Marathon Man - great movie/erratic transfer (1 Viewer)

[Lou Sytsma]

Just picked this one up - still a great flick and quite enjoyable to watch again!
OTOH this movie has one of the most erratic transfers I have seen. Sometimes you'd swear it was filmed yesterday and then other scenes look like they were from the Stone Age.
A shame really as it pulls one out of the movie. Fortunately the poor sections are not that frequent - even though they are throughout the entire movie.
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Every man is my superior, in that I may learn from him.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Lou, I'm curious which scenes looked to you like they were "from the Stone Age" and which looked like a recent movie. I thought the entire film had the same dirty, gritty, washed-out look that it's always had, and I was impressed that Paramount's new transfer kept it under relatively good control and still provided a detailed image.
If you haven't yet watched the retrospective, I highly recommend it.
M.

 

[Lou Sytsma]

Micheal the worst scene(s) were probably at the farm house waiting. The outside landscape shots were really grainy.
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Every man is my superior, in that I may learn from him.

 

[Michael Reuben]

The outside landscape shots were really grainy.

I think that reflects the original photography, for better or worse. Those shots look about the same on Paramount's widescreen laserdisc; in fact, they're cleaner on the DVD. It's been so long that I can't remember how those scenes looked in theaters, but I do remember thinking that the landscape looked pretty dreary. It's as if they were trying to make the country house appear to be an extension of the grimy cityscape where most of the film takes place.
I blame it on The French Connection and Serpico. For years after those films appeared, everyone photographed New York to look as ugly as possible.

M.