The first thing you need to know about
Tommy is that you don't have to give a crap about rock & roll or
The Who to enjoy it. Yeah, it's a musical of their work, and if you're a big fan, obviously there'll be that extra appeal. But it's a
Ken Russell movie. It's one of the craziest Ken Russell movies, which you know is really saying something if you're familiar with Ken Russell films. It's a big, bombastic visual roadshow, with a fascinating, dark undercurrent.
Update 5/9/17: I've gone back and added the original, 1999 US DVD. Not only does it provide a nice bit of history to this post, but shows us a little something new, as it includes a fullscreen version.
Update 8/16/24: So, we looked at the US barebones DVD, the UK special edition DVD and the US blu-ray... Wouldn't it be great if there was a release that combined the best of both worlds: HD quality and all the UK extras? Well, there is! It's Update Week 2024 Day 3, and today I've also updated the pages for
A Room With a View and
Shoah with the Criterion DVDs I'd glossed over by jumping right to the Criterion blus.
Ken Russell has said he wasn't familiar with The Who or
Tommy (it was a rock opera album years before it was a film) when he was approached to make the film. But not only did he like it when he listened to it, but he realized it had a lot in common with
The Angels, a script about false religion he'd written to follow
The Devils, but was unable to get funded. So this would be a sort of way to make that movie while still being able to be more faithful to the story of all the album than most previous attempts to turn it into a screenplay had been by other writers. So things just sort of dovetailed nicely into an adaptation that could deeply satisfy The Who and their fans, while still being unquestionably a Ken Russell film. After all, breaking boundaries between music and film was more than half of this guy's career.
So we meet
Tommy as a young boy. His father,
Robert Powell, goes off to war (originally WWI, but updated to WWII in the film), and his mother
Ann-Margaret has an affair with Russell regular
Oliver Reed. When Powell returns home, they kill him in front of the boy and he goes blind, def and dumb. Cut to a decade later and of course the boy grows up to be
Roger Daltry. He's abused and neglected, drugged and taken advantage of all his life - even psychiatrist
Jack Nicholson can't help him - until it turns out he has an inexplicable gift for breaking records at pinball. He becomes a celebrity and even a sort of youth culture messiah, but obviously that can't work out for long.
Giving Russell a massive rock star budget lets him return with unparalleled spectacle. And I'm not a rock and roll guy, but even I have to admit the music's pretty good. I mean, when
Tina Turner sings "The Acid Queen?" Come on! But beyond all that, the performances, even though they're all sung and often highly exaggerated, are quite good (Ann-Margaret was nominated for an Academy Award for this, after all) and the story is genuinely involving. This movie is super 70s, and got a lot of mileage out of simply being an epic music video before music videos existed. Nothing like it would fly today. But at the same time, if you love cinema, it holds up completely and shouldn't be missed.
So
Tommy first hit DVD in 1999, and even Superbit DVD in 2002, both via Columbia Tri-Star. But those were disappointingly absent any features, and the one to own became the British Prism Leisure import from 2004, because it was a brilliant 2-disc special edition. And then the next noteworthy release was in 2010, when Sony brought it up to HD on blu-ray. But it was barebones again. Grrr. Fortunately, UK label Odeon came out with their own blu-ray, which included the Prism Leisure extras, now properly coupled with an HD transfer.
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1999 Columbia widescreen DVD first; 1999 Columbia fullscreen DVD second;
2004 Prism Leisure DVD third; 2010 Sony BD fourth; 2013 Odeon BD fifth. |
Well, say what you will, Sony really gave us a nice image with their blu. The UK DVD looked pretty good: anamorphic, un-interlaced, strong colors, 1.85 framing. It was a good DVD. Though surprisingly, the older US DVD, despite being from the 90s, actually looks a bit better, with cleaner lines and more precise colors. But Sony does more than just present the same transfer on a less compressed blu-ray disc. The image is much sharper and cleaner, with more natural colors and clearer detail. The framing is slightly different, still 1.85:1, but the blu is pointed a little lower, with a bit more picture on the bottom, while the DVDs have a bit more on the top. I can't say one is really better than the other in that regard, but they're different so I'm pointing it out. Oh, and of course the fullscreen DVD has a lot more on the tops and bottoms. It's almost entirely open matte, just losing a little on the sides. But of course 1.85:1 is the proper composition.
As for the Odeon blu, it's virtually identical to Sony's. They're clearly using the same master. Zooming in way close, though, the grain is a smidgen softer in places, which I'd put down to compression. You'll never see the difference in motion, but technically Sony comes out a tiny step ahead.
Both DVDs have a Dolby stereo track and a 5.1 mix. Audio is especially important in a musical, after all. And Sony appreciated this as well, giving us DTS-HD master tracks for the 5.1 mix, and a 5.0 Quintophonic Sounds mix. "Quintophonic Sounds" was a special 4-way stereo mix designed for this film. Anyway, Odeon has both tracks in DTS-HD, too, and each release also includes optional English subtitles.
But yeah, for whatever reason, Sony didn't carry over any of Prism's extras. They don't even have the trailer, just a couple of random bonus trailers.
Well, the UK discs do have the trailer, but that's nothing. They start out with a Ken Russell commentary. He always did great commentaries, and he delivers a great conversation here alongside moderator and famous British film critic
Mark Kermode. This alone is a treasure, and it's crazy to think it never made it to the US, but anyway. Russell also has a nice on-camera interview. Ann-Margaret, Roger Daltry and composer
Pete Townshend also give fun on-camera interviews, and they're some pretty big gets! Finally, there's
The Story Of the Sound, which is a terrific twenty-minute feature on the
Tommy's Quintaphonic sound, including interviews with the film's dubbing mixer
Ray Merrin, music editor
Terry Rawlings and
Robin O'Donoghue, head of sound at Shepperton Studios. Well, technically there's one more extra on the DVDs: a 20-minute "Press Promo,' which is a sort of an advertisement featurette,
combining clips from the film and the interviews already on this disc. There's no new content, so it's just as well Odeon didn't bother with it.
Instead, they have an extra, albeit brief, television interview with Russell that even Prism Leisure doesn't include and is easily preferable. The 2-DVD set does also come in a nice slip-sleeve and includes an exclusive 12-page booklet with vintage posters, cards, notes by
Matt Kent and an essay by Pete Townshend, though. But I'll always take proper video content over swag.
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Odeon's exclusive interview.
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So for years, most serious fans had both the UK set and the US blu - one for the extras and the latter for the superior presentation of the film. That's still a winning combo today. But if you don't already have both and are deciding what to pick up today, the Odeon's the clear way to go. At least until UHDs start coming out, which feels somewhat likely. But if just Sony does it in the US, they still probably won't have the extras, so the Odeon feels like a fairly safe investment.
