Search - Paint Your Wagon on DVD

MPAA Rating: PG-13 Content Advisory: Adult Situations, Questionable for Children, Adult Language Movie Release: 1969 DVD Release: 07/24/2001 Format: DVD - Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV Edition: Special Collection Audio Tracks: English, French Subtitles: English SwapaDVD Credits: 1 Number of Discs: 1 Run Time: 2 hrs 44 mins Studio: Paramount Members Wishing: 18 Genres: Musical, Western, Musical Western See Also: Paint Your Wagon, Paint Your Wagon

After a debut on Broadway in 1951, Paramount spent an estimated 17 to 20 million dollars in production costs for this Lerner and Loewe musical. With Loewe's permission, Lerner wrote five additional tunes for the film with Andre Previn. Ben Rumson (Lee Marvin) is the grizzled prospector trying his luck panning for gold in California. Pardner (Clint Eastwood) is his companion. When Ben buys a woman from a Mormon, Elizabeth (Jean Seberg) expects equal rights for her gender and chooses to live with both men. Ben and Pardner tunnel under the boomtown to gather the fallen gold dust that has filtered through the cracks of the saloon and other places. The musical comedy features 13 songs, the most recognizable being "They Call The Wind Maria". The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band helps out on the song "Hand Me Down That Can O' Beans". Both Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin are given a chance to show their vocal ability (or lack of it) in several songs. The initial release fell far short of regaining the millions put into the production, and most critics dipped their pens in poison to pan the picture -- though the film plays better than the critics would lead anyone to believe. Many jumped on the Paint Your Wagon smear campaign after the film proved to be not nearly as successful as other musicals. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Lee Marvin - Ben Rumson
Clint Eastwood - Pardner
Jean Seberg - Elizabeth
Ray Walston - "Mad Jack" Duncan
Harve Presnell - Rotten Luck Willie

To judge from the high original list price, Paramount Home Video was still trying to balance the books on Paint Your Wagon for the reported 17 million dollars sunk into it in 1968-1969 (mostly from bringing a huge cast on an extended location shoot, plus commissioning new songs) when this DVD first appeared in 2001; as of 2004, however, the price had dropped and it became a more reasonable purchase. Over the years since the film's original release, viewers have had to endure decades of cropped, commercial-laden showings that stretched it out to nearly three-and-a-half hours; there was no chance to appreciate Paint Your Wagon's virtues, much less get to like the movie. That all changed with the release of this DVD, which restores the film's proper anamorphic Panavision aspect ratio (2:35:1) for the first time since its 1969 theatrical run (plus a lot of sharpness and rich color tone in the bargain), and it is adaptable to 16 x 9 widescreen monitors. It's now possible not only to appreciate the movie as a serious attempt at a more naturalistic kind of musical, but also to enjoy and avail oneself of the virtues of all of that expensive location shooting, better than at any time since the original release. Traditionalists can argue that the 1951 stage musical might have been better served onscreen by taking the approach of, say, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, but by 1969 audiences weren't going to take seriously any movie with singing matinee idols like Howard Keel or dancer/actors like Russ Tamblyn going through their paces in frontier settings. Watching Paint Your Wagon on this DVD, one becomes convinced that if the producers were going to make a movie of that musical in that era, they took the only way open to them. Lee Marvin and Jean Seberg are on such solid ground dramatically that they carry the movie, and Clint Eastwood is getting just good enough to keep up, and also to portray his rather lost, lonely, and vulnerable character convincingly, and his song segment is not bad -- it isn't what Gene Kelly or Russ Tamblyn would have done with it, but in the realistic context of this movie, it is good viewing today. Additionally, for the traditionalists, there are the big choral sequences and production numbers, plus the scenes with Harve Presnell (a veteran of one of the last studio-bound old-style musicals of the kind, The Unsinkable Molly Brown), who does wonders with "They Call the Wind Maria."

In addition to an excellent film-to-video transfer, the producers have paid attention to the sound quality here. It's robust, to say the least, and mastered at a very healthy volume. The 164-minute movie has been given 18 chapters, which isn't really as much of a breakdown as it deserves since they mark off none of the songs by title, which is a serious oversight. Moreover, the chapter layout showcases the movie's one flaw, its sometimes slow pacing; the whole matter of the polyandrous relationship between Seberg's and Marvin's and Eastwood's characters doesn't even come up until chapter ten. The only bonus feature is the trailer, which is also a bit disappointing -- at the time of the DVD's preparation, Ray Walston was still alive, as were John Mitchum, Eastwood, and Presnell, so a commentary track would not be out of the question. The movie is a peculiar hybrid, and really a prodigious achievement during a period in which most big-budget musicals were dying on the vine (look at Doctor Dolittle, Camelot, and Star!), even if the music was partly eclipsed by the realism and the sheer size of the movie. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide