- Joined
- Feb 8, 1999
- Messages
- 18,397
- Real Name
- Robert Harris
As the initial Blu-ray release from the Cohen Media Group, the entity that purchased the old Rohauer library, The Thief of Bagdad comes off looking quite nice. The film has been in the public domain since the early 1950s, and many people have seen it over the years in dupes. Some quite superb. Some downright unpleasant. It's obvious that thought and effort went into this release, the only downside of which, seems to be that the film elements used, were apparently those only held by the Rohauer library. I must wonder if things might have been a bit improved had other access been available. The elements scanned were two different full aperture dupe negatives, with the majority of the footage coming from a continuous source. As scanned in 2k, resolution and gray scale are very acceptable, especially for an element that is not original. One of the major problems with the source, which may go unnoticed by the uninitiated, is the movement within the frame, as baked into the dupe. The original element copied to dupe, was obviously shrunken, and seems to twitch vertically through various portions of the film. There is there little that can be done about this, and I'm extremely pleased that those behind the digital work, didn't go looking through their digital tool-boxes for an anti-veritcal-twitch app. By leaving it alone, I believe we have a better presentation. Using the Carl Davis score, which is typically superb, and real treat, also added problems, as reference (a PAL tape), had been produced in sync with the track at 22fps. In order to keep in sync, every tenth frame is duplicated, allowing the element to run in a faux 22 fps mode. This frame doubling will not be noticeable to the general audience, and is in no way a problem. The score is presented in DTS-HD MA. Tinting is also copied over from the Thames tape, and comes off as being quite pleasing. One really cannot discuss this initial release, without considering what it might have looked like had it come out via Kino. My gut reaction, is that what we're seeing from Cohen Media is a step up, as funding has been allowed for clean-up and other digital work that probably would not have occurred in the alternative. This is a good thing, and portends in a positive way toward future releases. While the Rohauer library was a world unto itself, it remains to be seen if future releases are able to take advantage of elements held by varying archives, especially for those titles in the public domain, such as the majority of the Griffith productions. What I'd love to see from Cohen, are releases that cannot be bettered in the future, and which, for those with an interest in early cinema, become the obvious go-to editions for purchase. If others come out with similar or better editions, it will muddy the waters. But if Cohen Media do the outstanding job that, with the Rohauer Collection as a basis, they should be able to do, along with input and access from other libraries, they may be unbeatable in that segment of the home video marketplace, and I'd love to see that occur. They've taken the step of using clear cases, a la Criterion, and offering small booklets along with the disc. I'd like to see the specifics of what elements were used added in the future. There are very good technical people behind the new Cohen brand. Things coming up should be very interesting. "It's only a matter of going." Image - 2.5 Audio - 5 Recommended. RAH
(Either way, it helps to keep folks up to speed on what we over on BR.com refer to as "Cover juggle": Every cover design is copyrighted, so no two releases can have the same cover layout--A change of elements, a different color or logo, a shuffle of one main character to the foreground, there's always some reason why, no, they can't use the original poster art just like the VHS or first DVD release did.)
