Brighton Beach Memoirs - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

Brighton Beach Memoirs

Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score: ​

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Movie
Brighton Beach Memoirs is a film that I have never seen before, though I AM familiar with it’s stage play counterpart. In fact, I intentionally refused to see the movie back in the 90s because I loved the play so much that I didn’t want to sully it’s memory. I know it sounds silly, but sometimes efforts that work on stage don’t fare so well on the silver screen, and films that work really well don’t translate to stage either, so I pulled a “stick your head in the sand” technique. Interestingly enough, I ended up really enjoying Gene Sak’s translation of the play, and find it a wonderful compliment to the already stellar stage play.

Brighton Beach Memoirs (both in stage and film form) is the first in Neil Simon’s auto-biographical works revolving around Eugene Morris Jerome in a post World War II, where Eugene (Neil Simon’s alter ego) has to deal with racism, anti-semitism, and general tough times in a world that was trying to rebuild. The film itself is connected very deeply with the stage play (which had won multiple Tony awards and various other accolades with Matthew Broderick playing the lead role), even having Gene Saks come in to direct it (who had directed the Broadway play and was also a strong collaborator with Neil Simons), as well as having Brian Dillinger and Lisa Waltz reprise their roles as Eugene’s brother and female cousin. Jonathan Silverman was hired to take over for Broderick in the film, and also took over for his role on Broadway as well after the movie, garnering almost as much praise as Broderick did over his career in the role.

Eugene is your typical boy living in 1937’s Brooklyn. He lives in a lower/middle class two story house in the lower end of Brooklyn and dreams of being a pitcher for the New York Mets some day. However, his proclivities for writing and poetry makes his dreams a bit far fetched, as the boy’s talents obviously have him leaning towards being a writer instead. Instead he has to make do with school, a mother (played by Blythe Danner) who uses him as her personal gopher (she sends him down to the corner market AT LEAST two or three times a day) and is obsessed with his own burgeoning sexuality. He’s constantly taking peeks in nudy magazines, as well as trying to peak at his own older cousin Nora (Lisa Waltz) in typical 15 year old fashion, and even more obsessed about baseball.

Bright Beach Memoirs is very whimsical and “slice of life” in it’s narrative structure, and lends itself toward an actual memoir in structure. The film slides along at a smooth pace, integrating different aspects of Eugene’s life in places, as well as his views of how his older brother Stanley (Brian Dillinger) deals with life’s bigger problems. There’s a scene part way through the film where Stanley gets in big trouble for standing up for an African American co-worker and ends up off his boss in the process. Then he’s forced to write a letter of apology or face termination, which adds a strain in the household as Stanley figures out what is the right thing to do.

The film’s whimsical and loose narrative structure really works in it’s favor, showering us with varying vignettes of Eugene’s life and the experiences of those around him without feeling TOO loose and uncohesive. I was initially worried that the film would be too sluggish and not move along, but the vignettes are short, sweet and to the point without any wasted movement or being bogged down with excessive storytelling. By the second half of the film I had almost forgotten that nearly an hour had gone by, and by the end I realized that the shorter than Broadway time frame had kept the story from getting too sluggish, which is a definite boon.

Coming from someone who had seen the play multiple times, I DID have a few problems with how Gene Saks took the play and chopped some of the scenes down pretty heavily. He trimmed and maneuvered some scenes out of order, and even cut out some of the best lines of the play. However, this is pure nitpicking as the movie itself works well on it’s own, which is a HUGE thing, as most stage plays to film adaptations don’t really get that. They sometimes stick a bit TOO close to the plays roots, which turns it either into a stage play on film, or an overly bloated movie that can’t reconcile the fact that different techniques need to be applied to a movie than a stage production. In the end Brighton Beach Memoirs is a very good movie that I really wish I hadn’t put off watching until now.




Rating:

Rated PG-13 by the MPAA




Video:

I didn’t see anything about a new transfer, but the transfer that Shout Factory has put out on their 72nd “Shout Select” title is quite good looking. It’s a clean transfer with no signs of major artifacting or black crush to be found (mild crush in a few of the darker interior shots), full of a vibrant grain structure that is nice and thick, but still very organic looking. The colors are very warm and burnished, with heavy sepia over tones and hints of yellow to simulate the rustic look of the 1930s. Fine details are generally strong, through some of the interior shots do look a bit softish in nature. It’s a very good looking transfer and one that I must iterate looks very authentic to the low budget films of the 1980s. It’s not going to be ultra shiny and glossy like modern digital shoots, but the grain levels are very organic and the colors more than appealing.






Audio:

The 2.0 Mono track is perfectly replicated with a simple sound design that is about as natural and clean as the video encode is. The track isn’t wild and exciting, but it replicates the vocals and New York City accents cleanly and clearly with no issues in regards to hissing and crackling. The front sound stage has a moderate amount of activity in the hustle and bustle of New York, but it’s pretty typical of a mono track that was recorded late in the 20th century, simple, effective, and clean.






Extras:

• Original Theatrical Trailer.

Final Score:
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Brighton Beach Memoirs is a whimsical and sweet retelling of Neil Simon’s young years in a lower middle class blue collar family in New York. The film resonates with many people today and those not in the upper class will definitely be able to relate with the struggles and problems that Neil had growing up back then. The Shout Factory encode is very pleasing to look at, and the audio mix is great for a simple Mono presentation. The only thing that I was a bit displeased with was the near complete lack of extra (we only have trailer) as usually Shout Select titles are very near “Collector’s Edition” status in regards to extras. Still, fans of the Broadway play and fans of the movie should be very pleased with the set and I heartily recommend it as a good watch.




Technical Specifications:

Starring: Jonathan Silverman, Blythe Danner, Stacey Glick, Lisa Waltz, Judith Ivey, Bob Dishy, James Handy, Steven Hill
Directed by: Gene Saks
Written by: Neil Simon (Play and Screenplay)
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 AVC
Audio: English: DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles: English SDH
Studio: Shout Factory
Rated: PG-13
Runtime: 108 Minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: March 26th, 2019

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• Michael Scott
• May 11, 2017

Recommendation: Good Watch

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. Never heard of this so didn't catch the play or the movie. Will check it out.