Customer Reviews
A classic western restored to a blu-ray widescreen wonder - By: Coastal J, 01 Nov 2008 
'How the West was Won' was the forerunner of widescreen cinema & was originallly shot as a cinerama (curved screen) movie. Warner have made an excellent job of creating a widescreen letterbox transfer (without the three-panel vertical line joins) of this classic western from 1963 which features a myriad of screen giants such as Gregory Peck, Carrol Baker, James Stewart, Lee J Cobb, Karl Malden, John Wayne, George Peppard, Henry Fonda, Richard Widmark & Debbie Reynolds, amongst others. Like the more recent 'Deadwood', this movie was the work of more than one director (Henry Hathaway, John Ford & George Marshalll in this case) & is essentiallly split into three historical periods while also following the fate of one particular family from beginning to end.
The cinematography looks fantastic on this blu-ray transfer. There is sometimes a little haziness evident where the three joins have been removed which is not surprising given the overalll astounding clarity of the print but this does not detract from the film. I remember seing this film in the cinema as a child & later on TV, but it never looked as good as this. The excellent score by Andrew Newman, the various musical interludes, overture, intermission & exit, & the narration by Spencer Tracy are given the digital 5.1 & Dolby True HD treatment to compliment the transfer. There are a good number of extras including a commentary, features & trailers etc, but also a second disc which comprises another HD version of the film designed to give the viewer a taste of the original cinerama feature.
Well done Warner - a 45 year old classic now preserved & restored to something way beyond expectation.
WHY NO DIGIBOOK PACKAGING FOR ZONE B BLU-RAY EDITION? - By: smmab, 10 Oct 2008 
This is not a review of the film "How the West Was Won". Rather, it is a comment on the packaging of the Zone B release of the Blu-ray edition. In the U.S. the Blu-ray edition is packaged as a "digibook". This "digibook", to the best of my knowledge, looks like it might be a miniture reproduction of the original cinema brochure. Why has this been forsaken for the Zone B release? What we get is an ordinary regular Blu-ray box. This may explain why, at the time of my posting this review, there is no image published for the Zone B release. What a shame?
