated emotions and personal matters to contend with, none of which in and of themselves would probably not happen to somebody in real-life but seem to happen to everyone in this picture simultaneously. Scott is nearly crippled in a horrendous accident but determines to make it back to the track and become a world champion; everybody in the film has an affair with everybody else; the characters are generally vacuous stereotypes, Pete chief among them; team managers are ruthless; and winning is everything to every driver, every owner, and every spectator. It begins to feel like piling on.

As with all sports movies, "Grand Prix" comes down to the final race of the season to determine the world championship, and the tension mounts. Ah, the joys of DVD and HD-DVD, to be able to watch the movie again by clicking only on the racing sequences. They are more than worth the price of the set.

Video:
I was impressed that Warner Bros. did such a superlative job restoring the film and transferring it to disc in standard definition. I am even more impressed with the high-definition results, although the improvement, by comparison, is not tremendously different. Again, the video engineers preserved much of the film's 2.20:1 theatrical ratio (originally projected, as I've said, on some screens in Cinerama).

The HD-DVD picture is exceptionally clean and vividly detailed, obviously more so than the SD picture. Furthermore, the colors remain entirely natural, never too bright, never too dull; only now in high def they are deeper and richer than ever. Grain, moiré effects, artifacts of any kind were nonissues in standard def, and in high def, they're not even nonissues, they're nonentities. Grain is practically zero except that inherent to the original print; moiré effects are zero; motion effects, halos, pixilation are zero. I have maybe never seen a cleaner picture from any disc. The video is never startling in its brightness, but it is impressive in its sense of realism. As with the standard-definition transfer, there are a few overly dark faces; otherwise, the picture quality must be pretty close to what I imagine the original film print to look like.

Audio:
On the standard-def disc, I was not entirely happy with the sound. The problems, I thought, were that the sound, which was remastered in Dolby Digital 5.1, was sometimes hard and harsh, voices quite often too nasal, dialogue dry and flat, all of it accompanied by a small degree of background hiss. The new Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 processing helps the situation a bit, but apparently there was nothing the audio engineers could do about the vocal elements. In DD+ there is a wide front-channel stereo spread, along with a slightly stronger dynamic impact and a touch greater overall clarity. Still, the rear channels communicate only a small amount of sound, though, in things like engine noise, tires, crowds, and musical ambience. However, the racing sequences continue to be the highlights of the movie, and it is here that the sound serves them well.

Extras:
For the 40th Anniversary Special Edition SD set, Warner Bros. spread the movie over two discs; but here on HD-DVD they include both the movie and four newly made documentaries plus a vintage featurette all on the same side of a single disc. The first documentary, "Pushing the Limit: The Making of Grand Prix," is twenty-eight minutes long and includes commentary from filmmakers, stars, and drivers who worked on the film. Interestingly, we learn that director Frankenheimer originally wanted Steve McQueen to play the part of Pete Aron, but it fell through; and the director insisted that his actors learn to drive race cars and that most of them do at least some of their own driving in the movie. The second documentary, "Flat Out: Formula One in the Sixties," is seventeen minutes long and contains the reminiscences of a number of world-champion drivers about their racing experiences in the 1960s. The third documentary, "The Style and Sound of Speed," eleven minutes long, is all about the photography, sound, and editing of the film; and the fourth documentary, "Brands Hatch: Chasing the Checkered Flag," ten minutes long, is a look at the British Grand Prix course today. Then, there's a promo featurette, "Grand Prix: Challenge of the Champions," twelve minutes, made at the time of the film's production.

The extras wrap up with forty-five scene selections (but no chapter insert); a theatrical trailer; English, French, and Spanish spoken languages; English, French, and Spanish subtitles; and English captions for the hearing impaired. As usual with WB's HD-DVDs, the package also includes pop-up menus, an elapsed time indicator, a zoom-and-pan feature, and an Elite Red HD case.

Parting Thoughts:
For anyone who enjoys motor racing, "Grand Prix" remains the best movie ever made about the subject. Despite its histrionic interludes and emotional glimpses into the drivers' private lives, the racing sequences more than make up for any other deficiencies. In its new HD-DVD transfer, it is a terrific motion picture just to look at, and if you don't like the mushy stuff in between the races, you can always use your remote's "Fast Forward" and "Skip" buttons.

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