The Captive Heart Blu-ray - Michael Redgrave

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S E A R C H D V D B e a v e r

Directed by Basil Dearden
UK 1946

From Basil Dearden, the renowned director of Dead of Night, Pool of London, The Mind Benders, The Blue Lamp, Woman of Straw, The League of Gentlemen, The Square Ring, They Came to a City, and The Man Who Haunted Himself, comes this Ealing classic about a captain of the Czechoslovak Army (Michael Redgrave, The Night My Number Came Up) who assumes the identity of a dead British officer during World War II. When he is caught, he joins thousands of British prisoners of war, captured during the Fall of France, on a march to a German prison camp. Although he keeps up a correspondence with the dead officer’s estranged wife to avoid exposure, his fellow prisoners begin to suspect him of being a spy. Only his conspicuous courage during an escape attempt vindicates the secretive Czech. The Captive Heart features a wonderful cast of great British character actors including Mervyn Johns (The Horse’s Mouth), Jack Warner (It Always Rains on Sunday) and Gordon Jackson (The Ipcress File), with stunning black-and-white cinematography by the great Douglas Slocombe (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lion in Winter, Raiders of the Lost Ark).

***

A series of stories about the lives and loves of nine men in a Prisoner of War Camp over five years. Location shooting in the British occupied part of Germany adds believability. The main story is of Hasek (Redgrave) a Czech soldier who needs to keep his identity a secret from the Nazis, to do this he poses as a dead English Officer and corresponds with the man's wife. Upon liberation they meet and decide to continue their lives together. The other inmates' stories are revealed episodically.

Posters

Theatrical Release: April 2nd, 1946

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Review: Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray

Box Cover		CLICK to order from: Also available in the UK, on Blu-ray, from Studio Canal:
Distribution	Kino - Region 'A' - Blu-ray
Runtime	1:39:42.393
Video	1.33:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 32,529,521,204 bytes Feature: 31,253,962,752 bytes Video Bitrate: 37.92 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video
	NOTE: The Vertical axis represents the bits transferred per second. The Horizontal is the time in minutes.
Bitrate Blu-ray:
Audio	DTS-HD Master Audio English 1554 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1554 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit) Commentary: Dolby Digital Audio English 192 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 192 kbps
Subtitles	English, None
Features	Release Information: Studio: Kino 1.33:1 1080P Dual-layered Blu-ray Disc Size: 32,529,521,204 bytes Feature: 31,253,962,752 bytes Video Bitrate: 37.92 Mbps Codec: MPEG-4 AVC Video Edition Details: • NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian Samm Deighan -Theatrical Trailer (0:47 in SD) Blu-ray Release Date: May 19th, 2020 Standard Blu-ray Case Chapters 10

Comments:

NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (May 2020): Kino have transferred Basil Dearden's The Captive Heart to Blu-ray. It can look a shade faded and clunky, but the image is consistent on a dual-layered disc with a max'ed out bitrate. It's not a top-shelf image but the textures are wonderfully rich and fine. It looked adept in-motion with only infrequent speckles and no visible damage.

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master 2.0 channel mono track (16-bit) in the original English language. There are a few war-related effects and score by Alan Rawsthorne (Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, The Man Who Never Was), sounding clean and even. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region 'A' Blu-ray.

The Kino Blu-ray offers a new audio commentary by film historian Samm Deighan who talks about The Captive Heart as a prisoner-of-war melodrama, how it fits into Dearden's overall work, his career, the screenplay and original story... she discusses Angus MacPhail's (Dead of Night) collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock (Spellbound) and the advent of the MacGuffin, Ealing Studios, the highly interesting producer Michael Balcon... and much more. It is educational and interesting. She does (mistakenly?) tend to call it "Captive Hearts" most of the time. There is also a short theatrical trailer in SD.

Basil Dearden's The Captive Heart is an excellent film. It looks at the prisoner-of-war experience from another, emotional, angle. It can be quite dark. It is well-directed, written with an honest expression, and the Kino Blu-ray has value with the 1080P, consistent audio and Samm Deighan commentary. The Captive Heart is certainly recommended!