![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/WomansWorld1954_poster.jpg\")
Even the poster’s pastel colours evoke a puff pastry.<\/p><\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Woman\u2019s World<\/a><\/strong> may have been selected because someone in the assets division looked at the best selling \u2018scope productions of the 1950s and noted several were directed by Jean Negulesco, and thought \u2018Well, no one\u2019s asked for this one, so why not?\u2019<\/p>\n Less of a travelogue for the \u2018scope format and far shorter than hits like How to Marry a Millionaire<\/strong> (1953) and Three Coins in the Fountain<\/a><\/strong> (1954), WW is pure fluff, packed with rather dated portraits of married women tagging along with their husbands to NYC for what\u2019s essentially an upscale job audition by top auto manufacturer Gifford.<\/p>\n The review goes into the plot, the potent cast, and Negulesco’s late career \/ weird fixation on tales of three women and their love lives, but it\u2019s strange that unlike Warner\u2019s Archive series, Fox didn\u2019t follow up with more titles beyond pre-‘scope productions\u00a0Coney Island<\/strong> (1943),\u00a0Sentimental Journey<\/strong> (1946), and the Clifton Webb babysitter classic\u00a0Sitting Pretty\u00a0<\/strong>(1948).<\/p>\n It\u2019s a shame, because the Fox \u2018scope archives are loaded with unseen gems and curios which, if they did make it to video, were often older transfers, if not full screen. I\u2019m still waiting for Tender is the Night<\/strong> (1962), The Sun Also Rises<\/strong> (1957) with that goddamn gorgeous main theme by Hugo Friedhofer, In Love and War<\/strong> (1958), and many more (although I wish it was standard policy to include an isolated score track with each release).<\/p>\n Early ‘scope productions often mandated in addition of stereophonic sound, and any chance to hear the studio\u2019s stellar orchestra booming music by its brilliant roster of composers is worth it, especially if its in uncompressed DTS.<\/p>\n Fox was super-smart in 1953 when they created the Fox CinemaScope Fanfare – that melding of the famous logo with a declaration of its new widescreen process, with extended music by Alfred Newman. When the full fanfare seemed pass\u00e9 and rarely used in post-\u2018scope productions (the process was retired by the late 1960s), George Lucas brought it back for Star Wars <\/strong>(1977), and it\u2019s now the studio’s de facto logo music.<\/p>\n Hearing Newman\u2019s original fanfare (which made its debut in 1933) seems abrupt, perhaps because there\u2019s no sleek strings, plus that fat warm bass that blanketed audiences in the original 4.0 surround mix which Fox created and branded as Perspecta Sound.<\/p>\n WW isn\u2019t in stereo \u2013 it\u2019s meh flat mono \u2013 but the \u2018scope cinematography is exceptional, capturing the best of sleek 1950s d\u00e9cor, design, and a gleaming NYC skyline; to small town inhabitants packed in the neighbourhood cinema that was lucky to be outfitted for \u2018scope,\u00a0 those aerial shots must have been jaw-dropping.<\/p>\n As the fact-packed Widescreen Museum<\/a> details, In Like Flint<\/a><\/strong> and Caprice<\/strong> (both 1967) were among the last films produced in \u2018scope before the process was retired and replaced by filmmakers with more popular brands like Panavision, but the name still holds magic.<\/p>\n Fox treated the process like a star, gave it a theme and its own standalone title card, whereas rival studios who licensed the process for their own films were obliged to include it in more standard title sequences.<\/p>\n The brand still held its magic: B movies like Dinosuarus!<\/a><\/strong> (1960) used a similar sweeping CinemaScope font design to distinguish it from surrounding text, and rival processes like RKO\u2019s SuperScope<\/a> also had a unique design, but only Paramount\u2019s VistaVision<\/a> echoed Fox\u2019s snazzy extended titles, with the VV logo emanating from the mountain like a stylus needle and the great tagline “Motion Picture High Fidelity” \u2013 amusing, because VV wasn\u2019t always used for very wide exhibition (the format did allow for 1.66:1, 1.85:1, and 2:1 versus CinemaScope\u2019s standardized 2.35:1), and many blockbusters like War and Peace<\/a> <\/strong>(1956) were mixed in flat mono.<\/p>\n In any event, there are still many Fox \u2018scope productions awaiting a proper BR release, and maybe some of the aforementioned will get their due, ideally as special editions. It\u2019s a major wallop seeing these gems in widescreen and surround sound after those first glimpses on TV as panned & scanned mono versions with orange hues and heavy grain.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lauren Knows All. Do Not Lie To Lauren!<\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n Coming soon<\/em>: reviews of the CanCon classique (of sorts)\u00a0Funny Farm<\/strong> (1983) from Code Red (plus a few related classiques, of sorts) + Sam Fuller’s nutbar noir\u00a0The Crimson Kimono<\/strong> (1959) on Blu from Twilight Time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Mark R. Hasan<\/strong>, Editor Review of Woman’s World (1954), Jean Negulesco’s lesser-known entry in his ‘Tales of 3 Women’ series, nicely mastered on Blu by Fox on MOD.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16439,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[367,2562,2563,364,5231],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/WomansWorld_featured.jpg","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-4gZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16429"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16449,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16429\/revisions\/16449"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/WomansWorld1954_Sp_poster-710x1024.jpg\")
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