The Pirate (1948)
Music, Romance, Comedy, Adventure • 1h 42m
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, Reginald Owen, George Zucco, Fayard Nicholas, Harold Nicholas, Lester Allen, Lola Albright, Ellen Ross, Mary Jo Ellis, Jean Dean, Marion Murray, Ben Lessy, Jerry Bergen, Val Setz, Cully Richards, Oliver Blake, Marie Windsor, Dorothy Tuttle, Marie Allison, Anne Beck, Hal Bell, Norman Borine, Jill Browning, Wheaton Chambers, George Chandler, Bruce Cowling, Willa Pearl Curtis, Peter Cusanelli, Dante DiPaolo, Ken DuMain, William Edmunds, George Emerson, Anne Francis, Fred Gilman, Suzette Harbin, Jane Howard, Paul Maxey, Bert May, Aurora Navarro, Hamil Petroff, Ellen Ray, Sharon Saunders, Dick Simmons, Dee Turnell, Irene Vernon
About the film
A girl is engaged to the local richman, but meanwhile she has dreams about the legendary pirate Macoco. A traveling singer falls in love with her and to impress her he poses as the pirate.
- Alternative Titles
- The Pirate
Warner Archive, 2k + 4k scans
4K restoration of the original 3D left eye and right eye camera negatives
4K restoration from safety preservation elements
More Music on Blu-ray
Shout! Factory's Blu-ray has both cuts of the film in addition to the 3.0 stereo and 2.0 mono mixes making it the first time the full theatrical cut is available with the 3.0 mix. The new commentary is good. The 3.0 stereo sounds wonderful and the mono sounds solid.
That's where the positives end. This is the same terrible Universal DVD master slapped on a Blu-ray disc with a terrible encode making both versions share the disc separately taking up more space. This master was already poor for DVD and is nearly unwatchable here on the Shout! Factory disc. It looks virtually identical to the upscaled DVD most of the time with only a bit less noise due to it being 1080p. This is one of the most appalling cases of "DVD master slapped on a Blu-ray disc" you can possibly find. Absolutely shameful video presentation. This should have never been released this way. Sadly it's still ever so slightly better than the DVD and the only way you get the proper theatrical cut with lossless 3.0 stereo. This is still the best source we have for the film.
Directors: Chris Appelhans & Maggie Kang
"Sing-Along Edition" not included on the Criterion 4K Blu-ray, only available on Netflix Streaming
Director: Masaaki Yuasa
Director: Damien Chazelle
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
US Lionsgate Limited 4K Blu-ray re-release announced with Dolby Vision, a new exclusive bonus, and the previously retailer pre-order bonus-exclusive/Hong Kong-exclusive bonus interviews in HD
Italy Eagle Pictures has DV, better encode, and no brightness shifts compared to Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray
Lionsgate 4K Blu-ray for the original Dolby Atmos mix
Hong Kong Panorama 4K Blu-ray has two interviews available in HD that are SD everywhere else and only included as retailer-exclusive pre-order bonus DVDs with the US Blu-ray
Directors: Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
UK StudioCanal UHD
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has excellent master in SDR and a good encode. BD caps here.
Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray has poor audio: The 2.0 is fine but unremarkable, the 5.1 is presumably an upmix with a botched, strongly raised LFE channel which makes the entire track unlistenable on well-tuned equipment. Audio graphs here.
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