227 Le Corbeau

[Matango]

Don't hold your breath.

[dad1153]

Going Out of Print by the End of March.

[swo17]

Back in the Collection, BD-only, Sep 20

[movielocke]

Are the extras any different? or is this just a format upgrade?

[Roscoe]

I was just coming to note that the extras seem rather light.

[PfR73]

The extras currently listed are the same as the original DVD.

[Fred Holywell]

Too bad they couldn't wrangle Fox's 1951 remake The 13th Letter, directed by Otto Preminger, for an extra.
I understand there's a rights issue keeping the film out of circulation, but it would've been nice if Criterion had worked that out.

[Finch]

I have the French import BD from Studio Canal dated from 2017 but the Criterion specs state they have a 4k master so a double-dip it is.

[tenia]

The French BD was already sourced from a 4k restoration.

[Finch]

I went to check my copy before I made my original earlier post and they don't mention it at all anywhere on the package. Thanks, tenia, that'll save me some money.

[MichaelB]

Too bad they couldn't wrangle Fox's 1951 remake The 13th Letter, directed by Otto Preminger, for an extra.
I understand there's a rights issue keeping the film out of circulation, but it would've been nice if Criterion had worked that out.

Owned by Disney, presumably, and I can't see them allowing an entire feature to be licensed for what would unavoidably be a flat-rate deal.

[ryannichols7]

The extras currently listed are the same as the original DVD.

I was with dustybooks today and we both love Clouzot and touched on this so it reminded me to post in this thread. I have to say I'm disappointed that none of Criterion's Clouzot releases contain much in the way of scholarly material - Diabolique and Wages of Fear are pretty light, La Verite is all archival, and this one hardly has anything. like yes, the transfers are nice to get (the former two are older, but at the time they were good) but how does Clouzot of all directors not conjure up scholarly material like Godard, Ophuls, and Truffaut do??? and it's not that scholars don't want to - Adrian Martin does a typically excellent track on the BFI of Wages of Fear. there's no way they'll add anything at this juncture, but we can dream!

[L.A.]

Beaver.

[ryannichols7]

well it least it looks amazing, that's a seriously substantial improvement. never expected us to get a better Le Corbeau Bluray than a Les Diaboliques one. since Criterion owns the latter film in the UK, it's unlikely to get an upgrade for awhile..anyone know if it was restored anyway ala Wages of Fear?

and it's not that scholars don't want to - Adrian Martin does a typically excellent track on the BFI of Wages of Fear.

today I learned on his wikipedia page that he actually did a commentary for Le Corbeau! has anyone heard it? frustrating Criterion didn't port it, they've done so for Martin's tracks for 2 or 3 Things.. and The Immortal Story among others. but their track record with him is weak anyway, as pointed out elsewhere on this forum they've never commissioned him for a commentary track, only ported his existing ones. I'd love to hear him talk about this film though, or really anyone.

[M-A]

well it least it looks amazing, that's a seriously substantial improvement. never expected us to get a better Le Corbeau Bluray than a Les Diaboliques one. since Criterion owns the latter film in the UK, it's unlikely to get an upgrade for awhile..anyone know if it was restored anyway ala Wages of Fear?

It has been restored in 4K and released in France, see here

[AxeYou]

I took some screen caps comparing the Criterion and StudioCanal BDs. They are sourced from the same 4K restoration. The difference is very subtle. M-A helped point this out and I agree: Criterion appears a bit sharpened and has minor compression artifacts. StudioCanal looks more natural.

Overall though, these are likely negligible in motion and at a normal viewing distance. If you already own Criterion, I don't think double-dipping for the SC would be worth it.

Caps: https://slow.pics/c/h9sZull5

But the real problem is audio. It is immediately noticeable that the Blu-ray's audio is very muffled.

For a deeper dive into muffled audio on modern catalog releases, Moshrom has written an eloquent essay: https://blah-ray.blogspot.com/p/what-is ... ed-my.html. He has also compiled hundreds of examples with detailed comparisons and clips.

Back to Le Corbeau. Let's start with the 2005 Optimum (UK) DVD, slowed down to 23.976 fps. This is the best sounding source I can locate. It's hissy, but very detailed. There are some distortions during loud music, e.g. during opening, and artifacts elsewhere, but nothing I can't stand. Below is its spectrogram.



Next up is the 2004 Criterion DVD.

The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from a digital monaural mix, and audio restoration tools were used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle.

Criterion applied a high-pass filter and some more filtering in the upper frequencies. It still sounds ok, but slightly worse than the Optimum DVD.



Had the audio "restoration" stopped here, the result would have been pretty respectable. But then Éclair restored the audio as part of a 4K restoration, and StudioCanal released that on BD in 2017.

The original monaural soundtrack was also restored at Éclair, [...]

Whereas the DVD tracks used to boast detail up to ~15 kHz, everything is now cut off at ~8 kHz. Very muffled.



Finally, we arrive at the Criterion BD, released in 2022.

The original monaural soundtrack was also restored at Éclair, with additional restoration carried out by the Criterion Collection.

As usual, Criterion can't keep their fingers off the "filter" button, even when the input is already filtered. Additional high-pass filtering on top of an absurdly low-pass filtered track.



Flip between these spectrograms here: https://slow.pics/c/S8kaLqBN