Humphrey Bogart Collections

[What A Disgrace]

I wonder what it will take to get a Blu-ray of The Big Sleep, already.

[Finch]

I'm undecided on the Falcon Blu as well: like Napier says, contrast and blacks are evidently stronger but it lacks the Wow factor of the Sierra Madre images. The SE DVD is worth holding on to for the 1931 version alone (found the Davis version terrible and I say that as a fan of Davis and Dieterle).

[movielocke]

Sierra Madre was released a while back and probably had an 1080i master, so it probably had to be retelecined for bluray, new scanning technology, or a raw scan at 4k downconverted to 1080p would result in the detail improvement seen in this title.

Maltese Falcon probably already had a 1080p master and that was reused for the bluray. older scanning technology, and a 2k telecine cross-converted to 1080p would explain why there's not as big of a wow factor in the title.

But although oversampling would explain the difference, it may not be oversampling that results in the strong difference between the two. Film stocks were changing pretty regularly at the time, and the black and white stock used for Sierra Madre may have been a much higher quality level of fine grain than what was used earlier in the decade for Falcon.

[johncarvill]

Thought this forum might like tio be aware of this thread, which is running through Bogart's movies in reverse chronological order.