Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 Disney children’s musical film based on the the series of books by author Mary Norton. Though the film hasn’t been released on Blu-ray (as of 30 June 2013), so I thought I’d review the iTunes HD version.
An animated interlude.
The story is often compared with Mary Poppins, as it features both musical and animated interludes and have children who have been left in the care of a magical stranger. In fact one of the musical numbers, “Beautiful Briny Sea”, was originally written for Mary Poppins.
In fact while Disney was negotiating the rights to Mary Poppins they were lining up the rights to Bedknobs and Broomsticks as a fallback.
Angela Lansbury does a great job as as Miss Price, and David Tomlinson is excellent as Emelius. The whole show has a very fresh post 1960s sensibility, and the age of the leads makes everything seem fresher. In fact it seems like a Terry Pratchett novel.
The film’s title sequence is a homage to the Bayeux Tapestry, interestingly, Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki would later use a very similar sequence at the start of his animated feature Nausicaa, which also features a strong flying woman.
Amusingly the film tackles the age old problem of not being able to kill anybody in a children’s film by making the good-guys forces magically animated suits of armor, which merely fill up with bullets when shot.
Very typical damage on the right hand side of the frame. The live action portion is very soft due to the double compositing.
Originally intended to be approximately 143 minutes long, the film was cut to 117 minutes due to the need to run after the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. The cuts resulting in the removal (and permanent loss in some cases) of a considerable amount of footage. The 117 minute version was further cut to 97 minutes for VHS release in the late 1970s. This cut almost all of the songs except for “Beautiful Briny Sea”, “Portobello Road” and “Substitutiary Locomotion”. It’s certainly this version that I remember.
A restoration was completed in 1996, restoring the running length to 139 minutes. This adds back a number of scenes and extends sequences. However some footage was lost entirely, including an entire song and the voice track to a few extended scenes that were re-voiced by the original cast where possible.
At the time, the film didn’t do so well at the box office, but certainly was a video favorite in my home.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks iTunes Review
The iTunes 1080p HD download clocks in at 5.58 GB, which allows for average bitrate of 5.2Mbps with peaks of 12.8 Mbps and lows of around 3.2Mbps. Both an AAC stereo and Dolby Digital track are provided. Runtime is 139 minutes 22 seconds (i.e. the extended restored edition of the film).
The video track is slightly window boxed giving an aspect ratio of approximately 1.66:1
Picture quality is good bordering on excellent, with some grain observed. There wasn’t any artifacting that I noticed, but the grain did seem very soft in places, suggesting adaptive pre-filtering had been applied by the video compression suite. One thing I did notice was a moderate amount of scratches, and dirt on some shots, which tends to suggest no noise reduction has been applied. Again – a couple more megabits per second would have greatly improved the picture here.
Conclusions
Great 5 out of 5. If you are looking for a Mary-Poppins-esque kids movie, and you (or your kids) can stand the slightly extended running time, this is definitely worth a look on iTunes. Thankfully this hasn’t been ‘restored’ with copious DVNR. The DVD is reasonably priced but definately a step down from the presentation offered here.
November 2014 update: A Blu-ray edition of the film has just been released, however it is the shorter 117 minute theatrical version. Interestingly the iTunes edition of the film now reports a running of 117 minutes, so it’s possible it’s been ‘upgraded’ to the shorter version. Buyer beware.
iTunes HD 1080p Screenshots
The Bedknob in question.
A Witch needs a broom like a man needs a…
Football. Really.
Meeting the kids for the first time.
Watching from the sidelines as the final battle takes place.
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