The Beggar's Opera (1953)
History, Crime, Music • 1h 34m
Director: Peter Brook
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Hugh Griffith, George Rose, Stuart Burge, Cyril Conway, Gerald Lawson, Dorothy Tutin, George Devine, Mary Clare, Edward Pryor, Athene Seyler, Stanley Holloway, Daphne Anderson, Eric Pohlmann, Yvonne Furneaux, Kenneth Williams, Sandra Dorne, Laurence Naismith, Max Brent, Mercy Haystead, Patricia Raine, Jocelyn James, Isabel George, Helen Christie, John Kidd, Herbert C. Walton, Eugene Leahy, Edgar Norfolk, Oliver Hunter, Madge Brindley, Felix Felton, Denis Cannan, Margot Grahame, Tamba Allen, Terence Greenidge, Billy Wells, Adele Leigh, Jennifer Vyvyan, Edith Coats, Joan Cross, Bruce Boyce, Alanna Boyce
Best English-friendly & video release
· updated 11 months agoOverview
Adaptation of John Gay's 18th century opera, featuring Laurence Olivier as MacHeath and Hugh Griffith as the Beggar.
Director: Morton DaCosta
Warner Archive 4K Blu-ray Nov 24th
TV series
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative for all episodes
Director: John Ford
Sources: ibb.co (opens in a new tab)
Warner Archive Blu-ray is 4K restoration from nitrate projection elements
Germany Filmjuwelen Blu-ray is AI upscaled https://ibb.co/album/mCJ7RQ
Director: Norman Taurog
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Delbert Mann
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
More History on Blu-ray
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Included in the Complete Kubrick box set with FiM encode of the same master from the Universal release without the filtering.
DTS:X mix on Universal 4K Blu-ray most closely approximates original surround mix
Criterion DVD and Universal 4K Blu-ray has additional features not found on the Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Director: Martin Scorsese
Other releases have horrendous DNR
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Miloš Forman
Theatrical: WB 4K Blu-ray
Extended: Warner Bros Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Warner Bros 4K Blu-ray: Huge improvement in colors and detail. The restoration was done by the Academy instead of WB MPI which explains that there’s no grain management or issues with colors. They also accessed the original credit optical and scanned that one instead of recreating them digitally
Theatrical: WB 4K Blu-ray, according to Saentz, the 5.0 is a recreation of the original and subsequently 70mm mix from original elements.
StudioCanal Blu-ray
StudioCanal was overseen and approved by Nicolas Roeg and has a more filmic color grade than the Warner Archive Blu-Ray.
Sources: YouTube (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Director: S. S. Rajamouli
Video format: UHD Blu-ray
Zee5 Streaming
France Carlotta 4K Blu-ray coming in December
Japan Twin Co. 4K Blu-ray
Zee5 Streaming has the original Telugu audio and English subtitles (albeit with English portions also overdubbed in Telugu)
Netflix Streaming only has the Hindi dub but better video quality
Japan Twin Co. 4K Blu-ray has original Telugu Atmos audio
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