Ashes and Diamonds

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MichaelB · #1 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Jun 27, 2007 10:30 am

Their transfer of Ashes and Diamonds is superb (I think I heard they licensed it from Criterion), but the disc is otherwise barebones.

TonyleStephanois · Tue Jun 29, 2010 11:11 am

MichaelB wrote:Their transfer of Ashes and Diamonds is superb (I think I heard they licensed it from Criterion), but the disc is otherwise barebones.

Will see if I can post caps. This is ridiculously cheap right now, so well worth picking up for the price and Michael's testimony alone

DanV · #3 Post by **DanV** » Tue Jun 29, 2010 11:27 am

Oh, so Ashes is top-notch! Very well, thanks. Now, I'll be waiting for some news about the other two.

PS: I'm absolutely ok with "no-extras discs"!

TonyleStephanois · Tue Jun 29, 2010 12:23 pm

It's not an entirely barebones package, there is a very nice 40 minute interview with Wajda discussing all three films on the disc for A Generation.

Jonathan S · #5 Post by **Jonathan S** » Tue Jun 29, 2010 12:46 pm

I bought the Arrow release of the Wajda war trilogy and immediately re-sold it. Unless they've remastered it, the transfer of A Generation is incredibly jerky (I suspect a botched NTSC-PAL job) - it was totally unwatchable for me and I'm much more tolerant than many home cinema enthusiasts!

The other two didn't suffer from jerkiness but Kanal, though very sharp, is a far more damaged print than the one aired on the UK's FilmFour channel and Ashes and Diamonds was cropped to 16:9 instead of the 1.66:1 of Criterion's and FilmFour's transfers. The compositions looked wrong to me with tops of heads cut off. Unless Arrow have completely remastered it, I do not recommend this edition at all. I haven't seen the Criterion but I can't imagine it uses the same transfers, at least not with the same final results.

EDIT: There is a review of the set here: http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.co.uk/c ... ilogy.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. The extreme jerkiness of A Generation, which I cannot believe any reviewer would fail to notice, isn't mentioned, so maybe it was remastered. It also states that Ashes and Diamonds is 1.66:1 but my Arrow copy wasn't - I compared it extensively with the FilmFour broadcast, which has small side bars in anamorphic mode (unlike the Arrow) and more image at the top and bottom.

EDIT: Another online review but of the single Arrow release of Ashes and Diamonds: http://www.myreviewer.com/default/a9411 ... DVD_Review" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Judging from the screengrabs, their review copy is 1.66:1 with the narrow sidebars. Three explanations come to mind:
1) I had a faulty Arrow edition that was later corrected
2) The single edition transfer is different from that in my set
3) For some reason Arrow's anamorphic encoding failed to display correctly on my system - though I haven't had a problem with other 1.66:1 films and I vaguely recall checking it on another system

Note, though, the review's disappointment at the image quality (it may well be a softened NTSC to PAL conversion of Criterion's transfer) - and isn't that chroma on the screengrabs?

DanV · #6 Post by **DanV** » Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:47 pm

Jonathan S wrote:I bought the Arrow release of the Wajda war trilogy and immediately re-sold it. Unless they've remastered it, the transfer of A Generation is incredibly jerky (I suspect a botched NTSC-PAL job) - it was totally unwatchable for me and I'm much more tolerant than many home cinema enthusiasts!

The other two didn't suffer from jerkiness but Kanal, though very sharp, is a far more damaged print than the one aired on the UK's FilmFour channel and Ashes and Diamonds was cropped to 16:9 instead of the 1.66:1 of Criterion's and FilmFour's transfers. The compositions looked wrong to me with tops of heads cut off. Unless Arrow have completely remastered it, I do not recommend this edition at all. I haven't seen the Criterion but I can't imagine it uses the same transfers, at least not with the same final results.

EDIT: There is a review of the set here: http://homecinema.thedigitalfix.co.uk/c ... ilogy.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. The extreme jerkiness of A Generation, which I cannot believe any reviewer would fail to notice, isn't mentioned, so maybe it was remastered. It also states that Ashes and Diamonds is 1.66:1 but my Arrow copy wasn't - I compared it extensively with the FilmFour broadcast, which has small side bars in anamorphic mode (unlike the Arrow) and more image at the top and bottom.

Thank you, your post is highly appreciated. So it seems (reading the review at HomeCinema) that 'Ashes' is a bad NTSC-PAL conversion, too.
About the 1.66 ratio: I've read many reviewers stating that a certain film was presented in 1.66, but actually it was a 16:9, so probably your comparison is more accurate.

I had a pair of similar experiences with Arrow; sometimes, even with an AR of 1.33, the image resulted to be badly cropped compared to the other, and I had to buy another edition (see the example below). This is why I asked for some comparison caps, but after having read all this, I'm going to buy the Criterion box set straight away.

Closely Watched Trains:

Arrow

vs

Criterion

Jonathan S · #7 Post by **Jonathan S** » Tue Jun 29, 2010 1:55 pm

DanV, in case you didn't see it, I made a second edit about the aspect ratio - but maybe you've come up with a fourth explanation! In any event, I'm sure you won't regret the extra money spent on the Criterion, which I intend to get myself one day.

MichaelB · #8 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Jun 30, 2010 8:32 am

Jonathan S wrote:I bought the Arrow release of the Wajda war trilogy and immediately re-sold it. Unless they've remastered it, the transfer of A Generation is incredibly jerky (I suspect a botched NTSC-PAL job) - it was totally unwatchable for me and I'm much more tolerant than many home cinema enthusiasts!

I've only seen the separate Arrow release of Ashes and Diamonds, so thanks for that.

Incidentally, anyone after what is now clearly the definitive release of that film should pick up the Pro-Motion Blu-ray - it's been extensively and expensively remastered, and I've never seen it look so good (and that includes a cinema screening). I believe it's region-free, and it's definitely 1.66:1.

Peacock · #9 Post by **Peacock** » Wed Jun 30, 2010 12:52 pm

MichaelB wrote:it's been extensively and expensively remastered, and I've never seen it look so good (and that includes a cinema screening). I believe it's region-free, and it's definitely 1.66:1.

Does it have english subs?

L.A. · #10 Post by **L.A.** » Wed Jun 30, 2010 1:24 pm

Peacock wrote:
MichaelB wrote:it's been extensively and expensively remastered, and I've never seen it look so good (and that includes a cinema screening). I believe it's region-free, and it's definitely 1.66:1.
Does it have english subs?

Yes.

John Edmond · #11 Post by **John Edmond** » Tue Nov 23, 2010 10:57 pm

I'm guessing Ashes and Diamonds will use the HD transfer used for the Polish pro-motion release (but happily with a better cover) - a release MichaelB is fairly chuffed about.

MichaelB · #12 Post by **MichaelB** » Wed Nov 24, 2010 10:06 am

...with the qualification that I haven't actually sat through the whole of Pro-Motion's Ashes and Diamonds yet, and it's currently on loan to a friend. But I was very impressed with Night Train and especially Austeria.

eerik · #13 Post by **eerik** » Wed Mar 02, 2011 8:34 pm

BVA has listed Ashes and Diamonds for 12 September 2011.

MichaelB · #14 Post by **MichaelB** » Tue Sep 27, 2011 4:48 pm

Beaver on Ashes and Diamonds.

As far as I'm aware, the source transfer is the same as the one that fuelled Pro-Motion's Polish Blu-ray, but while that had no significant extras to speak of (bar trailers and a "before" and "after" restoration demo), this has a 25-minute high-def interview with Wajda and an extremely comprehensive booklet that turned out better than I'd envisaged. I originally sent them my introductory essay and two Polish-sourced ones (by Wajda himself and by film historian Marek Hendrykowski), assuming that they'd pick just one of the latter - but in the end they boosted the page count to cram everything in.

Oh, and my contact at Arrow says that the Beaver is wrong about the region code - it should be region-free.

MichaelB · #15 Post by **MichaelB** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 11:12 am

Blu-ray.com on Ashes and Diamonds.

RobertB · #16 Post by **RobertB** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 5:25 pm

When I watched the Arrow dvd of Ashes and Diamonds I kept wondering about the screen ratio. IMDB lists it as 1.66 : 1, but this leaves a lot of shots with the top of the frame very near the top of the head, and sometimes the top of the head missing. Looking at the screenshots on Blu-ray.com it looks the same. Has this ever been shown with full frame?

MichaelB · #17 Post by **MichaelB** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:05 pm

As far as I'm aware it's definitely 1.66:1, and I've seen the film several times in multiple releases (including a big-screen presentation of the restoration) - it never occurred to me that it should be anything else.

Wajda is such a strong visual stylist that it would be pretty obvious if anything was getting cropped, and a quick spin through my DVD suggests that 1.66:1 is correct.

For a good example, look at the film's most famous scene - specifically the way the camera moves when Cybulski stands up at 0:10. Had Wajda intended the framing to be 4:3, wouldn't that movement be unnecessary? And throughout the scene I'd argue that the compositions are intended as 1.66:1 - most shots feature one of the two men dominating the frame in such a way that giving them more headroom would arguably weaken the composition. (For an excellent example, look at 0:29, where Adam Pawlikowski is in the foreground and Cybulski is in the background - in fact, watch how that entire shot plays out).

knives · #18 Post by **knives** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:11 pm

Also while I'm no Wajda expert a lot of his films I've seen have had similar tight framing, akin to William Klein I suppose, that does sort of give the sense of improper AR, I'm especially thinking of Danton, when that's not the case.

RobertB · #19 Post by **RobertB** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:17 pm

Thank you. That's a relief. Such tight framing in a film from the 50's gave me a suspicion that I had a hard time to shake off while watching the film. But I do agree that the scene MichaelB refers to looks right.

MichaelB · #20 Post by **MichaelB** » Fri Sep 30, 2011 6:25 pm

It's also worth bearing in mind that Wajda is not only alive but still very active (he starts shooting his next film, a big-budget Lech Wałęsa biopic, in November), and it's hard to believe that he wouldn't have been consulted at some stage given that the Ashes and Diamonds restoration was such a prestige project - if it was given a special premiere in London, I suspect it had an even higher profile in Poland.

So while aspect ratio mistakes do happen (<ahem>Barry Lyndon</ahem>), I think it's very unlikely in this case - in fact, the more I look at the film (which is playing in the background as I write this), the more obvious it is that 1.66:1 is the correct ratio.

#21 Post by **zedz** » Sun Oct 02, 2011 7:01 pm

Yeah, I'm just chiming in to say that Ashes and Diamonds is definitely not Academy. I've had experience with 16 and 35mm prints and I think the 16 was even hard matted.

Der Spieler · #22 Post by **Der Spieler** » Fri Nov 04, 2011 5:13 pm

Judging from this site's review, Arrow's release of Ashes and Diamonds sucks pretty badly.

Sad thing since I was planning on getting it.

MichaelB · #23 Post by **MichaelB** » Fri Nov 04, 2011 6:03 pm

Der Spieler wrote:Judging from this site's review, Arrow's release of Ashes and Diamonds sucks pretty badly.

And according to DVD Beaver and Blu-ray.com, it's very good. Especially given that this film has been subjected to some hideously murky and battered prints over the years - Criterion is the best of a not especially distinguished bunch, but it's also excessively dark in parts, as the Beaver comparison suggests.

That said, there's clearly been some digital cleanup, and it's pretty clear from the reception that some are more bothered by it than others. Personally, it doesn't faze me in the slightest, especially given the transfer's other advantages - this is by far the cleanest copy of the film I've ever seen, with details that were pretty much invisible in the past.

Incidentally, to answer Chris's question, as an independent label lacking their own in-house transfer facilities (or the budget to work from scratch from original film materials) Arrow make the best of what they're given, and it just so happens that Italians and Poles are both overfond of applying digital post-production to their masters that's impossible to remove after the fact. Rififi, on the other hand, was unmolested - which is why it looks so stunning. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to have a look at The Tin Drum over the next few days.

(Full disclosure: I oversaw the booklet, but had nothing to do with the transfer, and saw it for the first time when my shrinkwrapped copy arrived. By which time I was extremely familiar with the shortcomings of the various DVD editions, and it was like scraping a thick layer of dust off my monitor!)

Der Spieler · #24 Post by **Der Spieler** » Fri Nov 04, 2011 6:18 pm

MichaelB wrote:
Der Spieler wrote:Judging from this site's review, Arrow's release of Ashes and Diamonds sucks pretty badly.
And according to DVD Beaver and Blu-ray.com, it's very good.

I usually find this site's reviews a lot more trustworthy than BD.com and Beaver's... Having said that, I admit I'm not familiar with the various DVD incarnations over the past so maybe I'm not able to enjoy the upgrade to the fullest. The screen captures do look quite bad though. There's way too much DNR and it doesn't look very detailed for high definition. But I'm no expert...

#25 Post by **cdnchris** » Fri Nov 04, 2011 6:47 pm

There are moments where it looks very good but as a whole I found it incredibly smudgy and it looked more like a heavy amount of noise reduction than an issue with the source materials (which are otherwise in great condition and hope I conveyed that) and it really did bother me to a great extent.

Michael is right, though, on that it is easier to see, and will have to update that in the review to reflect that. There are quite a few scenes that are at least easier to see. I think printwise it looks great, but the transfer itself was very disappointing and this was one I was really looking forward to.

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