THE PRINCE OF TIDES: Blu-ray (Columbia, 1991) Criterion

Barbra Streisand continued her exploration of self-discovery, arguably, a life-long quest to find her own inner beauty, using Pat Conroy’s celebrated novel, The Prince of Tides (1991) as her catalyst, inspiration and sounding board – and, what a magnificent motion picture it remains. While the novel delves deeply into a centralized brother/sister relationship and the revelations occurring from their exhumation of profoundly disturbing family secrets, Streisand’s colossus divides its run time between Conroy’s originally themed scenario and a new focus on the burgeoning romantic entanglements involving the movie’s conflicted protagonist, Tom Wingo (Nick Nolte in a superbly nuanced and Oscar-nominated performance, well out of his usual comfort zone) and Dr. Susan Lowenstein (the nothing short of brilliant, Streisand); a no-nonsense, though ultimately supportive Manhattan psychiatrist, passionate to spare Tom’s sister, the sensitive introvert/poetess, Savannah (Melinda Dillon) from another suicide attempt.  Upon the picture’s release, Streisand would be heavily criticized for this departure from and/or revision to Conroy’s prose, despite the fact Conroy, together with screenwriter, Becky Johnston, was responsible for the screenplay. And Conroy, something of a perfectionist in his own right, had nothing but the highest praise for Streisand’s devotion to his brainchild, in the end, sending her an autographed copy of the novel with an inscription that read: “To Barbra Streisand: The Queen of Tides...you are many things… but you're also a great teacher...one of the greatest to come into my life. I honor the great teachers and they live in my work…they dance invisibly in the margins of my prose. You've honored me by taking care of it with such great seriousness and love. Great thanks and I'll never forget that you gave 'The Prince of Tides' back to me as a gift - Pat Conroy.”

The Prince of Tides – the movie – has since become a sorely overlooked masterpiece from Streisand who, in a career outlasting most of her contemporaries, has unconventionally morphed from the elegant, if occasionally thunderstruck songbird of sixties’ road show movie musicals, into a dramatic star and, even more refined storyteller, naturally poised to straddled the chasm between what goes on behind the camera and the impeccable performances she renders in front of it.  Arguably, Streisand urgently needed The Prince of Tides’ middle act to revolve around her. Yet, in hindsight, the carefully constructed mobile of plot points efficiently dangled, then dispatched to tell two major stories – one from the haunted recesses of childhood trauma, the other, its ever-present fallout and extraordinary aftermath – generates parallel narrative arcs on a collision course for the sort of heart-wrenching and emotionally satisfying finale, rarely seen in American movies then - and virtually unheard of in all American movies made today. In hindsight, Streisand’s lavish outpouring of unvarnished sentiment is not only very much in keeping with the novel’s diffused filter, spreading shafts of truth-revealing light on the ties that bind, but can also tear us apart; also, adding another cornerstone to Streisand’s fractured legacy from youth. By 1991, fans of la Streisand had discovered what many of her detractors still refused to concede; that apart from her ravenous perfectionism, often reinterpreted by the media as shrewish, exacting, emasculating and maniacal, Streisand nevertheless had defied what others misdirected and labeled as ‘ego’ to become one of Hollywood’s finest directors of her generation. Still, Streisand had good cause to gird her loins just prior to the release of The Prince of Tides; the picture, nominated in virtually every major category at Oscar time, except Best Actress and Best Director; the ole ‘boys’ club’ nepotism hard at work to shutter her chances from the competition that, in 1991, included such heavy-hitting and sincerely memorable entertainments as Oliver Stone’s J.F.K, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Warren Beatty’s long overdue return to the screen in Bugsy and, the ultimate winner, Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs.  

But 1991 was a banner year for Streisand in other ways. Not only had she elected to release a ‘then’ thirty year retrospect of her music career, but the usually shielded diva whose reclusiveness, second only to Garbo’s rich mystique, endured a rather angst-shredding interview conducted by 60 Minute’s sage and master of the nitty-gritty, Mike Wallace, whose own journalistic chutzpah proved too great for Streisand to overcome, much less deflect. Challenging Streisand as ‘self-absorbed and opinionated’ Wallace, who suggested he never really like Streisand to her face, cornered her under the auspices of ‘tough love’. “Why do you sound so accusatory?” Streisand generously inquired when pressed to explain her twenty-years in psychoanalysis. But soon, she was unexpectedly opening up to chapters from her past otherwise kept tightly under lock and key; the loss of her father when she was only fifteen months old, and, enduring chronic verbal abuse from a cruel stepfather who berated an impressionable seven-year-old as being ‘too ugly’ to have ice cream. “He couldn’t give affection,” Streisand suggested, “He never talked to me. He was mean to my mother. This was not a nice man.”   In hindsight, that interview, in which Wallace continued to chisel away at Streisand’s usually Teflon-coated austerity, catching more than a glimpse of those childhood insecurities still able to draw on a wellspring of tears, is both revealing of Streisand’s purpose in making The Prince of Tides as well as her presence as the compassionate psychoanalyst in it, and, ostensibly, the reason for the picture’s critical and box office success. Clearly, she could relate to the catharsis. And The Prince of Tides, apart from being a thoroughly compelling exposé about the journey back from a thoroughly ravaged and barren brink of mental devastation, is, in many ways a tale told by Streisand about Streisand; the mirror held up and just a little too close to be of comfort or absolutely edifying to its puppet master.   

Too often movies in which the past and the present intermingle are marred by jarring cuts, clumsy dissolves or otherwise ever-dreaded clichés in the anticipated ‘flashback’, taking the audience out of one story to zero in their attention span on the other, toggling back and forth as a sort of a visual ping-pong match that, over the course of the film’s run time, more often than not becomes stale and emotionally dissatisfying.  Streisand’s skillful maneuvering through the labyrinth of Conroy’s turbulent honesty is assuaged by her ability to find the connective tissue and nuggets of wisdom and revelation in those proses. She intuitively switches between the two; her transitioning from ‘now’ to ‘then’ – and quite often, more adversarial, as in ‘now’ vs. ‘then’ – navigates, exculpates, and ultimately liberates our hero and heroine from the devastating foibles of their personal histories apart, and, in the third act, drawing them closer together as compatriots of a mutual scarring, destined for an emotionally-charged sexual liberation. Lost in transition are whole passages from Pat Conroy’s novel, mostly devoted to the childhood brutalities experienced by the Wingo children; Tom, Savannah, and their beloved brother, Luke (intermittently glimpsed throughout, in ‘flashbacks’ and played by three distinct child actors, Grayson Fricke, Ryan Newman and Chris Stacy) who, along with their calculating mother, Lila (Kate Nelligan) suffer the slings and arrows of a mentally and physically abusive father, Henry (Brad Sullivan), and, the hellish nightmare of a home invasion, perpetrated by a trio of prison escapees; resulting in the fierce rape of Tom, Savannah and Lila. This latter trauma survives the artistic cuts and is compounded by Luke’s wherewithal to load his father’s shotgun and murder all three assailants, their bodies later committed to the swamp; the revelation beaten into submission by the frantic Lila and never spoken of again, nor revealed to Henry who was away on his fishing trawler at the time of the attacks.     

Stephen Goldblatt’s lush and evocative cinematography, and James Newton Howard’s vibrant score, prone to groundswells of luxuriating orchestral sentimentality, extol the endangered splendor of South Carolina’s low country, contrasted quite effectively with the dusty inner-city sparkle of upscale Manhattan. And Nolte and Streisand – seemingly such disparate people in life, as well as oddly cast personalities on the screen, nevertheless possess the elusive firefly spark and magic of illuminating movie-land chemistry; neither, simplifying their characterizations herein; each, diving headstrong and heart-sure into the deep end of this creative pool; arms, legs, heads and hearts wrapped around a story that, in tandem affects and soothes. The salient elements of Pat Conroy’s novel linger and sustain, hyperbolized by Streisand’s yen for layering artifice onto verisimilitude, but with such mind-bogglingly impressive aptitude, the melding of these outwardly irreconcilable intangibles yields to an even more elusive third, more gratifying and self-assured as a universal, a parable and – yes, an ole-fashioned ‘love story’.  There is even a place in it for Streisand’s son, Jason Gould playing, what else? – Streisand’s movie son, Bernard Woodruff; a spoiled rich kid, given his first real lesson in manhood by Tom. Rule number one: learn how to throw a forward pass. Rule number two: never be held back from pursuing your passion. These lessons culminate in a devastating dinner party given by Lowenstein and her arrogant husband, concert violinist, Herbert (Jeroen Krabbé), who cannot resist treating Tom as something of an untouchable peasant in the midst of their cultured sect of sycophants until Tom threatens to drop Herbert’s Stradivarius off the balcony of their fashionable 5th Ave. penthouse, unless he publicly apologizes to his own wife for having an affair with his piano accompanist.   

Movies are, by their very nature, a communal activity; art by committee, as it were. But in The Prince of Tides’ case, the committee is undeniably ruled by the iron-fist will of Barbra Streisand who knows precisely what she is after and is never afraid to demand it from cast and crew. Streisand’s inability to accept anything less than the passionate vision going on inside her own head is precisely the reason John Barry, the original composer chosen for this project, elected to bow out. “I can’t work with someone looking over my shoulder all the time,” Barry admitted. And Streisand is not only ‘looking over the shoulder’ but during her creative process, constantly reinventing, expanding and even changing and scrapping the perimeters of her own artistic license to begin anew, doubly reinvested in the outcome and the precision behind it meant to inform, cultivate and will a more concrete definition from that invisible value lingering in the back of her mind. “It’s how I grow,” Streisand once admitted, “How I get better and hopefully improve.”

The Prince of Tides opens with a spectacular montage of images gleaned from a seemingly idyllic childhood on the Carolina bayou; the Wingo clan, living in a great white house won by Tom’s great great-grandfather in a poker game; the children indulging in the sun-filtered steamy serenity of thigh-high reeds and rushes, shrimp trawlers lazily traversing the smooth waters, golden sunsets, and, the voice-over reflections of an adult Tom Wingo, superficially looking back on a time he would rather not explore more deeply. Nick Nolte’s great gift in the role is his uncanny faculty to covey the duality of conflict roiling close to the surface of Tom’s shaky resolve. His seemingly deadpan narration, at once suggests emotional detachment and yet an unrestrained fondness for the picture postcard images presently gleaned from this childhood he has yet to actually and fully come to terms. From this halcyon vantage we are plunged squarely into the nightmares of the present, soon to unravel, and yet ironically restore Tom’s inner soul; a phone call in the middle of the night alerting him to his sister, Savannah’s latest suicide attempt in Manhattan. Arriving in the big city after an estrangement from his wife, Sally (Blythe Danner) and their three children, Tom is alarmed to find his sister nearly catatonic and strapped down inside a padded cell at the psychiatric hospital; Savannah’s psychiatrist, Dr. Susan Lowenstein, not terribly interested in Tom’s glib and wholly unfair assessment of her skills as a ‘head shrinker’. “My only concern is my patient’s welfare,” Susan suggests. “Well, you’re doing a hell of a job!” Tom replies.

Lowenstein confronts Tom on a fundamental level: to tell her, the story of his life – and, by extension, Savannah’s – in the hopes of unlocking the inner torment causing Savannah such grave emotional distress. As it turns out, Tom is an even tougher ‘nut’ to crack. He has had a lifetime to build his own insular cocoon around his truer feelings, caustically slick and uncommunicative in anything beyond a pithy retort or embittered smart against their mother, Lila – a status-hungry matriarch who divorced Henry to marry Reese Newbury (Bob Hannah); a powerful attorney who, in Tom’s youth, manhandled the boy with thinly veiled threats of sending him off to boarding schools from which he likely would never return. Tom takes up residence in Savannah’s apartment, making small talk with her amiable gay landlord, Eddie Detreville (George Carlin). What could have possessed Savannah to end her own life? Tom reasons his sister has never entirely recovered from the loss of their eldest brother, Luke, an ex-Navy seal and Vietnam vet, likely suffering from PTSD, who applied military tactics in his personally waged war against the threat of a nearby power plant, destroying bridges and sabotaging building equipment. Luke, so we are later told, though ironically never shown, was later shot to death by the local police in a standoff. 

In the novel we get a lot more back story on the Wingos; particularly, severely flawed patriarch Henry, a WWII bomber crewman who survived a hellish bail out over Nazi Germany. Henry’s idea of family discipline during peace time is to regularly beat his children into submission while squandering his hard-earned wages as a shrimper on pie-in-the-sky business ventures; including a gas station advertising the added attraction of a live tiger, named Caesar; something of the family’s mascot, and, later to be unleashed by Luke on the prison escapees/rapists invading the Wingo household one rainy night. In the movie, Henry’s physical abuse is supplanted with mere verbal maltreatment. At one point, Henry grabs Tom rough by the arm. Tom, who is sensitive and thus rife for belittling, is defended by elder brother, Luke. We also get levity interjected: Lila, ordered by her husband to improve the swill she has newly concocted for their dinner, takes Henry’s plate back to the kitchen, mixing in several cans of dog food before re-serving the meal – now declared superb by him – as his children, knowingly look on. Even more interestingly, in the movie Tom has managed to reconcile his bitterness toward his father, enough to entrust Henry with his own three children, Lucy (Maggie Collier), Jennifer (Lindsay Wray) and Chandler (Brandlyn Whitaker), partaking of supervised outings on their grandfather’s shrimp boat. Tom’s relationship with Lila is, alas, never as fully resolved.

Another major departure from the novel is Streisand’s handling of the revelation of the family’s darkest secret - the rape. In both the novel and the movie, this pivotal moment arrives late. However, in the book, Tom and Savannah are both eighteen at the time of the incident, while Luke is in his mid-twenties. In the movie, all three are still very much children - Luke, barely sixteen; Tom and Savannah, more like twelve or thirteen. This alteration serves a twofold purpose. First, to make the already insidious nature of the crime even more despicable because it is now being perpetrated on the very young. But second, to heighten the confession Tom makes to Lowenstein as an adult in the present, an amplification of both its emasculating and humiliating qualities.  In the book, Luke releases Caesar from his cage – the animal viciously attacking and killing two of the rapists, while Tom kills his own attacker with a rifle. In the movie, the onus for the penultimate retaliation and murder is squarely placed on Luke’s shoulders. The boy shoots the family’s attackers dead with uncharacteristically vindictive aplomb for one so young that not only rivals their rage, but portends to Luke’s future vigilantism against the state, resulting in his own death. Tom’s confession to Lowenstein ends with a paralytic stare. When asked how the incident was later explained away to both Henry and the police, we learn from Tom that Lila maniacally threatened her children to remain silent; scrubbing away all evidence of the blood-stained coup and sinking the battered remains in the mire of the nearby swamp; effectively burying the physical evidence, though never able to fully expunge the emotional wounds, left to fester and dehumanize Savannah and Tom, leading directly to their inability to connect with anyone in their adult lives.

In the present, Tom remains in contact with Sally. During one of their long-distance phone conversations, she confides a proposal of marriage from a mutual friend; neither, particularly wanting to address the prospect of getting a divorce. Instead, Sally and Tom have affairs; Tom with Lowenstein, whom he rightly assesses as always being ‘so sad’. She has begun to admire the sacrifices he has made in order to free Savannah from her tortured memories. Tom tries to encourage Lila to provide her account of the rape to Lowenstein. Alas, she is as ever resolved to pretend it never happened, despite the fact her acceptance of the truth might further along Savannah’s recovery. “Who taught you to be so cruel?” Lila insists. “You did, mama,” Tom astutely points out. It is a moment of truth so utterly blood-curdling and revealing of the sort of devastating impact a terrible mother can have on a young boy’s life. And Streisand handles it with uncharacteristic intensity without ever dwelling on the situation. Some things will never change. To gain new insight into Tom’s failed venture as a former teacher and football coach, Lowenstein asks if he will instruct her son, Bernard on the finer points of the sport with a few tips on how to ‘tackle’ the sport. Bernard is spoiled; also, likely bitter over his parents’ dysfunctional relationship; a father, too self-absorbed in his own prominent career as a virtuoso violinist, and a mother seemingly on the cusp of throwing everything away to have a tryst with one of her patients. Tom is not about to take any guff, however, but especially not from Bernard. He puts the kid through the paces of basic training. From this, Bernard learns physical and mental discipline. But he also comes to respect Tom as the type of father-figure he would like to have had; and Tom equally warms to Bernard; in the movie’s penultimate farewell, showing utter amazement for the boy’s obvious skills as a budding concert violinist. “Boy, I tell you if I could play the violin like that, I’d never touch a football,” Tom tells Bernard, moments before sending him off on a train at Grand Central. “What’s wrong with doing both?” Bernard suggests. “Absolutely nothing,” Tom is pleasantly forced to admit.

Recognizing the positive change in her son’s attitude, to show her gratitude Lowenstein invites Tom to a social gathering at her husband’s penthouse; the soiree attended by a hoity-toity blend of Nuevo riche and self-important prigs; literary critic, Madison Kingsley (Frederick Neumann) providing his ‘gold seal of approval’ on Savannah’s book of poems, recently published before her suicide attempt. Yet, even here, Susan’s husband, Herbert cannot be a gracious host; earlier, accosting Tom with a rather sly rendition of ‘Dixie’ to illustrate for the rest of his guests what he mis-perceives as Tom’s limited music appreciation and now, revealing to everyone, under the guise of ‘polite dinner conversation’ Savannah’s precarious mental condition.  The tone of the party turns darker still when Herbert refocuses his slightly inebriated disgust on his own wife, accusing her of transforming their sensitive son into ‘Quasimodo in a football uniform’. “I can’t believe you’d let Bernard play football when you know it could ruin his hands,” Herbert’s piano accompanist, Monique (Sandy Rowe) declares, to which Susan swats back, “…and I can’t believe you’d come to my house when everyone knows you’re fucking my husband!”  Having thrown down the gauntlet, the evening looks as though to have come to a grinding halt when Tom expertly interjects a moment of levity; holding Herbert’s priceless Stradivarius hostage over the edge of the balcony until he apologizes for his smug condescension. Turning to Susan, Tom adds, “Now I know why you always look so sad.”

Now, director Streisand moves into the biggest departure from the novel. At the time of the picture’s release, grand amour between Tom and Lowenstein was heavily criticized as The Prince of Tides’ biggest blunder - several uninterrupted days spent in blissful escapism in the country, having great sex overlooking an endless series of roaring fireplaces; all of it caught in a montage of overlapping images set to one of James Newton Howard’s less tome-like music cues. Undeniably, it all looks very good for the cameras. But it equally tends to bring the central narrative to a screeching standstill. Mercifully, this flagrante delicto leads to a sort of nostalgic assignation; a mutual awareness for Tom and Susan. There can be no future together. Despite having been brought together to lend solace to each other, they nevertheless come from very different and irreconcilable worlds. Thus, Tom returns to Sally, renewing his commitment to their marriage and family; a decision Lowenstein is unable to argue with, having already recognized Tom as the only man to whom her heart belongs. In New York, Tom witnesses Savannah gradual coaxed from her schizophrenic hallucinations; Lowenstein, using her newfound knowledge of the Wingo’s family’s background to liberate her patient from the tyrannies of her past. Witnessing his sister’s slow recovery is very gratifying for Tom. He knows he has done the right thing by divulging these suppressed family secrets. Has Savannah come through the storm of her own private hell with a new resolve to withstand future attempts to take her own life? Only time will tell. Still, The Prince of Tides remains open-ended, open-minded and optimistically hopeful of this prognosis as Savannah and Tom share in their heartfelt reunion, then, farewell as Tom prepares to go home to Sally. Lowenstein and Tom embark upon a bittersweet goodbye of their own; one last dance together inside The Rainbow Room; a sequence originally intended to play host Streisand’s rendition of ‘For All We Know’, but instead set to an orchestral arrangement of that J. Fred Coots/Sam M. Lewis time-honored ballad.  Lowenstein and Tom will likely always remain paramount in each other’s memory as the idyllic coupling never to be. But the heart is a strange appendage, prone to fondness for the things and people it cannot ever fully possess, as Tom drives home across the causeway, whispering Lowenstein’s name as both an exultation and prayer of thanks for his former life, now restored to him.

The Prince of Tides is supremely edifying entertainment; an eloquent elegy to everlasting love, made by a master film-maker/star who capably understands the type of heartfelt movies that can sell tickets almost singularly on her box office clout alone. And, to be sure, Streisand never disappoints in her proficiency in front of or behind the camera. Think it easy to be star, director and executive producer? Think again and then try it sometime. What Streisand has achieved herein is nothing short of lyrical, smart and sexy; a beautifully crafted, solidly acted, exquisitely photographed and superbly underscored masterpiece; the way all movies based on best-selling novels ought to turn out, though far too few actually do. Streisand and her co-star, Nick Nolte have great on-screen chemistry; conceived in mutual antagonism but ultimately burgeoning with more subtly nuanced threads of mutual respect, and, tinged with flashes of comic relief. Nolte commits to some of the finest acting in his entire career, running the gamut of emotions and really getting under the skin of his alter ego. It’s an adult performance, which sounds rather condescending, except that far too few male leads in American movies - then or now - actually give us reflections of adulthood from the masculine perspective. No, what we generally get is tough guys or boys behaving like they think ‘real men’ ought; the clichéd swagger and boastfulness of a guy’s guy, too self-involved and thinking muscle tissue and testicles the mantra for self-professed paragons, distilled into cock of the walk. Nolte, however, gives us ‘a real man’ – warts and all; imperfect, damaged, sensitive, and utterly terrified of being found out as anything less than. It is a tour de force for which Nolte was passed over at Oscar time: the Best Actor Award, almost forgivable in going to Anthony Hopkins’ towering presence in The Silence of the Lambs. We will forgive the Academy…this time.

The Conroy/Johnston screenplay, often erroneously described as ‘uneven’ is actually a miracle of concision, concentrating the action of the novel, and even expanding upon its certain theme; adding to the milieu by morphing the tale to suit the medium of the motion picture. It ought to sink through contemporary film-maker’s heads: a great movie need not – and, in point of fact, should not be a literal translation of any great work of literature to function as its own entity, but excel as a movie pop-u-tainment. Like it or not, American movies have never aspired to existentialist, experimental art house. The few and far between ventures in this direction have generally proven unmitigated bores and quite often box office disasters. Leave the neorealism to the Italians, folks. Hollywood movies are about stars, glamor, the excitement and the fantasy of stepping into a world created, not a world to be discovered in nature. That’s fine. Heck, under the right circumstances, it is art too. No false modesty here. And Streisand knows implicitly where to draw the line. She unpacks the novel’s weighty psychological trauma and familial angst. But she never forgets or mislays the central purpose of her movie – to entertain with a subtext as the time-honored morality play. The Prince of Tides is a truly magnificent achievement with few peers in its day and virtually none in competition for the top spot today.   Streisand’s own drawing power at the movies used to be secure. I cannot say as much, as the actress has moved away from such finely wrought portraits, committed instead to such drivel as 2004’s Meet the Fockers and 2012’s Guilt Trip. La Streisand in a Seth Rogen movie?!?! Did she really need the money that badly? Ugh, I wanna throw up!!!

It has taken an impossibly idiotic amount of time for The Prince of Tides to arrive on Blu-ray. One can only sincerely hope Streisand’s other magnificent opus, 1996’s The Mirror Has Two Faces will not take as long! Criterion’s Blu-ray, remastered from a new 4K scan provided to them by Sony Pictures, the current custodians, has been supervised by Streisand, who also has committed to updating her original audio commentary for this hi-def debut. More on this in a moment. Director of Photography, Stephen Goldblatt’s meticulous attention to detail is utterly ravishing on Blu-ray. The Prince of Tides has always looked a tad over saturated in oranges on home video. And while the lean toward warmer tones remains, what is immediately noticed is how subtle the nuances are in 1080p; the extraordinary layering of hues and textures, with dark scenes yielding far more fine grain detail than ever before. We get a DTS 2.0 stereo. Aside: odd, Criterion is usually only interested in PCM audio. Nevertheless, everything here sounds marvelous, particularly, James Newton Howard’s memorable underscore – a definite highlight.

Best of all, Criterion has padded out this release with superb extras. For kick starters, Streisand, who voiced her enthusiasm, has updated her audio commentary that was originally recorded 18-yrs. earlier for Criterion’s LaserDisc.  The years have definitely ripened Streisand’s recollections. Criterion has included the previous ‘making of’ featurette. We also get Streisand’s interviews on Aspel and Co. from 1992; 35 mins. devoted to Streisand’s career, with emphasis given to The Prince of Tides. We also get a brief 11 mins. from Streisand’s interview on The Director's Chair. There is also an interview with the late Pat Conroy from 1992, plus an alternate version of the movie’s closing credits, featuring Streisand's vocal performance of ‘Places That Belong to You’ – expressly written for the movie, though never used, but included on the original soundtrack album.  Finally, we get notes from Conroy to Streisand, costume tests, deleted scenes, a gag reel, trailers and liner notes supplied by historian, Bruce Eder. Bottom line: The Prince of Tides is an exceptional movie from an as uniquely situated talent whose contributions to both film and music are likely never to be equaled. This Blu-ray delivers the good and should be an easy blind purchase for anyone who admires great storytelling. Very – very – highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

5+