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* in the sense of an "oil painting" filter on Photoshop or something equally atrocious.

That can't be real

It's like they messed up the scan of the film and it ended up blurred, so they added some photoshop tricks.

The last pic:
Pathé presents the restoration of:
"Le Samouraï" (Jean-Pierre Melville - 1967)
It was made from a 2k scan of the original negative.
But many scenes are from intermediate elements due to the bad shape of the negative.
The image and sound restoration was made by the Quinta Industries group (Paris).

If those grabs are accurate, it looks more like a rotoscope animation now. Astonishingly wrong.

The producers of the Don't Look Now Blu-ray funded this to take the pressure off

peerpee wrote:If those grabs are accurate, it looks more like a rotoscope animation now. Astonishingly wrong.

Judging from the instantaneous reviews on Amazon.fr lambasting this release as unworthy of the format and an abject disaster it looks like fears are well founded. These are from posters with an educated track record of reviews whilst suspiciously the 5 star plaudits are from people with no previous.
Mine arrives tomorrow. Thank God it's Xmas and I can perhaps resell immediately and wait for the Criterion.

Incredible. Do we know if that is in MPEG-4, and if so, could it possibly hold the title for worst release in the codec/format?

Haha, I usually have no idea of what you guys are talking about when you say blus look waxy or show excessive DNR or whatever, but Jesus Christ is that awful

Just so ya know, Madonna's new album has a song, "Beautiful Killer," that is an homage to this movie.

Caps-a-holic compares the Pathe BD and the Criterion DVD

Check that first BD screencap up close, it looks like a cartoon.

That looks similar to Madame de... but several times worse. What exactly is the filter being applied and what is the reasoning for it? I mean I get why some loons might want to degrain a film, but what is the motivation behind turning it into a watercolour painting?

I need to find the link back, but I've seen caps comparing the 1st pressing VS the 2nd one. Basically, the mosaic filter is all gone, but that's it. It's still quite soft and lacking of details, but at least, it doesn't look like a water painting anymore.

I've finally gotten to this Melville and I am frustrated and in awe, the film left me thinking and rethinking its contents in a way I haven't for any of the other Melville films. While it's not quite the genre perfection of Le Doulos it is richer and more nuanced which is an interesting feat considering how Le Samourai strips away so much ornamentation. The film sings but it is a desiccated skeleton of genre, all the flesh eaten away, the petrified bones resonating in a thunderous and pure symphonic thrum.

It's an odd experience, coming to this film so late in my viewings of Melville and of course of having seen so many films that have come after, Drive, for instance is pretty much an uncredited remake, going so far as to use every plot point and an identical main character in its shallow imitation of Le Samourai. And the influences on so many contemporary filmmakers are probably too many to enumerate.

To a certain extent, I'm a little hung up on the title. I understand why Melville named it as he did, but I feel a tiny bit irritated by it, using Samurai as a sort of short hand, as a heuristic, to compress all these values into Jef because it seems like a slightly limited interpretation. But in reading Melville's interview included in the booklet, I think he's writing Jef as someone who has taken all the 'cool' aspects of samurai out of context of the tokugawa period and created a sort of persona for themselves, an ideal to strive towards that is neither realistic nor especially representative. The title, in that respect, is a reflection of Jef's internal vision and narrative of himself. In a sense, that suggests that the whole film, not just the second job, is Jef setting the terms of this death, and this may explain some of his behavior at the beginning, because after he shoots his first mark, he becomes somewhat reckless, letting people see him, walking out in broad view, getting picked up by the police, it's as though he wants to be set up by the mobsters on grounds Jef chooses. The film has a very fate heavy ominous tone, moving inexorably towards its ritualized finale, and I think that will make it all the stronger on repeat viewings, even as it left me a little exasperated and amazed on a first look.

I would say that Melville has taken all of the "cool" aspects out of Hollywood noir and gangster films as well, in much the same way you describe his use of the Samurai. And to me one of the great things about Le Samourai is the way Melville is always subtly pointing out the artifice in his homage. It's interesting that you would come to it last. When I started on Melville, Le Samourai was the only film readily available. I always thought of it as the film that makes all the others Melville films make sense--at least, it's hard to imagine Le Cercle Rouge or Un Flic without Le Samourai, but it's hard not to see its abstract gamesmanship behind Bob Le Flambeur, as something he was already aspiring to achieve.

If Criterion finally does a blu-ray of this film, I hope against hope that they manage some kind of fix for the French blu-ray disaster. I don't know how the French can tolerate that release.

feihong wrote:I don't know how the French can tolerate that release.

Most of us don't, and are waiting for Criterion to release a proper HD upgrade of Le samourai.

feihong wrote:I don't know how the French can tolerate that release.

They didn't. That's why it was re-remastered, and reissued in France with a better transfer.

manicsounds wrote:That's why it was re-remastered, and reissued in France with a better transfer.

A better transfer that we still only barely tolerate because it's still not up to what it should be.

Criterion is adding an HD version to iTunes on July 14th. Hopefully this means an imminent Blu-ray release!

Sadly, the iTunes HD appears to be sourced from the same transfer as the Criterion DVD, so a blu is probably a long ways off yet.

Kadokawa in Japan is releasing a blu ray of Le Samourai in May.

There is a huge product description on Amazon Japan. Google Translate can only make a magical hash out of it, but the translation I read offers some potentially encouraging stuff. It seems to be talking about the French blu ray and how bad it was. It seems to be saying it will offer something much higher quality? They are boasting about a high–quality encoding process. Maybe if someone here reads Japanese they will be able to make better sense of it.

feihong wrote:Kadokawa in Japan is releasing a blu ray of Le Samourai in May.

There is a huge product description on Amazon Japan. Google Translate can only make a magical hash out of it, but the translation I read offers some potentially encouraging stuff. It seems to be talking about the French blu ray and how bad it was. It seems to be saying it will offer something much higher quality? They are boasting about a high–quality encoding process. Maybe if someone here reads Japanese they will be able to make better sense of it.

Actually I think the blurb is saying the HD master is the most recent 2011 digital restoration by Pathe in France and that its "high-definition is flawless" - ゴミ傷一つない高画質 -. Google translate unhelpfully renders this as "dust scratch one no high-quality!".

HDマスターは2011年、フランスのパテ社がデジタル修復した最新版で、ゴミ傷一つない高画質!

The HD master was created in 2011 by Pathe France, a newly digitally remastered version without a speck of dirt on the high quality image!

Well, we know what happened to the original French BD....

There's this too:

Blu-rayではこの魅力を最大限に味わっていただくため、スタジオジブリ全作品等のBlu-rayで定評のあるMGVC(マスターグレードビデオコーディング)を採用、2層ディスクの大容量で最高画質を追求!

In order to allow you to fully enjoy [the cinematography], we will be using MGVC (Master Grade Video Coding), the well-respected [technology] used on all the Studio Ghibli blu-rays, and a full-to-capacity dual-layer disc in order to deliver the best possible picture quality.

Sounds promising...

There hasn't been a follow-up discussion regarding the Japanese release, but it looks like caps-a-holic has shots of it up along with a re-release of the French disk here. Both of them look a lot better up close than the original French blu with the watercolor filter. The colors appear to be the same, significantly darker than the Criterion release, and I'm not sure if that's what the film is supposed to look like but there you have it.

Is anyone aware of a second DVD printing of this title? Copies have surfaced that have the same catalog number and ISBN as the 2005 edition (SAM150 / 0-78003-018-4), but has the statement "Second printing 2014". Although it was issued in a pre-2006 black keep case, it has the post-2006 logo, and a redesigned back cover with a back of the cover photograph which isn't visible unless removed from the case. (This feature is usually used only on a transparent case so that the image is visible when the case is opened.) The opening menu is identical to the one used in the 2005 edition, retaining the old straight line logo. I don't know of any other title which has been given a second printing" without it being reissued for some apparent reason, either a new transfer, or an error in the first printing, nor any pre-2006 title being reprinted with the current logo but issued in an old case. Perhaps this was a manufacturing error and should have been in a transparent case? (Otherwise why print an image that can't even be seen!) Any help would be appreciated.