101 / BD 8 City Girl

[Saturnome]

Try the upcoming digital copy perhaps?

[What A Disgrace]

This movie is about farmers. I hate farmers! What a bad movie.

[matrixschmatrix]

Horses for courses, of course, but have you seen what an ugly print from the 30s looks like? This, for instance, is the best release of Happiness available.

HD doesn't necessarily mean all the cel dirt and scratches are taken out- watch one of the Kino Keaton releases if you want to confirm that (Our Hospitality, in particular.) It does mean a larger amount of information in the image, and therefore sharper lines, greater depth, etc. City Girl is one of the best releases of a silent movie I've ever seen.

[MichaelB]

I bought this on Blu-ray and I am very disappointed with the picture quality. The amount of lines running throughout the film is unacceptable and distracting. There doesn't seem to have been any digital remastering done on the picture. It is very dirty. I probably should have gone with the DVD and saved some money. I can't imagine it looking much worse than the Blu-ray.

What were you expecting from an 80-year-old film? I think it looks absolutely stunning - in fact, until the last fortnight's double-header of Coeur fidèle and The Great White Silence, it was my benchmark for silent-film presentation on Blu-ray.

Personally, I think MoC's policy of not aggressively "cleaning" (= artificially smoothing out) their masters of older films is the kind of thing that far more distributors should do as a matter of course: I'm a big fan of the BFI's Ozu discs for the same reason. To me, City Girl looks like projected film, and that's exactly what it should look like.

Mind you, I will concede one point - as with the Ozu discs, print damage is more noticeable on the Blu-ray because of the higher level of detail. But calling it "very dirty" is hyperbole, and the virtues of the Blu-ray comfortably outweigh the drawbacks. (For the record, I have copies of the film on both formats).

[Michael Kerpan]

Absolutely a benchmark. The first film I would show (an intelligent) someone to demonstrate the virtues of Blu-Ray discs.

[hearthesilence]

Finally caught up with this - what a lovely film, and yes, MoC's transfer looks spectacular. All the more impressive considering all the praise Fox's DVD was getting - at the time, the PQ on that disc was considered a revelation, and this BD tops even that.

Sunrise is one of my favorite films, period. For me, this one isn't on par, but it very well could have been. It's frustrating that there isn't anymore forensic evidence detailing where this cut fits within Murnau's vision. For example, from what's there, I can see the harvest of the grain easily connecting to the bread in the city in a different edit using the same exact footage. So much of this is brilliant, but it does seem to come down a few notches soon after the waitress meets the father-in-law. Also, the film is far more verbose than Sunrise and of course The Last Laugh - I still wonder if the extra dialogue/title cards were imposed on Murnau? The flow of visuals probably would have gained some power if they were interrupted less frequently.

[domino harvey]

This is long OOP (and Fox, so it won’t be coming back) but somehow Rarewaves has new copies for $21, if anyone needs a copy

[pistolwink]

Remember when Fox released a whole box set of films by Murnau and Borzage? That was fun :sigh: