Tag Archives: L’Immagine Ritrovata

The Kid Brother (Criterion)

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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.

Playtime (Criterion)

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As part of the celebration of the reopening of the Egyptian Theatre here in Hollywood, the American Cinematheque ran a 70mm print of the 2002 restoration of Playtime (1967). Since Criterion released it twice on BD, each with radically different color timing, I took note of the color. A simple test: does it look gray, like metal, or brown?

Criterion’s first BD is close to the color you’d see if you went to a 70mm screening:

Notice how gray everything is. That’s the point. Paris’ colorful life obliterated by cold, drab, and homogenous modernism.

The 2002 version does have some computer repairs that I’d probably complain about if I got a chance to look closely, but I have yet to notice them during a screening, and I go nearly every time it plays in Los Angeles.

The 2013 version:

It now has L’Immagine Ritrovata’s characteristic urine-soaked color timing.

While the new version is sharper, less grainy, more stable, it’s ruined by the ugly color. Additionally, it’s riddled with interpolation that also freezes grain. It fakes frames that are intact in the previous version.

I first saw Playtime when the 70mm prints were still new, at least as late as 2004. It was stunning. Even with 20 years of wear, the print I just saw was still beautiful. All they needed to do was scan this negative, nothing more, and the BD would have looked wonderful.