This week, history returns. After 35 years, the film that broke genre boundaries and reinvented one of the most terrifying monsters and aliens ever opens in theaters.
In 1979, Alien opened in theaters. Unknown at the time, director Ridley Scott was making his second major motion picture. In fact, he teamed up with the extravagant Swiss artist H.R. Giger, who was already known for his pen drawings, oil paintings and sculptures in the 1970s. His style is called "biomechanical surrealism," and H.R. Giger is its most famous exponent.
The pairing of Scott and Giger provided a shock to film fans that not many movies have replicated. Everything lent itself to a not-so-big budget. $11 million wasn't much. As a result, every known technique was used to good effect. The limited budget is not visible at all in the film. Everything is believable and the miniatures are perfect. And only 7 experienced actors, not counting the stuntmen and the Alien (Bolaji Badejo), managed to deliver a great cinematic treat for movie fans.
Scott brought in composer Jerry Goldsmith, who had scored the best Star Trek movie that year. Unlike the sci-fi based on the TV series, Jerry Goldsmith only gave Alien a dark and simple score, which he partially lifted from the score of Freud, which he also scored. The combination of the music and Alien is as precise as stacking Tetris blocks and so fits the overall concept of the film. The film's music doesn't stand out at all and forms a perfect symbiosis with the picture and the actors.
The experienced British cast, with American Sigourney Weaver in the foreground, create a realistic sense of a lost ship on its way to its home planet, which unfortunately has to stop where it shouldn't stop at all as part of a political and military override. On a planet where the only living beings are space parasites who will destroy their hosts as they transition to adulthood, killing the entire crew of the ship if you let them.
The director's cut of the film, which goes into Czech cinemas this week, contains a quarter of an hour of new footage replacing parts of the film compared to the theatrical version. We learn more about the aliens' lives and it also deepens the relationships between the last survivors. For me personally, the director's version is better. Even though there's no Czech dub for it.
The only Czech dub for the Blu-ray is the one chosen from 1995 starring Ilona Svobodova. It doesn't matter that Sigourney Weaver isn't dubbed by her court dubber Dagmar Čárová.
The English original is perfect. It's not a bad thing that it was THX certified at the time of the DVD's creation. Not many films get that certificate. By this time, even the THX standard is no longer played, everything is of such high quality thanks to digital technology that every other film would have received THX quality by then.
The movie Alien is also perfectly cleaned of all ills and looks as if it was made only a few years ago. The fact that it was shot on film analogue technology is evident in the fact that it has classic film noise, which is very valuable for fans of the film. The fact that the film is over 35 years old can also be seen by the fact that lens flaws are visible throughout the film. Vignetting, reflections and of course bokeh are used to let fans of the film know that there are experienced filmmakers behind the film who know how and when to use which lens feature to enhance the enjoyment of the film. After all, in the modern age, digital perfection can sometimes kill a film, and almost anyone can make a film with a good digital camera. In 1979, when the film was made, few people had the quality of filmmaking background to make a film to their liking and with such success.
Although with a budget of only $11 million, Alien is one of those films that operated on a shoestring budget at the time of its creation. It was one of the most unsuccessful science fiction films ever made. Any opportunity to see the film in theaters and not on LCD TV should not be missed. The distributor is admittedly screening the film 2K, which is similar in resolution to Full HD. But thanks to the bitrate, the cinema quality of Blu-ray exceeds that of Blu-ray.
So go see a movie in the theater, don't just watch it at home. You'll enjoy the highest quality experience you should be taking advantage of. If you can't make it, a quality Blu-ray will make sure of that, but don't forget to play the medium on a quality full HD TV, with quality 5.1 audio, and of course, you must not forget that the best feeling you will get from the film will be on a dark night, with no distractions and of course no neighbors to react to your movie experience.
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Original Article February 16, 2015 – Kritiky.cz
