"Filmic" DVD Transfers

[Michael Kerpan]

Well -- I've sampled the Criterion "Late Spring". Once again, I personally prefer the look of the Shochiku DVD. Yes, the Criterion has removed far more blemishes than Shochiku -- but on a conventional TV at least, the Criterion DVD looks harsh -- overly contrasty and overly sharpened. Maybe on plasma/projection/LCD systems this looks better.

Nice to have subs -- but (in a more perfect world) I'd rather use the subs with my Shochiku DVD than watch the Criterion DVD.

I thinkCriterion's doctoring here is more like that done to "Tokyo Story" than to the less "massaged" (and more pleasant to look at) "Early Summer.

(I always seem to be in the minority on these things -- sigh)

[FilmFanSea]

(I always seem to be in the minority on these things -- sigh)

Once again, Criterion fails to live up to the exacting standards of MEK.

[Michael Kerpan]

Not so much my "exacting standards" -- but a fundamental disagreement with Criterions's way of handling really old films whose sources are not in terribly good condition. They don't do "film restoration", they do digital fiddling. And in the case of "Tokyo Story" and "Late Spring" (but seemingly not so much in "Story of Floating Weeds" or "Early Summer"), I find their intervention quite heavy handed.

Obviously most Criterion DVD buyers DO like what Criterion does.

[kinjitsu]

Obviously most Criterion DVD buyers DO like what Criterion does.

Not necessarily. I happen to agree with you in that many of the older films lose much of their film-like qualities from excessive digital manipulation and it shows. Ditto audio. It's a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation. One hopes they will learn by their mistakes.

[HerrSchreck]

I agree with Mike but I've given up expecting filmic transfers, where images truly look like celluloid, especially since every vid company under the sun is dedicated to mimicing the look of CC transfers.

Go into a cinema: films never look as icy sharp as Criterion's restorations. This is one of the reason's I'm determined to stick as long as possible to 27-plus inch, hi-rez dedicated tube screens (Multi Video Labs being a good hi-end product), which duplicate the cinematic "warmth" that flatscreens cannot at present recreate.

You cannot repaint a painting if it has faded over the centuries-- you set out to preserving it the best you can. I know there are some open air ceilings & frescoes where artists go in and actually paint over the old fresco rather than let it disappear before the public. If an old piece of pottery is broken you cannot stick the remaining antique piece into the oven with wet ceramic to create a brand new one. If a precious sculpture gets badly chipped you don't fill in the chip with new materials.

Some digital treatment is obviously fine, as well as wet-gate processing in telecine to fill in some scratches and deal with additional interferences on the surface. Edge enhancement has become so common however that the warmth and rich substance of film is rapidly disappearing, and reviewers complain when taking the measure of a DVD that there are scuffs, scratches, speckling, and audio pops & clicks... on films which are over 50, 60, 70 , even 80 years old! Criterion has a stated goal of reproducing the original viewing experience, i e getting films back to their original state of flawnessness. Certainly viewing films back then as well as now-- especially then, when 35mm negs were blown up 3 stories tall (and bigger!) in the old movie palaces-- provided far softer edges and a hell of a lot more grain than the hypersharp DVDs we watch from CC. It seems in some cases we're better off resigning ourselves to the fact that we'll never duplicate that original experience in certain cases owing to deteriorated elements, and stop fucking with the natural image which is like spraypainting over an antique.

I think a miraculous looking CC dvd is L'ECLISSE. Such a fine dvd-- such a filmic looking image. Certainly the closer to 10/mb per second we get, the more of a chance we have to seeing images like that. otherwise the images thin out and lose that certain richness, that fluid substance that celluloid has. Color accuracy aside, here's a very filmic looking CC frame, from RIVER.:



This also is a super-filmic image:


Both images have that certain something, very fluid & rich softness of celluloid, that few DVDs (including CC) attain. There are moments in CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER when the bitrate hovers around 10, especially in the very beginning where the old friend is shivering in the outdoors by the puddle. It's a richness that's not always easy to find. I'm not one of these purists (I think there's a co from Germany which released ENTHUSIAZM by Vertov, and they believe its sacrilege or something to do anything to a piece of old celluloid) who believes all digital manipulation is some kind of sin. But there is a line, somewhere. Rather than draw it I'd say it's on a film by film basis.

[montgomery]

I'm in total agreement here. In fact, I started a thread about this about a half year ago, but it didn't lead to much of a discussion, probably due to my incoherent rambling initial post.
As Kerpan said, Criterion doesn't do "film restoration," and personally I don't think it's that fine a line between restoration and digital manipulation, I think there's a fairly wide gap between the two. I don't know when people lost all tolerance for normal film patina, grain, scratches, etc. It's strange that people still say they prefer film over digital video, when they want their DVDs to look more like the latter.

[gubbelsj]

Tokyo-Ga has to be one of the finest supplements ever included in a Criterion release, beautifully filmed, slowly paced, as calm and tender as the master himself, if also dismayed by what Wenders observes. A pity things like A Constant Forge get their own spine number - this would have made a fantastic disc all by itself. Was this originally produced for theatrical release or television? Of course, any documentary featuring an appearance by Werner Herzog will always rank high on my list. What a burst of energy and barely-contained ideas, urging Wenders to join him on Mars now that Earth's images have been used up.

[Scharphedin2]

...I'm not one of these purists (I think there's a co from Germany which released ENTHUSIAZM by Vertov, and they believe its sacrilege or something to do anything to a piece of old celluloid) who believes all digital manipulation is some kind of sin. But there is a line, somewhere. Rather than draw it I'd say it's on a film by film basis.

Thank you for this wonderful post...

My father is in his sixties, and a couple of years ago we decided to watch a couple of flicks one night. He selected my old laserdisc edition of RED RIVER... needless to say, it is not a gorgeous presentation of the film by any stretch of the imagination... a muddy mess would describe it better. But, my father loved it... growing up in the '40s and '50s, the kind of access he had to movies was in the smaller theatres that would get the films only after they had been played for months or years in the bigger and more prestigeous movie palaces. To him, RED RIVER looked like he remembered the westerns that he saw as a child.

I am as preoccupied with finding the best editions of films on DVD as everyone else on this forum, and eagerly look forward to newly restored and/or "digitally fiddled" releases. At the same time, I am very conscious of what you point out above... many of the DVDs do not look "filmic." My layman's solution to this is to turn around and blow them up to 100+" with my projector. The sheer size of the image and inherent shortcomings of my projector detracts from the image quality of even the best DVDs (restored or not), but it somehow (to me at least) approximates the experience of watching a film. I enjoyed your more technical/scientific take on the issue. To me, putting a library together of great films on DVD is about being able to see these films at all, and have access to them at will. I am very conscious that they unfortunately are not films, but "only" DVDs.