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david hare wrote: ...Roger I don’t believe there are many long lap dissolves or optical transition at all through the course of the film. Resnais stays with hard cutting to reinforce the simultaneity of memory and place, present and past for basically the entire film. There’s one short optical/dissolve at 42m 50s for instance lasting four seconds, but there is no issue here at all with density and contrast or resolution or any degradation issues, and the transition is flawless, retaining perfect blacks and resolution/clarity for both “sides” of the dissolve, from the start of shot one to the end of shot two...

I agree that there aren't that many optical transitions in the film and the ones that are there tend to be a quick fade in to start a scene or a fade out. However, when these optical effects do occur, the entire shot (up to the next "hard cut") is duped to avoid any jumps in quality on either side of a dissolve or following a fade in/preceding a fade out. Let me stress that this is not a complaint by me, but I am trying to understand why some viewers have been noting that certain shots look "softer" or less defined than others. I suspect they are noticing this understandable loss in definition in the duped footage that follows or precedes an optical effect (the entire shower scene is a good example of this). I doubt anyone would even take issue with this artifact of how films were made if the vast majority of the film didn't look absolutely spectacular.

Roger Ryan wrote:

david hare wrote: ...Roger I don’t believe there are many long lap dissolves or optical transition at all through the course of the film. Resnais stays with hard cutting to reinforce the simultaneity of memory and place, present and past for basically the entire film. There’s one short optical/dissolve at 42m 50s for instance lasting four seconds, but there is no issue here at all with density and contrast or resolution or any degradation issues, and the transition is flawless, retaining perfect blacks and resolution/clarity for both “sides” of the dissolve, from the start of shot one to the end of shot two...

I agree that there aren't that many optical transitions in the film and the ones that are there tend to be a quick fade in to start a scene or a fade out. However, when these optical effects do occur, the entire shot (up to the next "hard cut") is duped to avoid any jumps in quality on either side of a dissolve or following a fade in/preceding a fade out. Let me stress that this is not a complaint by me, but I am trying to understand why some viewers have been noting that certain shots look "softer" or less defined than others. I suspect they are noticing this understandable loss in definition in the duped footage that follows or precedes an optical effect (the entire shower scene is a good example of this). I doubt anyone would even take issue with this artifact of how films were made if the vast majority of the film didn't look absolutely spectacular.

I remember telling someone after we had seen "the Apu trilogy" about some of the shots that looked grainer than other ones and many of them were due to the dissolves. And in that situation, it was even more noticeable because you were dealing with mostly dupe sources.

But what it comes down to our expectations and knowing how film works. If you understand how cross-dissolves, optical fades, freeze frames and the like work, then you can acknowledge it as such. If you understand the difference between using an original negative versus, say, an interpositive or a fine-grain master positive, that is also something to consider. Finally, if you know that a film made nearly sixty years ago is going to be different than say something that just came out in theatres, then that also helps.

I finally watched this one a couple of weeks ago and I can't say it astounded me. The main culprit is the black levels, which feel often too poor, leaving many frame washed-out in grey.
I'm very much OK with its look otherwise, especially is terms of sharpness, but the black levels really left me dubious.

Moshrom's demonstrations are really putting a dent in my faith in Criterion's releases. This one is especially frustrating because the soundtrack as heard on the Arte Video/Tamasa DVD is pretty clean, and yet Criterion has again put a blanket over the sound with their needless overuse of NR.

BURN ALL COPIES
DEATH TO CRITERION

Hah! Well, if you have the means (and I don't), ripping a BD, re-authoring with a different audio track from a different release and burning the results on a BD-R would be grand, if time consuming and not very economical.