The English version of The Blue Angel (1930) looks wonderful and far better than the German version. It has natural looking grain and no restoration processing artifacts—a benefit of being the neglected version.
English version. Clipped directly from the BD.German version. Clipped directly from the BD.
Grain on the German version looks blurry. Look closely at the second duck and you can see restoration artifacting.
However, the biggest problem with the German version is that the technicians tried to remove every cement splice, creating lots of interpolated and frozen errors. These are just two random ones I found. Pretty much every splice is like these:
Splices are visible in the English version, but they don’t detract at all.
Extras are all SD, and the ones from archival video sources are converted to 24fps instead of left at 50i/60i. Blech.
I’m surprised the English version is so ignored. Most of the movie is still in German and tacks closely to the German version. It works really well. Why read a movie when you don’t have to? English speakers should default to the English version, especially given the superior presentation.
L’Immagine Ritrovata did this restoration of The Kid Brother (1927). Compared to some of their other work, they used a light touch this time. However, they used interpolation, and I consider even a single instance too much. On the whole, though, it looks ok, if suspiciously clean.
Clipped directly from the BD.
Interpolation at the bottom:
Fully faked frame. It’s easy to tell which one by how ragged it looks:
Interpolation is subtle here, but view this full size, and you can see how it destroys vertical lines and fine fabric patterns:
On the other hand, the shorts have fantastic presentations. Looks like basic transfers, tasteful stabilization, with no obvious processing artifacts. Best of all, they’re encoded at 1080i to accommodate the slower frame rate, meaning the motion is perfect!
(Downscaling does no favors for interlacing. Expand the following clips to full screen, and they’ll look much better. TVs display interlacing just fine.)
Over the Fence (1917). Clipped directly from the BD.That’s Him!… (1918). Clipped directly from the BD.
The Kid Brother is transferred at 24fps. Gaylord Carter’s organ score is wonderful, as are many of the supplements. Skip the uninformative commentary, unless you like listening to people describe what’s happening on screen. I still prefer seeing one of UCLA’s 35mm prints.
For a 2013 movie, I expected this to look better. My guess is an inadequate camera. Look at that aliasing!
Clipped directly from the BD.
The running time is 141 minutes, not the 134 stated on the box.
Invasion (2017)
The first movie in the set that looks good.
Clipped directly from the BD.
However, the subtitles are horrible. There are typos throughout the set, but those for Invasion are the worst.
Later spelled “Daniel.”Plus inconsistent placement of quotation marks.
Careless Crime (2020)
Another nice transfer.
Clipped directly from the BD.
These are probably fascinating in Farsi, but I was bored, and not having any of it by the time I got to Careless Crime. All the walking, monotonous dialog, and reading was just too taxing. I would be very interested to see Invasion, maybe even Fish & Cat, dubbed in English.
Eureka’s BD of The Hands of Orlac (Orlacs Hände, 1924) has one of the most aggressive and inept restorations I’ve seen. Nearly every shot has restoration artifacts.
Be sure to click on the GIFs to see them full size.
Interpolation
The first and last frames of most shots are interpolated. Sometimes it looks like a duplicate pulldown frame. Other times, it introduces some serious distortions. Nearly every example in this section has frames that are completely computer-generated. Faked.
Conrad Veidt’s head stretches, Alexandra Sorina’s fingers split, grain and background warp, plus frozen temporal cloning at the top edge:
The pen is broken up and the rest of the frame is nearly frozen:
Stuck grain and warping throughout:
Hideous computer-generated teeth:
Not a freeze-frame, but interpolation:
Interpolation makes scratches stick to the image:
Here, interpolation is combined with spot removal. At first glance, it’s impressive. Look closer, and you can see that it leaves smudges in place of damage AND it leaves remnants behind:
Notice how the sheets of paper distort:
Here it’s combined with frame blending and frozen temporal cloning:
Interpolation utterly fails when it’s called upon to generate background, such as behind Veidt’s head. And check out his smashed head and hand:
Veidt’s hand becomes putty and merges with the sleeve. The sofa pulsates:
You can see magnetic scratches on the wall behind the now-breathing sofa:
I admit that it’s not always immediately apparent recognizing restoration artifacts on a small screen, but look how obvious it is here when displayed at a fraction of its full size! The man gets smashed. And that background…
Interpolation is combined with temporal cloning on the ceiling lamp and chairs on the left. They now bob up and down:
His body compresses and arm stretches, creating a second wrist. Yikes!
Veidt’s head smashes into an invisible curved ceiling:
Our villain’s fingertips disappear. The disembodied hand on the left is completely frozen:
Interpolation destroys the head:
An example of interpolation that is nearly a freeze-frame, plus some negligible spot removal:
Like The Valley of Silent Men on the first disc of the set, Back Pay (1922) looks like an as-is presentation. Natural grain, no obvious restoration processing, nice encoding. It looks wonderful.
Clipped directly from the BD.
Back Pay is transferred at 21fps and encoded at 24fps. Too stuttery, but as good as it’s gonna get in our 24fps-or-nothing world.
