Shirley Temple: The Collection DVD Review

It is indicative of these times that black and white just doesn't cut it anymore. All the movies in Shirley Temple: The Collection have been colourised. This, to me, is a bit like having the queen, in some traditional ceremony, ferried about the place in a Ferrari rather than an ornate horse and carriage: Yes the Ferrari is probably better in every respect, but that isn't the point! Those people who will buy this box set wont give two hoots whether the damn things are in colour or not. If anything else, the colour is so poor in places Andy Warhol could have done the colourisation. Clearly, overall quality was never going to be good; these movies are over seventy years old! Normally I would say something like “because these movies are old, the poor picture doesn't matter” but because of the decidedly odd colour, it does matter and by quite a bit. Look at the picture with Temple holding the camera for an idea.

The sound fares better than the picture, if only because the sound quality is to be expected. The sound doesn't get in the way of any of these movies. Instead, the mix is very vocal, in that other effects and music don't seem to be as obvious. Musical sections fare best, regarding sound, but do have a furry nature to them. This is par for the course in movies this age and, as far as concessions to the technology of the time go, sound quality isn't that bad.

There are none.
This isn't my normal movie collection of choice, I will freely admit that. But then, I can see why people like Shirley Temple. Inoffensive, fun, happy but most importantly, short, all of these movies offer a small dose of honeyed filmmaking that isn't going to end like Se7en. I do, however, bewail the lack of extras. A cursory look on the IMDB reveals that Shirley Temple's life is more than worthy of a documentary or three: How did fame effect her, why did she turn to politics in later years, why were there exactly 52 curls in her hair - what did it all mean?. In a box set that purports to be definitive, surely some extras could have been included?