UHD Review Sorcerer: Criterion Collection — 4K UHD review (3 Viewers)

[Konstantinos]

I'll wait for ARROW or BFI to do it properly.

Oh, do you think Arrow could tackle with it?
You put me in thoughts now.. Maybe I should wait too...

 

[CC95]

Oh, do you think Arrow could tackle with it?
You put me in thoughts now.. Maybe I should wait too...

I'm not sure that's gonna happen- it's just a wish.
I know the Criterion edition is available in the UK too- so not sure if any others are able to get the license and make another edition as long as Criterion has the license for the territory.
Otherwise- I'll just live with the better color grade on the 2k Blu-ray until there's another 4K edition.
Criterion has really drifted terribly from their original mission statement of preserving films as they are.
(Perfect example: BULL DURHAM. The Durham Bulls uniforms are Blue and white in the original color grade. With the altered color grade- the uniforms are now seafoam green and white.)

 

[JoshZ]

Criterion has really drifted terribly from their original mission statement of preserving films as they are.

This is a common mistake, but that was never Criterion's mission statement. Criterion's mandate from the very beginning in the Laserdisc era has been to present movies as their filmmakers wish them to be presented. A great number of titles in the Criterion Collection are only available in "Director's Cuts" different from the theatrical releases.

Often this is a good thing, but sometimes we wind up with filmmakers who inflict undesirable revisionist changes onto their old work, such as tinting it teal-and-orange or cropping the aspect ratio to 2.00:1 for no damn reason.

Nevertheless, Criterion is remaining true to its core value of respecting the filmmakers' instructions at all costs. Unfortunately, that doesn't always align with what viewers want from the product.

 

[Worth]

…Nevertheless, Criterion is remaining true to its core value of respecting the filmmakers' instructions at all costs. Unfortunately, that doesn't always align with what viewers want from the product.

In this case, they seem to have deliberately ignored the director’s wishes. They could have easily hewed closer to the previous master that Friedkin oversaw.

 

[JoshZ]

In this case, they seem to have deliberately ignored the director’s wishes. They could have easily hewed closer to the previous master that Friedkin oversaw.

They may have worked with Friedkin on the remaster before he died. Friedkin was known to regularly change his mind on how his old movies should look.

 

[Robert Crawford]

They may have worked with Friedkin on the remaster before he died. Friedkin was known to regularly change his mind on how his old movies should look.

Bingo! Friedkin had a history of changing his mind regarding that subject matter.

 

[Worth]

They may have worked with Friedkin on the remaster before he died. Friedkin was known to regularly change his mind on how his old movies should look.

Could well be. Not that this means much regarding Sorcerer, but this week I caught screenings of The French Connection and Cruising in 35mm. Cruising had a fairly neutral colour balance - there is some teal in the night scenes but whites looked white. French Connection went in the other direction - very warm with whites appearing yellowish-orange.

 

[JoshZ]

Could well be. Not that this means much regarding Sorcerer, but this week I caught screenings of The French Connection and Cruising in 35mm. Cruising had a fairly neutral colour balance - there is some teal in the night scenes but whites looked white. French Connection went in the other direction - very warm with whites appearing yellowish-orange.

What's interesting is that the original Arrow Blu-ray of Cruising (with the Friedkin revisionist transfer) isn't actually teal. It's doused in real, legitimate blue. That's almost rare to see in modern video transfers, which typically add a green bias that shifts blue to teal.

However, one of the bonus features on the disc includes an old interview with the cinematographer, who specifically talks about shooting the movie in a desaturated, monochromatic style. That isn't at all reflected in the Blu-ray transfer, which has very pumped-up colors and adds a pervasive blue tint over most scenes.

 

[tenia]

In this case, they seem to have deliberately ignored the director’s wishes. They could have easily hewed closer to the previous master that Friedkin oversaw.

They sourced 2 different elements, BOTH approved by Friedkin, to produce this new presentation. One would think it's precisely to remain aligned with the director's wishes, but if you have 2 approved-versions differing from one another... what are those wishes exactly ?

Oh, do you think Arrow could tackle with it?
You put me in thoughts now.. Maybe I should wait too...

Won't happen, since Criterion announced their UK release.

 

[titch]

I found the transfer to be superior and the 5.1 audio mix much more powerful, compared to the old Warner Bros. blu-ray.

I thought the 2018 documentary Friedkin Uncut on the supplemental blu-ray is one of the best supplements Criterion has provided in a long while. I hadn't seen it previously and find many documentaries about filmmakers these days to be rather formulaic. However, on Friedkin Uncut, the great majority of the people who were interviewed, had insightful and interesting things to say. Friedkin himself often comes across as bombastic and crude, but he certainly receives accolades from his peers, and he had a wide variety of interests, besides film. Also, I had never seen footage of Friedkin's first documentary, The People vs. Paul Crump. The few snippets of him interviewing Fritz Lang were fascinating. Friedkin may have had his best cinematic run in the 1970s, but he was inventively directing major opera productions at the age of 85! It was a selective, and not a comprehensive overview; it would have been interesting, if the interviewer had mentioned the biggest turkey of Friedkin's career: Jade. Friedkin didn't seem afraid of speaking his mind on any subject, but obviously, the documentary was made as a celebration of his work and not as a critical retrospective.

It struck me that Friedkin, as an old man, was providing access to the interviewer, in the same manner Fritz Lang had provided for himself, decades before.

 

[Winston T. Boogie]

It was a selective, and not a comprehensive overview; it would have been interesting, if the interviewer had mentioned the biggest turkey of Friedkin's career: Jade.

Interesting, you'd place Jade above things like The Guardian (a total stinker), Deal of the Century (I actually like this but many people mention it as his worst), and the abomination that was his "documentary" The Devil and Father Amorth? That last one I really struggled to make it through and found it crazy terrible. Jade was an utter joy compared to that.

 

[tenia]

I cannot not mention the 2015 ITW with Refn, which is just non-stop laughs due to how Refn is just, well, Refn and Friedkin keep giving him flak for it. It's like they're in different extras altogether.

 

[sbjork]

There's no blanket teal wash on the new 4K master for Sorcerer. If you're seeing excessive teal, then it's because you've been programmed to see excessive teal by sites like the other one mentioned (although it's worth pointing out that most of the commenters on their forum thread about it have been dismissive of the minority who agree with the reviewer). There's definitely teal in this new version of Sorcerer, but I'm not sure where people got the idea that teal didn't exist before 2000. It did. It's present in both the the costuming and the production design of Sorcerer, and was even visible in the overly boosted colors of the old Blu-ray. It's just that with those dialed back a touch, it's more noticeable. While I don't have an unfaded reference print from 1977 (and no one does, even the anti-teal warriors), I'll still pretty much guarantee that the greens and oranges weren't as vivid on original theatrical prints as they were on the 2013 master. It actually looked quite good taken on its own merits, but it wasn't accurate. This new master seems much more in line with Friedkin's aesthetic from that era.

It's also a huge bonus that the theatrical audio has been included, or at least a form of it. Sorcerer was released in optical mono and four-track mag striped prints, so it wasn't originally a matrix encoded Dolby Stereo mix, but at some point those four discrete channels were mixed down to matrix encoded LT/RT, and that's what's on Criterion's disc. Friedkin did engage in revisionism with the 5.1 mix, among other things adding the sound of a gunshot as the truck passes by on the left in the final shot. It destroys the ambiguity of that moment. (He claimed it was still ambiguous because it could have been a backfire from the truck, and he also claimed that it was always there and he just dialed it up, but he was definitely full of it on that score.) Even if you choose to listen to the 5.1, switch to 2.0 for the final scene. But I don't recommend the 5.1. The surrounds are actually more prominent in the 2.0 track, making it feel more immersive, and the music gets pulled toward the center in 5.1. The original 2.0 has wider stereo spread for the score and more active surround presence.

This disc is a mandatory upgrade. Don't pass it up.

 

[Harry-N]

I was thrilled to get that Warners Blu a decade ago. It was the first time we could see the whole widescreen image of SORCERER, and the colors, while very, very luminescent, were rather pretty to look at. I've watched the film on that Blu a number of times in the intervening years so I suppose I got used to the way it looked. A few times, I've mentioned that if the sound at the end bothers anyone, so simply switch to the Spanish track on that disc at the point that the camera pulls away from the bar. The offending sound is not on the Spanish track, and it's all music at that point to the end of the movie.

I was really on the fence about getting the Criterion, feeling that I didn't really need to triple dip on this movie, but then my love for the film got to me, and I took a chance on the 4K/Blu.

It's simply amazing how this version tames the colors while making the whole film seem more vibrant, The scenes that have a teal leaning are appropriately so. It mostly happens to some scenes of the town of Porvenir that truly are depressing, and the color palette emphasizes that depression.

Color me happy that I bought the Criterion.

 

[JoshZ]

There's no blanket teal wash on the new 4K master for Sorcerer. If you're seeing excessive teal, then it's because you've been programmed to see excessive teal by sites like the other one mentioned (although it's worth pointing out that most of the commenters on their forum thread about it have been dismissive of the minority who agree with the reviewer). There's definitely teal in this new version of Sorcerer, but I'm not sure where people got the idea that teal didn't exist before 2000. It did.

It's not that the color teal didn't exist before 2000, or wasn't ever used in movies. However, motion picture photography was certainly not smothered in a heavy blanket of teal and orange* until digital color grading made that popular in the early 2000s, at which point suddenly every movie, both new and old, got color graded or recolored that way. It's taken 25 years for that fad to even start to taper off, and it quite frustratingly hasn't gone entirely away yet.

*I'm not saying this is the case with the new edition of Sorcerer. I haven't seen it yet.

 

[JoshZ]

It was a selective, and not a comprehensive overview; it would have been interesting, if the interviewer had mentioned the biggest turkey of Friedkin's career: Jade.

What's funny is that Friedkin actually called Jade his favorite of all the movies he ever made.

 

[Konstantinos]

What's funny is that Friedkin actually called Jade his favorite of all the movies he ever made.

Oh really? I should see it then...

 

[Neil S. Bulk]

Color me happy that I bought the Criterion.

Okay, but you're going to be teal now.

 

[sbjork]

It's not that the color teal didn't exist before 2000, or wasn't ever used in movies. However, motion picture photography was certainly not smothered in a heavy blanket of teal and orange* until digital color grading made that popular in the early 2000s, at which point suddenly every movie, both new and old, got color graded or recolored that way. It's taken 25 years for that fad to even start to taper off, and it quite frustratingly hasn't gone entirely away yet.

*I'm not saying this is the case with the new edition of Sorcerer. I haven't seen it yet.

There's no blanket teal/orange wash in Sorcerer. There's no blanket teal wash, either. You're actually mixing two different things -- the current wave of complaints about teal are complaints about just that: teal, not teal/orange. The fad of complaining about teal/orange has started to fade, only to be replaced about complaints solely about teal. And that's exactly what's going on here with Sorcerer. The oranges are dialed way back this time compared to the old Blu-ray. Ironically enough, the old Blu-ray is the one that had the high-contrast orange/teal look that you're talking about.

And at no point in time was "every" movie regraded as teal/orange. Not even the majority of them. There were some revisionist color grades on older films in the 2000s, but it's not like the magenta-pushed telecine transfers that preceded them were accurate, either. What is true is that it became a real fad for new movies to get graded that way, especially after the DI era began. Think Michael Bay, among others. But those weren't revisionist grades; that's how the filmmakers wanted their movies to look. Heavy diffusion became a fad in the Seventies, especially in historical films. These kinds of things always come and go. Whether any of us like it or not has nothing to do with accuracy.

And regarding older films, absent reference material, we're all guessing, and yet still making emphatic statements about accuracy and revisionism. I can't guarantee you that the Criterion Sorcerer is 100% accurate to prints from 1977, because I don't have one for comparison purposes. But I will guarantee you that the old Blu-ray wasn't accurate. And again, I've been on record as saying that I liked how it looked, but there's no chance that original prints had greens and oranges that vivid. But absent reference material of your own, neither you nor anyone else can say that the new version is wrong simply based on the presence of teal (and once again, it's not a blanket wash). The color teal has existed long before any of us.

 

[JoshZ]

Oh really? I should see it then...

You really don't need to. It's quite awful.