criterionforum.org

I didn't get around to updating details about the restoration originally, but I wanted to post this from the notes on the restoration:

When The Grifters was released in 1990, the 35 mm prints that circulated were made using a ‘bleach bypass’ process. Skipping the bleach in color-film development yields reduced saturation, higher contrast, and grain. As a part of the work on this release, Stapleton’s personal 35 mm bleach-bypass print, which he screened for mastering supervisor Lee Kline and colorist Greg Fisher at the BFI in London, served as a guideline for the grading and scans of the negative. The resulting 4K presentation comes closer to the film’s intended look than any other version since the theatrical prints.

In the one documentary from 2018 included in the features, Stapleton explains his reasoning for the look and gets into quite a bit of detail about it. The presentation pretty much replicates what he explains.

Anjelica Huston is brilliant in this, in what is no doubt the best, and most demanding, performance she'll ever give, but Annette Bening I think goes beyond even her. Considering what a venal, verging on or reaching cartoonish, even scuzzy or scummy in a way character Myra Langtry is, its incredible, even awe-inspiring, how subtle, and imaginitively far-reaching, and resonant--for lack of better descriptors--Annette manages to be, and how perfectly she manages to mine what humanity and roundedness, such as they are, Myra possesses. Huston is unquestionably brilliant but more limited, more tight and perhaps even old-fashioned, at least in comparison, while Myra is an utterly timeless creation.

The movies seem to have done pretty well by JIm Thompson. He's no doubt the only even approaching major author that I'm at all familiar with where that seems to be the case. & it's amazing to compare The Grifters-era Stephen Frears, where his works are so engaging, and detailed, and smart and lively, with a film like Mrs. Henderson Presents, an utterly "why does this exist? why am I watching this?", witless, unimaginitive, complacent turd of a film.