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First of all, it might not be hard to do a new encode from the new transfer (though I suspect you have no experience to back up such a claim), but it would be expensive, especially if they already had an encode prepared for this Blu-ray release. If the probable results don't justify the cost, it's simply not going to be done. That seems to be the case here. I think there would be little appreciable difference, on DVD or Blu-ray, between Criterion's original transfer and the new transfer. As was mentioned on the last page, Criterion performed their original transfer from the camera negative and then did digital restoration and correction of that image. The process of the new restoration and transfer is similar, except that the work has been performed to create elements for photochemical reproduction: prints. There have been no changes made to the original camera negative so there is no "better element." Even though the transfer was done "an eternity" ago, I am willing to bet that this is going to be one of Criterion's best looking Blu-ray images simply based on the high quality of that original transfer and the element from which it came.

Secondly, The Leopard has always been $49.95 MSRP because it was 3 discs in the DVD edition and is now 2 discs in the Blu-ray edition.

as someone completely ignorant to this film, should I start with the Italian version? I think I might blind buy this, which I never do.

aox wrote:as someone completely ignorant to this film, should I start with the Italian version? I think I might blind buy this, which I never do.

Yes. The italian version is definitive and Lancaster has a good dub too.
Looking forward to seeing this again after quite a long time!

I agree with Peacock, watch the Italian version first. As I mentioned earlier, it isn't just that Lancaster is dubbed well in the Italian--Visconti is creating a new character with the carefully chosen Italian voice. The voice has a rough edge which fleshes out his persona as a Sicilian nobleman. It's that in combination with Lancaster's expressive physical presence which really creates Salina in the film.

Lancaster is a brilliant actor and normally I love his voice, but his character is slightly less convincing in the American dub where he uses his own voice. This is not to fault Lancaster, just to suggest that the original Italian post-synched dialogue was done with more care than usual. That's one of the reasons why the film holds up so well today, why it's such an engrossing experience.

Regardless, if you haven't seen The Leopard before, you should just go ahead and blind-buy the Blu-ray. Lucky you, getting to discover the film on Blu-ray! I'll bet that it will have better color than the 35mm print I saw several years back.

Matt wrote:First of all, it might not be hard to do a new encode from the new transfer (though I suspect you have no experience to back up such a claim), but it would be expensive, especially if they already had an encode prepared for this Blu-ray release. If the probable results don't justify the cost, it's simply not going to be done. That seems to be the case here. I think there would be little appreciable difference, on DVD or Blu-ray, between Criterion's original transfer and the new transfer. As was mentioned on the last page, Criterion performed their original transfer from the camera negative and then did digital restoration and correction of that image. The process of the new restoration and transfer is similar, except that the work has been performed to create elements for photochemical reproduction: prints. There have been no changes made to the original camera negative so there is no "better element." Even though the transfer was done "an eternity" ago, I am willing to bet that this is going to be one of Criterion's best looking Blu-ray images simply based on the high quality of that original transfer and the element from which it came.

I would only add a couple things to what Matt said: yes, Criterion's transfer is a little old (2003 or thereabouts), but if it were done with more care than usual (which it probably was), it should still hold up very well. At some point the law of diminishing returns must begin to apply to film transfer technology, especially with regards to Blu-ray standards. More importantly, the camera negative isn't going to improve with age. How do we know that it hasn't deteriorated further during that time? It might not even be possible to get quite the same quality image out of it that was possible seven years ago. I'm speaking purely hypothetically, of course. There are other instances where the surviving film elements have deterioriated badly enough just in the span of a decade or so that you can no longer pull the same information from it that you used to.

Here's more information on Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation restoration of The Leopard, from Schawn Belston at Fox:

ABOUT THE RESTORATION

“In order for everything to stay the same, everything must change.” Although Tancredi (Alain Delon) is speaking about the future of Italian aristocracy, his description is an apt one for film restoration as well. Motion picture technology has changed radically over time, and a primary challenge of restoration is the attempt to recreate the impossible experience of seeing the film as it was originally presented. Today, powerful digital tools allow us almost unlimited freedom in image manipulation and color correction - to almost entirely erase the ravages of time and more closely represent the original artistic and technical achievements of Il Gattopardo than was previously possible using traditional photochemical techniques.

Il Gattopardo was photographed in a process called Technirama, in which images were captured on 35mm film horizontally rather than vertically. The resulting anamorphic image, twice the size of a standard 35mm frame, is remarkably sharp and full of detail. Since 1963, the camera negative has now faded, and exhibits most of the issues common to films of its era - although interestingly, because of the photographic process, scratches and dirt move horizontally across the frame rather than vertically.

For this new restoration, the original Technirama camera negatives were scanned at 8K (8000 lines of horizontal resolution), resulting in twenty-one terabytes of data. A 35mm protection interpositive was also scanned for sections needed to replace material not present in the original camera negatives. After scanning, all files were converted to 4K, and the balance of picture restoration was performed entirely digitally at this resolution. Over 12,000 hours of manual restoration was performed, removing forty-seven years’ worth of dirt, scratches, and other physical anomalies.

The original monaural soundtrack has also been carefully restored, using a 35mm magnetic source which was digitally captured and processed to remove distracting pops, clicks, and noise while still faithfully representing the characteristics of the original presentation.

The restoration of Il Gattopardo is presented both in a 4K digital cinema package as well as in traditional 35mm film prints. Archival film elements and data archives have been created of both the restored and unrestored versions of the film in order to preserve Il Gattopardo for generations to come.

Ignorant question, but...

is there any worth whatsoever to the English Version?

I imagine it had tremendous worth back in the day when you couldn't just watch the Italian version whenever you wanted to, but now it's hard to imagine it's much more than a curiosity (though I haven't seen the English version).

aox wrote:Ignorant question, but... is there any worth whatsoever to the English Version?

Not so ignorant, but already asked and discussed earlier in the thread.

I'm a bit confused by the audio portion of the Beaver review. They find the Criterion "unnoticeably flatter" than the BFI (did they mean noticeably flatter??). Anyone else compare these issues yet? I'm befuddled when the 2 channel on the BFI is described as one thing and than Criterion is described as having "stuck with the original mono"....is not the BFI simply a 2 channel presentation of a mono track? It's not inconceivable that someone has created a stereo mix using the stereo music masters (presented fairly well on an old Varese Sarabande issue, but NOT so well on the CAM label cd issue, which almost does sound like fake stereo from a mono master), but I don't think that's what BFI did.

It's always confusing to me when 2 channel and 1 channel mono are perceived as something different from each other, but I've never been a fan of 1 channel mono, which in some home theater setups will only emerge from a center channel speaker....imagine if we had to put up with that kind of thing on mono audio cds, which, of course are 2 channel!

The BFI version is definitely mono. For the record, as with Red Desert, both the BFI and Criterion Blu-rays were ultimately derived from the same HD telecine.

The restoration is getting a UK cinema reissue on 27 August at the Curzon Mayfair - in a digital print apparently.

Its also at the BFI twice a day for a couple of weeks from the 27th.

Have to concur about the Blu Ray, does look gorgeous!...the Criterion Blu's have always taken an age to load on my Panasonic DMP-BD60 but guess because of the 'resume playback' option this title takes twice as long to load (literally about 2 and half mins)

I watched this last night for the first time, and it was really gripping. I think this film is aided by having even a cursory knowledge of Italian history. Delon's metamorphosis is such a pleasure to watch.

This thread has already talked about the sweeping cinematography, set and costume design, so I won't repeat how wonderful it all is. However, what really shock me was that this film was aesthetically so ahead of its time. Compared to the epics Hollywood was churning out in the late 50s into the 1960s (if we choose them as a metric), this film really stands on its own. It looks to me to be a film made in the 1970s. This might just be the filmstock, but I was really pleased with how fresh this felt considering its time.

I may be showing my liberal colors, but this is the first film I have seen where I truly seemed to somewhat sympathize with the Right and the 19th century aristocracy. A group very easy to demonize, not many do sympathize with them at this point since all of them are dead and not around to promote their side. However, this film was able to show the destruction of someone's world. All that they have ever known. It's sad to watch anyone's world collapse around them, and Visconti seems able to capture this perfectly without being didactic. It doesn't matter how one views Lancaster's class or place in 19th century Noble Italian society in general, this film was solely about Lancaster and his experience through it. Lancaster didn't make billions of lire and become evil. He was raised in this system and this world is no different to him than being in poverty is to the transient. Visconti also seems able to stop any 21st century judgment in hindsight by not necessarily commenting on the aristocracy, and focusing on one story. It isn't up to us in 1960 or 2010 to judge. People on both ends at the time accepted that this was the way things were until enough in the lower and middle classes had enough to create a revolution.

The ending is incredible. As if Lancaster is smart enough to know that futile resistance is simply that. And he wants to tour his new world because, while the Aristocracy and his class are coming to an end, he doesn't believe that the new system in late 19th century Italy will pick Sicily up out of ruin. In his mind, there will be no lowering his class and raising the lower class to meet in the middle. Sicily will never change. As he walked through the slums, it was almost as if he (thinks) he is visiting his, or his class', future.

Is there any info anywhere about what was cut from the 205-min. Cannes festival cut? Has anybody searched for this footage?

Stefan Andersson wrote:Is there any info anywhere about what was cut from the 205-min. Cannes festival cut? Has anybody searched for this footage?

I don't know if there's ever been a serious effort to rediscover lost or discarded footage from "The Leopard", though there was probably quite a bit of it at one time. It's more likely that whatever footage wasn't ordered destroyed after the film's first run in 1963, had disappeared during the various 'house cleanings' done by Titanus, Pathe, Fox, and Technicolor Rome and London over the last forty plus years. I would think that someone like Martin Scorsese (who just finished the new restoration), with an extensive knowledge of the movie, as well as considerable clout in the film world, would have turned up some surviving cuts if they still existed.

Though technically not 'cut', there are some additional scenes that do still exist that are rather interesting. These three or four brief scenes make up about six minutes of footage edited into the French-Pathe version of "The Leopard"; scenes with Lancaster, Delon, Stoppa, and others that try to explicate the political nature of the time for French audiences not familiar with the Risorgimento period. I'm not sure if they were ever part of the Italian language version, but it might have been a good idea if they'd found their way into the Amercian release. U.S. audiences were (and are) probably less familiar with the political intrigues of 19th century Sicily than the French were.

Otherwise, there are also a few brief shots from some cut scenes in the various U.S. and foreign release trailers (ie. a dream sequence with Lancaster and two prostitutes). While foreign poster and lobby card sets utilized a surprisingly large number of photos from deleted scenes to promote the film in their own countries (ie. a wounded Delon being tended to by nuns in a convent at the Battle of Palermo).

The Leopard will be issued on Blu-ray in France via Fox Pathe Europa this december. I'm personally curious to see if they will use the new 4K restoration Fox and Sony did with The Film Foundation (the title said version 2010, which is hopeful). It will make an interesting comparison.

He's joking, right? Look at the caps of the red uniforms. Yes, the vibrant red is pretty in the French caps, but they're blown out and show no grain or detail (look at the hat on the viewer's right-- it's like jpeg compression)

Well, this is exactly what I'm waiting for. Color/compression issues aside, the new scan outdid CC/BFI completely.

People from CC/BFI, can you guys finally put the 'this restoration is just for preservation purpose only and it won't do much good for a blu-ray' theory to an end? My wallet is open for a double-dip because I want all the essential extras accompanied by the best transfer of this film.

domino harvey wrote:He's joking, right? Look at the caps of the red uniforms. Yes, the vibrant red is pretty in the French caps, but they're blown out and show no grain or detail (look at the hat on the viewer's right-- it's like jpeg compression)

Congrats, you managed to find the one issue* with the French disc, completely ignoring that it looks vastly superior in every other way with an incredibly sharp, detailed, filmlike image with beautiful strong colours and super-fine grain; against the blurry, desaturated, edge-enhanced, digital-looking image with poorly balanced contrast and huge, unsightly, sharpened, blocky grain that is the Criterion.

*Which I'm not sure, but may be due to the compression. Warner's disc of Gigi show similar "blown-out" strong reds, only much worse.