International A Matter of Life and Death (Powell/Pressburger, 1946) FINALLY coming to Blu-ray (France) (1 Viewer)

[Yorkshire]

Here's the link:

http://filmfestival.tcm.com/a-matter-of-life-and-death/

"Sony Pictures’ Grover Crisp was on hand to see his company’s splendid digital restoration of A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, which may not have been original Technicolor but gave a very close approximation, with saturated colors and rich contrasts. The audience consisted of quite a few Powell-Pressburger converts, who took in the show in attentive silence. What a great picture"

Thelma Schoonmaker introduced that showing, by the way.

Note also here:

http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/2014/04/tcm-classic-film-festival-site-live-blog-day-two-chinese-multiplex-our-new-home

"By the way, the new restoration of A Matter of Life and Death looked gorgeous. Sony needs to put out a Blu-ray edition immediately."

That's the version we have on this disc. The 1999 GC restoration, which has apparently had some digital work done on it, though it's not clear what.

Frankly, not much. And what Sony haven't done is re-visit the original elements to re-align. The problems there are hard baked unless someone pays for the original three strip to be re-scanned. The mis-alignment will be there on every DVD, Blu-ray Disc, 35mm print and digital 2K scan.

As the colour timing is the same as the DVD, and comes from the same source restoration, which was colour timed in co-operation with Jack Cardiff (who thinks the colour portions look 'lovely'), then that's good enough for me, at least as far as the colour goes. It's not 'too blue'.

The only thing wrong is the misaligned three strip.

What AMOLAD needs is this:



Steve W

 

[haineshisway]

See, I don't know if I believe that. I'm reading it as a new restoration was done beyond 1999. I understand what this Blu-ray is, but that doesn't mean that there hasn't been a new scan with new work done. The way these things are worded would lead me, anyway, to believe that. You're obviously interpreting it a whole other way. But I think they would have mentioned it was a digital redo of the 1999 thing if it really was.

 

[Yorkshire]

Bruce, if they have re-scanned and realligned everything, no one on God's green earth would be happier than I. Unless this has been done it'd be pretty pointless to do anything else as the only problem with the '99 is the misalignment. A new scan of all three strips is not what I've heard from elsewhere.The thing is, the big worry was that this release would be the old restoration from the early '90s. Elephant have this under licence from ITV who didn't have access to the '99 restoration as they didn't co-fund it. That position has clearly changed.Why would Sony give them access to the '99 in late 2014 when they'd done further work in early 2014. Doesn't add up.When Blimp, TRS and ToH were rescanned in this way we knew about from before the work started. Steve Crook (founder of the P&P Appreciation Society is informed (and keeps the society informed) at every step of the way. There's been nothing about AMOLAD.Finally, those other 3 PnPs were scanned at 4K. The new print introduced by TS was 2K. And she mentioned nothing about a further full restoration in her introduction, which she surely would have - a big thing was made about it with the other films. I just don't see it. Steve W

 

[Yorkshire]

I've checked a bit more and it's quite bizarre. First up, matching shot for shot, the Blu-ray Disc is clearly more detailed.However, there's a fairly consistent misalignment of the green strip on the BD, and one which simply isn't there at all on the US DVD.It isn't that the DVD is too low in resolution for it to be apparent. At points it's absolutely massive. I'll post screenshots later.How is this possible?I'm going to have a guess - a pure stab in the dark. When Sony originally restored this I'm sure they saw the poor alignment. Perhaps they experimented, and when they saw the green was too high they manually shifted the green strip up a little. Perhaps they tried this several times until they got the best fit. Then, when they dug out the print to scan they picked one of the 'out-takes' by accident.That is probably not it, but it's the only explanation I can think of.If this release was as detailed as the BD, but with the colour aligned as well as the DVD, I'd be extremely happy.Steve W

 

[haineshisway]

Mine still hasn't arrived so I'll hold off until I've actually seen it - one can only hope that it's released here by Sony because I know Mr. Crisp enough to know that he wouldn't really release something like this for this particular film. From the reports at the screening referenced in those articles, whatever they screened looked great, which would lead me to believe - well.

 

[Yorkshire]

I've put up a message at AVF. Rather than laboriously re-load the pics here, I've just posted a link.

Hope no one minds:

https://www.avforums.com/threads/a-matter-of-life-and-death-powell-pressburger-1946-finally-coming-to-blu-ray-disc-france.1896245/page-3#post-21425914

Steve W

 

[Yorkshire]

One more quick update, and I dont know why I didn't check this before.AMOLAD was on Channel 4 about a year ago in the UK 1080i/50). I recorded it and it's remained on my planner ever since. I've just checked and the pronounced green fringe is there. Definitely more so than on the US DVD, very similar to the new BD.If anyone had any doubts, this is definitely not any sort of bootleg or dodgy upscale. The C4HD version was from a new HD master provided to C4 by ITV/Carlton at the time.Steve W

 

[haineshisway]

Finally it has arrived. For me, the news is not good. Anyone who thinks this is some "restoration" from any period other than the late 1990s is sorely mistaken. Anyone who thinks Grover Crisp would put something like this out in the United States in 2014 is sorely mistaken. Is it from a 2K scan made off something from the late 1990s? I have no idea, although it certainly doesn't look like it to my eyes.

I'm not one of these blue push fellows - I like blue and when skies are blue, real blue, I'm happy because that's what this film has - blue skies in those sequences that have them. They were beautiful Technicolor blue in Mr. Scorsese's 16mm British IB print that I ran. While I don't think the color is entirely accurate, it is the least of the problems here. If you've seen Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus on Blu-ray, then you know exactly what this film SHOULD look like, what the contrast should be, what the detail should be. None of those things are in evidence here. The black-and-white scenes don't look sharp or as they should. The fringing in the color scenes is erratic but when it's in evidence the image is just out of focus. But it's never ever detailed as it should be, as it would be if this were a new scan that had had actual work done on it. As has been pointed out, this is, most likely, some version of what was used for the DVD, which was dated even then in terms of technology. Is it more detailed than the DVD - sure, why not. Is it in the ballpark of what it should be? It's not even in the country let alone the ballpark. One was worried to begin with, and sadly those fears have been realized. A major disappointment, but despite what the people who WANTED this to be great were saying, I was prepared for what I saw.

The film is one of my all-time favorites, and I do look forward to the day when Mr. Crisp does his usual magic, if it hasn't been done already. That's what none of us know. He may, for all any of us know, have a brand new and beautiful master either done or in the works. In the meantime, I suppose this is a half-step up from the DVD and one can watch it when one wants to. But it isn't what Mr. Powell would want you to be seeing.

 

[Patrick Mason]

Received mine last night, but didn't have a chance to watch the whole thing. The first half hour was a mixed bag, it has moments that really look very nice, but others that fail to live up to the Sony DVD edition. Some of the issues I can live with (more debris than expected, softer resolution in the heaven/b&w sequences), but the scenes with registration issues are obviously distracting. The dreaded green fringe first showed up in the desert sequence near the beginning, and does seem to come and go throughout.

The news of this Blu-ray coming after those screening reactions put me in a more hopeful mindset than it turns out was warranted. This title seems bizarrely cursed on home video considering its stature. This is a transfer of a dated restoration, which just doesn't seem to match up with the favorable reception of the screenings.

The film, at least, has fortunately lost none of its magic. I can't wait to go home and finish it, presentation issues aside. I am disappointed, but considering how recently I was still watching this as an imported VHS quality disc, I can't deny that I felt happy to be watching it last night even in this compromised form. Really hoping that Sony or Criterion can surprise us soon with the presentation this great film deserves.

 

[bigshot]

I got the box set today, and I'm as happy as a pig in mud. The transfers are faithful and film like. Spy in Black even still has reel change marks. There is stuff that could be touched up with some digital cleanup here and there, but overall it looks like really good film prints. That is what I want. I don't necessarily want all the digital monkey business.

 

[Yorkshire]

I got the box set today, and I'm as happy as a pig in mud. The transfers are faithful and film like. Spy in Black even still has reel change marks. There is stuff that could be touched up with some digital cleanup here and there, but overall it looks like really good film prints. That is what I want. I don't necessarily want all the digital monkey business.

Bigshot, obviously I was aware of the misalignment issues and that this hadn't had a TRS/Blimp job done on it, but I was going to be happy with a 2K scan of what one might see in the cinema on 35mm. Anyone who compares those two releases to this will see just how extraordinary this film could and should look.

This does appear to be that, apart from the fact that the misalignment is so extreme.

I've not seen it on 35mm for quite a few years, and won't pretend to remember how it looked then. However, the US DVD does not have misalignment as bad.

This is just a complete head-scratcher. Other elements of the viewing experience suggest this is from the same source as the US DVD. The colour is all but identical, and there are print damage marks in exactly the same places, and which are not apparent on the UK DVD.

So how come the alignment is so out on this one?

I did comment earlier that the new DVD which comes with the Blu-ray Disc shows the same issue, so it can't be down to HD showing a previously hidden problem. However, I'm now thinking that original DVD will have been scanned in SD, whilst the new DVD is a downscale of a 2K scan. Maybe the answer lies there.

But in general, yes there doesn't appear to be any unfortunate digital tinkering - there's no obvious EE, DNR or compression artefacts, at least in as far as my couple of scan-throughs have shown. This does appear to be a faithful transfer of a compromised element.

I wonder if a new master was created from GC's restored elements (as opposed to trying to scan a 20 year old print), only for the shrinkage to have made things worse.

Whatever, I think we all agree it would look far better with the 3 strips correctly aligned (and this would have to be done in the digital realm).

Unfortunately, the work on this does not appear to have started, unless they're keeping it very tightly under wraps, and the process is not a quick one. It took them 2 years to do TRS, followed by a wait of several months before the film appeared on Blu-ray Disc. That would mean no restored AMOLAD until at least the summer of 2017.

Subsequently, I hope they have been working on this in secret.

I wonder if GC's checking out of the last job at the TCM festival was to see what needed doing.

One silver lining.

Blimp is 163 minutes. TRS is 133 minutes.

AMOLAD is only 104 minutes, including a lot of b&w material which, whilst needing some work, wouldn't need the same time-consuming alignment adjustment, which has to be done frame-by-frame. Also my understanding is that, alignment aside, the original elements are not in anything like as bad a condition as the other films were.

Steve W

 

[bigshot]

I projected the first half hour of all three features and they all looked great. The color in Matter of Life and Death was amazing. Gorgeous print! I didn't run into any objectionable fringing in the first half hour, but there was a bit of that distinctive three strip Technicolor hue drift in closeups. Thief of Bagdad had an unusual color palette with lots of pink, but I think that was the color the sets were painted. Beautiful skin tones and rich primary colors, and tons of sharp detail. Spy in Black looked as good as any British film from the era that I've ever seen. Nice deep blacks with perfectly balanced grayscale and plenty of detail. If I stood right up at the screen on the Technicolor stuff, I could see that the grain was digitally clumping up a bit, but at normal viewing distance, it looked fine. The sound on all three was just ordinary. Probably from optical soundtracks. I'm sure if these transfers were put into post and had some digital work done on them, they could look a bit better, but for straightforward transfers of super nice film prints, they are exceptional.

All three are very good transfers and the box set is a tremendous bargain. I didn't look at the DVDs but there is another feature in there that is on DVD only.

 

[bigshot]

I watched A Matter of Life and Death all the way through projected last night with a few friends. It's a very good transfer overall. The Technicolor issues didn't bother me at all. I thought it was a beautiful print of a very unique movie.

 

[Yorkshire]

I too watched this start-to-finish two weekends ago.The misalignment issue is enough to leave me a tad disgruntled for maybe 15% of the film.The rest is quite lovely.Yes, it still needs the work that's been performed on the other PnP films we've mentioned, but we always knew that anyway.For now, this'll do.Steve W

 

[bigshot]

To be honest, a few scenes seemed soft, but I didn't see the hard green lines people were talking about at all. I have MUCH poorer looking blu-rays than this.

 

[haineshisway]

To be honest, a few scenes seemed soft, but I didn't see the hard green lines people were talking about at all. I have MUCH poorer looking blu-rays than this.

That's not really the issue here. The issue here is that this particular film does not have a particularly good transfer. it's okay at best, and for this film okay doesn't cut it, not with me.

 

[bigshot]

I think the transfer has amazing contrast and color. I don't know what you're looking at. I suspect you are sitting way too close to the screen.

 

[haineshisway]

I think the transfer has amazing contrast and color. I don't know what you're looking at. I suspect you are sitting way too close to the screen.

You suspect I'm sitting close to the screen? Why? I don't sit close to the screen and anyone who knows me around these parts knows I am not of that crowd. What I have is a good memory. What I've seen is a pristine British IB Tech print owned by Mr. Scorsese. I'm glad you're happy with it, but I am here to tell you it could and should be miles better than this. This is an old transfer and is not what this film deserves.

 

[bigshot]

It's a darn good transfer that serves the film well.

tag, you're it.

 

[haineshisway]

It's a darn good transfer that serves the film well.

tag, you're it.

No tag. I'm glad you like it and, as you know, I am less pleased than you are and I am not alone in this. Anyone who knows the film well will be disappointed in the transfer. I'd guess you have no frame of reference in terms of what it should look like and that's fine. So, enjoy, and I will hope that down the line this wonderful film gets the treatment it so deserves.