Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. (1951)
Adventure, War, History • 1h 57m
Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty, Moultrie Kelsall, Terence Morgan, James Kenney, James Robertson Justice, Denis O'Dea, Richard Hearne, Michael Dolan, Stanley Baker, Alan Tilvern, Alec Mango, Christopher Lee, John Witty, Michael Goodliffe, Eugene Deckers, Ingeborg von Kusserow, Amy Veness, Kynaston Reeves, Ronald Adam, Chris Adcock, Basil Bartlett, André Belhomme, David Birks, Robert Cawdron, Diane Cilento, Howard Connell, Alexander Davion, Steve Donahue, Patric Doonan, Anthony Forwood, Arthur Gomez, Lindsay Hooper, Richard Johnson, Howard Lang, Jim Brady, Fred Haggerty, Sam Kydd, Anthony Marlowe, Michael Mellinger, Julio Monterde, Peter Morton, Jack Stewart, Derek Sydney, Jack Taylor, John A. Tinn, Russell Waters, Del Watson, Jack Watson, Byron Webster, Patrick Young
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 1 month ago
4K restoration from original technicolor negatives
Overview
Captain Horatio Hornblower leads his ship HMS Lydia on a perilous transatlantic voyage, during which his faithful crew battle both a Spanish warship and a ragged band of Central American rebels.
Director: Raoul Walsh
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Raoul Walsh
Sources: moma.org (opens in a new tab)
New restoration by MoMA and Film Foundation https://www.moma.org/calendar/events/11558 no release yet
Director: Raoul Walsh
Director: Raoul Walsh
Director: Raoul Walsh
Criterion 4K Blu-ray scheduled for Dec 2026 release
Warner Archive Blu-ray in October
More Adventure on Blu-ray
Criterion Box Set coming October 20th with FiM encode, work done to un-Nolan the 4K master, the first ever appearance of the 35mm mono track on physical media and a new restoration/remastering of the 70mm 6-track mix.
(early pressing has errors of a shot, later pressings fixed)
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Criterion Box Set coming on October 20th with FiM encode
DTS:X mix most closely approximates original surround mix
Criterion DVD has additional features not found on the 4K Blu-ray
Director: Terence Young
WB 4K Blu-ray despite frozen grain
Director: James Cameron
Sources: movie-censorship.com (opens in a new tab)
Fox Blu-ray for original cuts without the extra scene added in the re-release and AI upscaling
Newer Blu-ray/4K has the extra scene, but is poor and has excessive AI upscaling
An additional scene was added to the ending of the movie in the 2022 re-release: https://www.movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=493908
Director: Sidney Lumet
Criterion 4K Blu-ray replacement disc for fixed audio (there were some dialogues missing)
While the video on the replacement disc is exactly the same as the original release, the Atmos with missing lines has been corrected as it was also corrected on the Criterion commentary. Criterion also included the 6-track which is almost identical to the PAL track; It’s 4.0 in a 5.1 container. This 6-track is slightly better than the PAL DVD track as the PAL has some flutter on some parts that Criterion doesn’t have.
The Atmos on the replacement is identical to the Imprint AUS Blu-ray track which also has all the lines. The compatibility track is also the same,
It is worth mentioning the Imprint only has the Atmos and no 6-track. The 5.1 surround is with LFE and split surrounds and it’s just a downmix of the Atmos. Ditto for the LPCM 2.0 on said Blu-ray.
Director: Michael Arias
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
GKIDS 4K Blu-ray is a sharpened upscale. Caps
GKIDS 4K Blu-ray has a true lossless English dub and correct volume levels for the Japanese audio
Edit history
Every recommendation follows the same method — how these calls are made.