1492 - Conquest of Paradise

Back in 1992, the 500th anniversary of explorer Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the “New World� prompted an expensive bout of competition between filmmakers, with two large-scale movies doing battle to be the first to reach cinemas in the anniversary year. One of them was the embarrassingly dreadful Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, produced by the Salkind family (of Superman fame), written by Godfather creator Mario Puzo and directed by James Bond stalwart John Glen. That now-forgotten flop might have won the race to be seen first, but it was Ridley Scott’s 1492 that scored the prize for watchability.

It’s a hard story to screw up, really. The idealistic, driven Columbus, certain that his theories about a mainland to the west are correct, sets off on a voyage to discover them, against all the odds and with an increasingly annoyed, hungry crew. He’s vindicated when he finds new land, but the introduction of European ways to the previously untouched native cultures there has predictably tragic consequences.

Certainly 1492 looks nice; in typical Ridley Scott style, every carefully-prepared Panavision shot is loaded with sumptuous detail, rich colour, the trademark Scott falling-rose-petals gimmick (see Legend or Gladiator for further details) and enough over-the-top lighting effects to make Russell Mulcahy pick up his bat and ball and go home. But pretty pictures are almost a given when dealing with a Ridley Scott film; where 1492 stumbles is in the storytelling, a problem that starts with the screenplay and is exacerbated by Scott’s fondness for visual symbolism. For the first two thirds of this very long film, the story is told economically and without too much dwelling over the fine details; it’s basically an against-the-odds adventure movie. But when Columbus arrives back in the West Indies on his second voyage, the script goes south. Suddenly there are good guys and bad guys battling it out, but it’s impossible to tell exactly who’s who or why; all we see is a lot of pouting, grimacing and blood. Perhaps it’s an attempt to convey the anarchy that the island descends into; if so, it fails. Adding to the problem is Scott’s attempt to turn this sequence into some kind of wordless ballet, complete with slow motion carnage and an unintentionally hilarious shot of a crucifix being set on fire by a bolt of lightning. All the good work done by the film to that point is undone in five minutes as a good yarn turns into a confusing and tedious photoplay.

Acting throughout is suitably over the top, and while Gerard Depardieu has come in for some flack over his performance as Italian explorer Columbus, he’s actually perfect for the role; sure, the thick French accent isn’t exactly authentic, but then, Sigourney Weaver gives Queen Isabel a New York drawl and nobody seemed to mind that at the time, nor the fact that much of the Spanish aristocracy sounds decidedly British!

A flawed attempt at a full-scale epic historical film, 1492 still offers much that’s worthwhile, and is certainly fascinating to watch in the light of Ridley Scott’s subsequent output. If it were better attuned to its characters’ emotions, it might have worked a lot better than it ultimately does.

Umbrella Entertainment has come to the party for this long-overdue region 4 release of 1492, with an anamorphic transfer in the film’s correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio - a transfer previously only available on the German DVD release, and obviously imported from that country (the opening title still reads 1492 - Die Eroberung des Paradieses!) Other DVD releases of this film - including Fox’s UK disc - have offered it cropped to 2.20:1, the ratio used for 70mm theatrical prints that were struck at the time.

Using a very clean and problem-free source, this transfer presents the film reasonably well, though it’s not quite up to the current state of the art. There’s some grain visible throughout, and colour saturation isn’t quite what it perhaps could be. Nor are black levels, which tend more towards the green-grey much of the time, causing shadow detail to collapse during a couple of key scenes. But overall, the film’s never looked better on home video, and it’s a relief to finally be able to see it in its full widescreen format.

The layer change, by the way, is dreadful; placed in the middle of a scene, it interrupts the music score and the flow of the sequence and took an unusually long time for our review player to navigate.

The video encoding is exceptionally well done, and presents no problems despite the occasional use of very low bitrates.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack heard here was only previously available on the German DVD release, other countries’ versions using the original Dolby Surround audio that most heard theatrically. This multi-channel version of the soundtrack is not a modern remix; it’s the mix done for 70mm prints of the film, which carried six-channel magnetic audio. The difference in mix style from modern 5.1 mixes is quite striking, too - most notably in the surround channels, which are almost constantly active and mixed at a much higher level than is common today. It’s most definitely an immersive soundtrack, if not always the most realistic.

Fidelity is reasonably good, though location dialogue and effects have a tendency to sound tinny and midrange-biased, and there are quite a few scenes where it’s near-impossible to decipher what Depardieu is saying. The LFE channel gets good use throughout, though it may have been artificially created for this Dolby Digital version. The music score is by Vangelis, and appears to have been mixed in full surround; many will know one of the more majestic pieces of this score, as it’s been obnoxiously used in trailers for other films since.

Umbrella beats all other comers with this release of 1492 when it comes to extras; most of the other releases don’t have any at all, save for a trailer. This release shows what a little digging around can do to add value to a disc. Like all Madman-authored DVDs, this one is encoded with DVD Text (with the mysterious suffix “Pro�) and a jacket picture for players that support such things.

Interviews: There are three separate offerings here, all of which appear to have been sourced from SBS Television in Australia. The most rewarding is a 36-minute (!) interview with producer Alain Goldman, raw unedited camera footage of an interview done by The Movie Show’s Margaret Pomeranz. There’s also an eight-minute Pomeranz chat with Ridley Scott, shot outdoors at Cannes. And finally, what’s listed as an interview with Depardieu is actually a 30-minute (very!) raw tape of a press conference featuring Depardieu, his interpreter and Goldman. All up, that’s nearly an hour and a quarter of archival material; it may be raw and unedited, but that’s part of the pleasure of it. We’d like to see more of this done; certainly SBS is to be commended for being so generous with its archives.

Theatrical Trailer: If you’ve ever wanted to be reminded how bad video transfers were back in 1992, watch this.

Umbrella Propaganda: Trailers for Bagdad Cafe, Cinema Paradiso, My Beautiful Laundrette and Red Rock West.

Unlikely to go down in history as the masterpiece it so obviously wants to be, 1492 is nonetheless well worth a look; fans of large-scale epic cinema (or of Ridley Scott’s unique visual flamboyance) will find enough here to keep them entertained in spite of the movie’s flaws.

Umbrella Entertainment has delivered the best available DVD of this film to date, with a decent widescreen transfer, 5.1 audio - and best of all, worthwhile extra features that are unique to the Australian release.