Black Narcissus

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper By far my favorite of P&P movie if not the best I have ever seen. I hope the R2 new blue-ray will be a stunning transfer above the French relase - which was magnificent also.

Will it stand being made in any higher resolution, or will that then start to show the joins too much?

There are a lot of scenes that use matte shots or hanging miniatures. Sometimes where you'd least expect them. The last time I saw a 35mm print it was a very good print that had had some restoration work done on it (not sure what stage they went back to, if it was a full or partial restoration) - and that was beginning to show some of the joins where the mattes were used

Steve

[christoph404]

Originally Posted by Steve Crook Will it stand being made in any higher resolution, or will that then start to show the joins too much? There are a lot of scenes that use matte shots or hanging miniatures. Sometimes where you'd least expect them. The last time I saw a 35mm print it was a very good print that had had some restoration work done on it (not sure what stage they went back to, if it was a full or partial restoration) - and that was beginning to show some of the joins where the mattes were used Steve

I think with a film like this modern technology and restoration techniques can take the film to realms of quality that never really existed in its original form. In other words you can take things too far and the illusion starts to crumble slightly because the sharpening and so on is too scientific. I would hope those involved in restoring a film like this are aware of that but I do agree that going further and further down the path of higher resolution and restoration has to be done very carefully.

[Steve Crook]

I hope they also correct the error in the archive print.

First, a bit of background:
In the "madness of Sister Ruth" sequence when she gets all agitated when she & Mr Dean are shouting at each other she famously "sees red" (and there's a wash of red across the screen) and then she faints. But the BFI archive print goes to BLUE!! Not just any blue but the bright blue of a blue screen.

I wrote to the BFI and told them that it should go to BLACK, not blue. I said in the letter that I'd heard of people having a black-out but never a blue-out :)

I also mentioned that I'd checked with Jack Cardiff and Ian Christie and they both agreed that it should go to blue not to black.

I suspect that it's because there was some modern electronic kit in the process that saw "no light" and interpreted that as "no signal" and modern kit often uses blue for "no signal".

The response from the BFI (March 2003) admitted that the fault was theirs and said that they would be looking to "have this section reprinted before we are able to allow it to be screened again". In the meantime the print will be withdrawn from circulation."

So if anyone was due to see BN they'd better check it's still going to be shown and if the BFI really have "withdrawn from circulation" all their prints - Sorry

But I'm still puzzled as to why Criterion's DVD goes to blue whereas Carlton's correctly goes to black.

Steve

[samper]

Any news on the ITV DVD BD release yet? Wondering if it will be region free ...

[Steve Crook]

Originally Posted by samper Any news on the ITV DVD BD release yet? Wondering if it will be region free ...

Amazon UK gives the release date as June 16 and don't mention any region coding - but their not mentioning it is no guarantee that it'll be region free

Steve

[julian_craster]

Unlikely, as Criterion hold the USA DVD rights, so they are likely to issue BN on Blue-Ray......