Customer Reviews
The aspect ratio - By: infreg, 13 Aug 2007 
Yes, it is a pity that the movie is not presented in its intended theatrical aspect ratio 1.85. But to make it clear it is not presented in "butchered 1.33 to fit conventional TV screens" or a "TV-friendly crop of the original wide-screen movie" either. The movie is presented in its original open matte format, which means it was shot in conventional 1.33 to fit TV screens. For theatrical release the picture was then cropped at the top & the bottom, a common practice since the Fifties. So the picture is nothing missing here as the other reviewers suggest. Instead, it shows more information at the top & the bottom than the theatrical release. Just for the record.
Great film...poor transfer - By: pjic, 08 Jul 2007 
I was so looking forward to the release on DVD of this great film. However, the lazy use of the cropped tv version as opposed to a faithful remaster of the original beautifully shot widescreen film is a severe disappointment. The producers should go back to square one & do the job properly...the DVD release of 'If' is a great example for them.
Strange passage to DVD - By: Gavin Wilson, 04 Jul 2007 
This film first appeared on DVD last year, when it was included as a freebie inside an edition of the Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail. Now the distributors have suddenly decided that they could make some money out of this outstanding film. Sadly they appear to have used the same 4x3 TV-friendly crop of the original wide-screen movie.
So, four or five stars for the movie, but one or two stars for the DVD design.
5 star film, 1 star DVD - By: Simon Kroussier, 02 Feb 2007 This is a superb film, unfolding at a moodily languid pace & portraying the injustice of the class system in British society with far more subtlety than most period films. It is a film for intelligent viewers who can appreciate the accumulation of hints & nuances that support this through line. Alan Bates is superb, & Julie Christie is also very well cast. Though he only appears at the end, Michael Redgrave is mesmeric as the haunted bachelor asked to once more walk into the trauma of his youth. This youth involved carrying illicit notes between a young aristocratic single woman (Christie) & a tenant farmer on her family's land (Bates). The interplay of these characters is fascinating, owing much to Joseph Losey's restrained elegant direction & Harold Pinter's taut screenplay. Though I have not read the L.P. Hartley novel on which this is based, I am now very much encouraged to do so.
Unfortunately, though the back of the DVD case claims that the aspect ratio is 1.85, the film is presented in a butchered 1.33 to fit conventional TV screens. Hopefully a more meticulous release will come out at some stage, as the film reallly is a masterpiece that deserves to be seen as originallly intended & shot.
A timeless classic - By: tigjump@lineone.net, 19 Sep 2001 
Harold Pinter wasn't know for his screenplays, but with this script, he brought forward alll of his legendary expertise to give us one of cinema's most stunning costume dramas in british film history. This is a film you will want to see again & again, & if you do, you'll see something fresh each time.
