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The Prize Blu-ray Review

Paul Newman makes “The Prize” watchable.

Based on the novel by Irving Wallace, 1963’s “The Prize” revolves around a group of Nobel Prize winners from different fields in Stockholm. There’s the literature winner Andrew Craig (a womanizing alcoholic American writer), two feuding Doctors (Dr. Garrett and Dr. Farelli), the husband and wife chemistry geniuses Claude and Denise Marceau (both of whom are having marital problems due to Claude seeing the secretary), and physicist Dr. Stratman. This is no normal award ceremony, however, as Andrew becomes embroiled in a mystery involving Stratman, attempts on his life, cover-ups, a potential doppelganger, and other forms of drama.

Director Mark Robson’s “The Prize” is clearly trying to mimic the work of Alfred Hitchcock, but, in reality, it’s all over the place. At an unnecessarily long 135 minutes (this should have been 105 minutes tops), the large ensemble character piece anchored by Paul Newman’s character Andrew manages to be part comedy, drama, spy film, mystery, suspense thriller, and action film. As you can imagine, the tone is all over the place although I would say it’s pretty consistently a dopey movie (see the hotel clerks and the nudist colony bit). Ernest Lehman’s script also contains far too much padding. The amount of scenes with characters introducing each other takes up a lot of screentime. It also takes far too long for the plot to come into focus (again, after so many character intros). Basically, it’s just a bloated Hollywood film.

The saving grace here is Paul Newman. Newman smirks and cracks wise his way through the movie and it’s a good thing he does because without him there’s no reason to make it through this one. Sure, there are likable performances by Edward G. Robinson, Diane Baker, and Elke Sommer, but they aren’t doing the heavy lifting of guiding this movie.

Video/Audio:

Presentation: 2.4:1 1080p. How does it look? A pristine print that is sure to please fans of the film.

Audio Track: 2.0 DTS-HD MA. How does it sound? A clean 2.0 track.

The lone extra is a trailer for “The Prize”

March 28, 2019 - Posted by nicklyons1 | Blu-Ray review | Edward G. Robinson, Paul Newman, The Prize Blu-ray Review, Warner Archive