The Blue Bird 2005 Horror Movie Review

Tourneur was a director of great visual imagination—but how do you show this in a film that has chemical decomposition and even blistering running down its center through roughly half its length?  Add to that several lengthy missing scenes in the middle, and a few missing shorter sequences elsewhere, and you’ve got a problem getting the essence of the man’s vision across to even veteran archival film lovers who can accept a good quality print of Griffith.  I enjoyed it, but I was willing to work through all the screen garbage to see some of the beauty that was buried, there.  My wife just rubbed her eyes.


So kudos to the Eastman folks for holding this print, and making it available, and to the music team for creating such a sympathetic score.  But nobody restored this work, and Kino took its usual cheap way out of extras by simply printing on screen a laudatory review from the original film’s opening, and a couple of acts from the original play.  Not a commentary in sight, or bios of the director, or actors, or listing of Tourneur’s films.


So cavaet emptor: consider The Blue Bird for purchase only if you don’t mind owning a heavily damaged, somewhat incomplete version of the film, in the likelihood no one will do for it what has been done for many other films of its vintage.  I’m hoping this version will be superceded in the near future.