HTF BLU-RAY REVIEW: North by Northwest (50th Anniversary Edition) [Highly Recommended]

Originally Posted by PianoPlayer 

USA Today's Mike Clark (my favorite movie critic and someone who always knows what he's talking about) says this about the new Blu-ray release of NORTH BY NORTHWEST in this week's column:

"Finally, it looks just right.  Someone obviously spent serious bucks going back to the original VistaVision elements to remaster ... MGM's VistaVision was darker than the splashier renderings from Paramount.  But THIS (Blu-ray) replicates what I saw twice theatrically in '59."

There you have it.

 

Originally Posted by dpippel 

I experienced the joy of spinning this Blu-ray last week and wow! What a presentation! The film looks absolutely stunning and it was a joy to watch it again in all of its restored HD glory. However, I did notice an issue with the audio in my theater. The volume level of the Dolby TrueHD audio track is very low. In fact I had to turn up the volume 10dB-12dB over the "normal" volume point on my Onkyo TX-SR805 just to get acceptably understandable dialogue levels. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

Originally Posted by BillyFeldman 

Second - the Blu-Ray of North By Northwest is a HUGE improvement over the DVD in every possible way.  People here and elsewhere keep talking about the fact that it's not as sharp as other Blu-Ray transfers like The Wizard Of Oz, but then they mention the clarity of seeing the pattern on Grant's suit and I defy anyone to say the crop-dusting scene is not sharp as a tack.  In fact, what people are referring to in terms of sharpness, as someone has finally noted in a post above, is the fact that many shots in the film were shot with diffusion filters, especially many close-ups of Grant and Eva Marie Saint.  It's why the medium and long-shots will be incredibly sharp and then the cut to a close-up will not be quite as sharp.  It's the nature of the filter.  As to why it was used on Grant?  Well, he was playing a romantic lead at fifty-seven and as handsome as he still was, they probably wanted the age difference between Thornhill and Eve Kendall not to be so extreme - not to mention that the woman playing his mother, Jessie Royce Landis, was, in fact, only seven years older than Grant.

And yes, the darker contrast is absolutely correct for all the reasons that I stated long ago - it's why everything looks better and why you can't spot the matte work and rear projection so easily.

 

Originally Posted by Larry Sutliff 

My favorite shot-the aerial view of Thornhill escaping from the UN. It looks superb on the new BD.

Originally Posted by shazzerman 

What other VistaVision releases can we expect to get the blu-ray treatment? If North by Northwest and The Searchers are anything to go by, I'll be getting them all!

Originally Posted by shazzerman 

What other VistaVision releases can we expect to get the blu-ray treatment? If North by Northwest and The Searchers are anything to go by, I'll be getting them all!