About the film
A man and a woman meet in the ruins of post-war Poland. With vastly different backgrounds and temperaments, they are fatally mismatched and yet drawn to each other.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Video format: 4K Streaming
Director: Victor Sjöström
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Victor Sjöström
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Leo McCarey
Director: Philip Kaufman
Criterion 4K Blu-ray is a significant upgrade over previous WB Blu-ray see comparison
Criterion for the first time on home video have provided the 70mm 6-track as well as the Dolby stereo which was previously on LaserDisc. Both tracks are unique so included both with the 6-track default. Criterion’s 5.1 remix is lossless compared to the lossy tracks of the previous blu-rays and DVDs.
See comparison
2023 Criterion 4K Blu-ray (bad compression) / Curzon 4K Blu-ray (visible chroma noise and meh compression)
Director: Roman Polanski
Director: David Lynch
Criterion standard BD encode, sold separately, is not very good
More Romance on Blu-ray
Director: Richard Rush
> Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray (FiM encode on Radiance compared to Duplitech encode on Shout! Factory)
Director: Paul Verhoeven
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Director: Claude Lelouch
French Metropolitan 4K Blu-ray has English subtitles and is better than Criterion Blu-ray see caps and comparison
Director: David Lean
The legacy extras are AI-upscaled
Director: Mike Nichols
StudioCanal 4K caps.Criterion Blu-ray better encode than StudioCanal Blu-ray.
Director: Roman Polanski
The 4K restoration introduced elevated black levels that Criterion have corrected while BFI left as is. However, the encoding on the Criterion is markedly worse, turning the grain into mush whereas the grain structure on the BFI is largely intact due to the noticeably superior encode. Therefore, the one to seek out is dependent on whether you prefer slightly better black levels or stronger grain retention.
Director: Hal Ashby
See caps https://slow.pics/c/lVdZaG0W
Shout! Factory's Blu-ray has both cuts of the film in addition to the 3.0 stereo and 2.0 mono mixes making it the first time the full theatrical cut is available with the 3.0 mix. The new commentary is good. The 3.0 stereo sounds wonderful and the mono sounds solid.
That's where the positives end. This is the same terrible Universal DVD master slapped on a Blu-ray disc with a terrible encode making both versions share the disc separately taking up more space. This master was already poor for DVD and is nearly unwatchable here on the Shout! Factory disc. It looks virtually identical to the upscaled DVD most of the time with only a bit less noise due to it being 1080p. This is one of the most appalling cases of "DVD master slapped on a Blu-ray disc" you can possibly find. Absolutely shameful video presentation. This should have never been released this way. Sadly it's still ever so slightly better than the DVD and the only way you get the proper theatrical cut with lossless 3.0 stereo. This is still the best source we have for the film.
Edit history
3 edits
Every recommendation follows the same method — how these calls are made.