TerryC wrote:I have just finished watching this set and I too am having a mixed reaction to it. I noticed while watching the Rink how bleached out and over-exposed it is. Edna is playing with a white cat that you can hardly see, because the image is so bleached out. Just for fun, I popped a copy of the same movie from my Image boxed DVD set and it actually looked much better with the cat clearly visible. The entire movie is less detailed being a DVD of course but looks to be much less scratched. Is this version from a different source (possibly 16 mm)? I know that these new Blu-rays are from 35 mm but if they are so damaged that the extra details do not make up for what is lost, what is the point? This is like playing a 78 rpm record on a very expensive turntable. You get to hear (in this case see) the scratches in state of the art quality. Most of the other movies look very good, especially The Immigrant ironically enough, but they also seem to show much more wear than I ever noticed before.
As has been mentioned earlier in this thread, and in other threads, this restoration was made from 35mm silent aperture prints struck from the original camera negatives, mainly A (domestic) and sometimes B (foreign) when it was unavoidable. Regarding THE RINK looking washed out, David Shepard wrote (on page 3 of this thread): "The original nitrate print of THE RINK had severe emulsion fading (hypoing). The problem is in the source, the scan is more or less a miraculous recovery."
The reason THE RINK looks "better" in the Image DVD is that it was made mostly from the much younger Van Beuren/Commonwealth elements, which were not silent aperture because they had soundtracks. The downside is that Van Beuren made cuts. Lots of them. I watched THE VAGABOND last night and realized that VB had made even more cuts than I'd detailed in CHAPLIN'S VINTAGE YEAR.
I mentioned in another thread that there are two approaches to restoration: 1) Use every frame you can, regardless of generation, gauge or aperture, to get the film complete (see TILLIE'S PUNCTURED ROMANCE), or 2) Use the best, earliest original source material you can, regardless of completeness, to reconstruct the film as closely as possible to the original without jarring visual discrepancies that can take casual viewers out of the movie.
The parties involved in the Mutual set went with 2), and in this case I think they're right. These films are much too iconic to be presented in a way that may distract audiences, especially since these versions are also DCPs currently appearing in theaters and winning new fans.
Michael Hayde