Review of Defiant Ones, The

Introduction

The Defiant Ones (1958) looks at a tale of two convicts from the deep south of U.S. returning from work detail on a chain gang. The police van encounters a road accident that gives two convicts, chain tied together, a chance to make their escape. Forced to be stuck to each other both Joker Jackson (Tony Curtis), a white bigot, and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier), a wilful black man, work together to make sure they are not caught by Sheriff Max Muller (Theodore Bike) who is hot on their trail.

Winner of two Academy Awards for best screenplay (Harold Jacob Smith and Nedrick Young) and cinematography (Sam Leavitt.), the film is one that leaves an impression that is still quite significant. The race perspective, while not as explore upon as in films like In The Heat Of The Night, Shaft & Do The Right Thing, is one that highlighted the problem of intolerances white people showed towards the black community during the period the film was set in. At the time of its cinema release the film was considered to be rather groundbreaking. Presently it is a film many still view for its gripping tale, excellent performances, and wonderful cinematography.

Video

The DVD is presented in an non-anamorphic widescreen ratio of 1.66:1, which is its original aspect ratio. The picture quality for me was a slight let down. While the film had no major problems like film dirt and grain (normally associated with films that are over 40 years of age) it was the lack of black shadows and detail that made the black and white movie lack some image information. The greys and blacks seemed quite monotonous in places. Despite this the picture was very clean for a film of its age, and I was impressed that no major wear and tear affected the overall crisp quality.

Audio

The English Dolby Digital Mono soundtrack is very audible and the dialogues heard is both very clear and concise. Normally much sound distortion, like hissing, is heard on older film titles. However this is not the case on this DVD. No major signs of any sound distortion can be heard.

Features

The extra features includes a still menu, which is very easy to navigate over. Also included is a theatrical trailer, which is the standard on many bare bones MGM DVD titles.

The disc has additional subtitle tracks in English (HOH), German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch. However these subtitles are not 16x9 friendly as they are placed right at the bottom of the picture making viewers with widescreen televisions sets miss out on the subtitles when the picture is zoomed upon to fill the screen.

Conclusion

Despite my criticisms on the picture quality, I found the DVD to be one I would recommend purchasing. It’s a title that can be bought inexpensively and has quality that will satisfy many people.