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Nice!
I love radio adaptations.

Criterion's version upped the contrast and looks darker giving the impression that it looks somehow better. Personally, I find the differences between the Criterion and Eureka version quite subtle. IMO, it's just not enough for me to pick up the Criterion and part with the Eureka one.

Or, more likely, the contrast is pretty much identical and they only look different because the Beav can't take consistent screencaps, especially when the two sets are taken 6 years apart.

David, some UK authoring houses (although I think David Mackenzie did the Eureka encode here so dont think Svet's assertion is correct in this instance) use a gamma setting of 2.2, as do the authoring houses used for Kino and Olive discs.

I love this film for so many reasons, but it's the details Fuller populates his environments with that give it an extra coating of authenticity and alluring involvement, like the beer-bottle pulley system which functions at both inviting us into its world and giving us spacial insight of Widmark's home's layout for the penultimate climactic scene. It's nothing short of joyous watching these characters wrestle in the mud of this moral playground, operating under the raw anti-pizzazz yet colorful vision Fuller has of the world, and also reinforcing his ethos that each subjective perspective carries its own truth. Of course there is a limit in communism's ominous threat that everyone can get behind, and shared values are highlighted in loyalty- that bleed between classes on common ground while still remaining separate; but otherwise we are asked to meditate on every character's vantage point and circumstance, as equitably-merited existential positions from segregated lives of already-dealt cards lying dead on the floor, starting over from zero. We can understand that each of them is on guard in a world that doesn't accept their cards as dead, that don't offer trusting rope to start over without a brand- whether this is Widmark's "criminal," Peters' "floozy," or Ritter's "snitch." These people are confined within their assigned roles and have become empowered to gain bootstraps-induced freedoms within their restraints, and this familiar concept works in a novel fashion here because Fuller loves and knows these characters in all their intricate desperation and resilience. He also has a terrific sense of mise en scene, so he can- and does- trap us in these worlds right alongside them, to the point where we feel like we're breathing the same air. Widmark is at his best here, delivering every line with such conviction, on his own personalized diverse spectrum of hard-to-loose, and his unpredictability between soft affection, whiplashed aggression, and aloof individualism becomes predictable once we comprehend the triggers for his defenses flaring up. In this milieu, one needs to earn the walls coming down- it's too dangerous any other way.

Gerald Christie wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 4:04 am Criterion's version upped the contrast and looks darker giving the impression that it looks somehow better. Personally, I find the differences between the Criterion and Eureka version quite subtle. IMO, it's just not enough for me to pick up the Criterion and part with the Eureka one.

I haven't seem either bluray, but had a good look at the comparison screenshots on caps-a-holic. I can't understand the raving about the superiority of the Criterion over the Eureka - as you say, the Criterion has a contrast boost, but otherwise the two discs look exactly the same, right down to the grain pattern.

It's not a contrast boost but just a gamma tweak.