DVD details for
A Place in the Sun (1951) More at IMDbPro »

Michel Hafner (7 December 2001):
_Place in the Sun, A (1951)_ is a huge classic. One of the most important American films of the 50s. Does Paramount give it the respect it deserves with a top notch DVD?
The film master used is in pretty good shape. Minor blemishes are present most of the time but are normal for films of this age.
Contrast rendition is good with deep blacks. Some shots are very dark, but I think it's the way it was shot.
The noise and grain level is ok.
Image sharpness is uneven. Some shots offer nice detail while others look outright fuzzy with little definition of textures.
Certainly not optimal at all. Sharpness suffers from filtering. The transfer has been noise reduced and it shows. Fine detail is often not there or looks jittery. At times high frequency b&w patterns on jackets etc. flicker because of the filtering. Too bad. Once more the desire to remove analogue film artifacts and allow a lower bit rate for compression adds digital artifacts that do not exist on film and are more objectionable than what they try to fix. It also reduces sharpness and promotes the video look instead of the film look. The sound approach is to use the best film master with the least grain and noise and compress it with a very high bit rate. If you must filter tune your filters so they don't leave obvious artifacts behind. The filtering trick does not work (at least not with the quality used here) once you watch the result progressively on a big screen with full DVD resolution. The filtering artifacts are obvious and distracting once you are familiar with them. Masters like this have no future and will have to be redone sooner or later. Why not do it right the first time?
Compression with a medium bit rate is adequate for current sharpness, but a higher bit rate together with less/no filtering would give better results.
The sound is DD 5.1 but sounds mostly mono as it should. Remixing mono material to 5.1 is a gimmick and has no place for classic films. It distorts the original work and intentions of its creators. The sound recording level is way too low, by the way, with the loudest sounds nowhere near 0 db, thereby wasting a good deal of the digital resolution of the DD track. What's the point of this? Makes no sense.
The supplements are of good quality, interesting and relevant.
This ain't a top notch DVD after all because of the usual misguided mastering practices taking their toll. It's very watchable nonetheless. Recommended if noise reduction problems and some fuzzyness at times are no issue for you.