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.
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:
After finishing Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories, I popped in the disc of A Holy Place (Sveto mesto, 1990), and, by damn, it has the same frame rate problem!
Clipped directly from the BD.
Just like with Ashkan, it drops a frame every second. What a waste of a beautiful transfer of a lightly-worn print.
Two BD releases of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), both riddled with restoration artifacts.
Flicker Alley (FA)
I like that it’s a color scan of a tinted print, which allows the subtle, imperfect color variations inherent in the process. The tints on Universal’s version are recreated.
The most common artifact comes from either poor compression or automatic spot removal gone awry (I’m guessing the latter):
Most of the time they look like specks of dirt, but if you look closer, they are hard tiny blocks.
In addition to damaging the text, the spot removal left an ugly retouched line at the top.Watch Norman Kerry’s beads disappear.Text disappears.Obliterated text.
Also frequent is frozen temporal cloning:
There’s almost nothing left of the “restored” frame.The top of the image suffers from misaligned frozen cloning and messy retouching. Spot removal was applied after stretching to 24fps.This piece of frozen cloning in the lower right lasts three frames.
The next three examples each have multiple instances of frozen temporal cloning:
Sloppy retouching:
The retouching at top is misaligned, has a hard edge, and doesn’t even remove the cement splice.
Quick-reverse temporal cloning:
Quick-reversing is when frames are repeated in the manner of ABCDCDEF. It’s often applied to entire frames. For this edition, Flicker Alley combined it with temporal cloning. It’s no better than frozen temporal cloning, as you can see the picture “seize up.” Maybe not all the time, but done enough times, you’ll start to notice something’s off.
The top of this frame repeats.Misaligned, hard-edged, quick-reverse temporal cloning at top.Quick-reversing is easy to spot when it’s applied to motion.
One thing I’ve heard in commentaries and interviews from the people that produce restorations is that these artifacts aren’t visible in motion. Well, up next, straight-from-the-disc at 21.5fps:
Pay attention to the horse at top right. Quick-reverse in action.
Stabilization:
Stabilization was applied relatively sparingly. I don’t particularly care for stabilized silents; they have a tendency to float and rotate around the center. Here is an egregious use of it:
Lon Chaney was in front of a wall, facing a camera locked to a tripod. Stabilization warps every bit of this shot.
