Mr. Skeffington (1944)
Drama, Romance • 2h 25m
Director: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Bette Davis, Claude Rains, Walter Abel, George Coulouris, Richard Waring, Marjorie Riordan, Robert Shayne, John Alexander, Jerome Cowan, Johnny Mitchell, Dorothy Peterson, Peter Whitney, Bill Kennedy, Bess Flowers, Fred Aldrich, Herbert Evans, Charles Sherlock, Chef Milani, Fred Kelsey, Ethan Laidlaw, Sam Ash, Janet Barrett, Tom Wilson, Harry C. Bradley, Georgia Caine, Lelah Tyler, Regina Wallace, Doria Caron, Wallis Clark, Richard Kipling, Patrick Cunning, Dan Dowling, Tom Quinn, Ronald R. Rondell, Joe Devlin, Ann Doran, Joan Winfield, Jay Eaton, Frank Mayo, Philo McCullough, Frank McLure, Helen Eby-Rock, Isabel La Mal, Minerva Urecal, Dagmar Oakland, Richard Erdman, Mary Field, Edward Fielding, Vera Lewis, William Forrest, Jack George, Leo White, Sol Gorss, Dolores Gray, Bert Moorhouse, Edmund Mortimer, Jeffrey Sayre, Angela Greene, Creighton Hale, Hans Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Stuart Holmes, Jack Mower, Charles Jordan, Andrea King, Walter Kingsford, Erskine Sanford, Lucille La Marr, Molly Lamont, Charles Marsh, Matt McHugh, Harold Miller, Gigi Perreau, Cyril Ring, Will Stanton, Tom Stevenson, John Vosper, Bruce Warren, Crane Whitley, Lottie Williams
Best English-friendly & video release
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Updated today
Compare the discs
About the film
A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.
Director: Vincent Sherman
4K restoration of the original 3D left eye and right eye camera negatives
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Richard Brooks
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: George Pal
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Compton Bennett
4K restoration from original technicolor negatives
Director: Jack Conway
4K restoration from safety preservation elements
4K restoration from safety preservation elements
Director: Jack Conway
4K restoration from safety preservation elements
Director: William Dieterle
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Arrow has a different grade and a better encode than the Shout! Factory, though the difference in either is not major. Imprint release, which leaves Shout! Factory's master and subtitles as is, is encoded by FiM. https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24473097&postcount=56
Original mix: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray
Alternate mix: Scanbox Nordic PAL DVD
Surround remix: HK Video France 4K Blu-ray (5.0)
Original mix: Shout! Factory 4K Blu-ray (similar to Criterion LaserDisc, but less distorted)
Alternate mix: Scanbox Nordic PAL DVD
Surround remix: HK Video France 4K Blu-ray (5.0)
Arrow used the alternate mix, but with extra filtering and lowered dynamic range. The alternate mix has much better fidelity.
Imprint presumably used the Shout! Factory original mix and left it as is, though no official confirmation.
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray > Criterion 4K Blu-ray > Kino Lorber 4K Blu-ray
1991 Orion LaserDisc vs 2024 Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Director: Sidney Lumet
4K restoration from Original Camera Negative
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
The 4K discs in both Criterion and Imprint sets are FiM encodes, but low-passed, Imprint minimally less so. Unfortunately, unlike with The Killing, Kino does not hold up at all, the grain is much rougher and the compression visibly struggles making for a much less pleasant watch, even if select stills look better.
All discs use the same source transfer. Criterion cleaned up some hums and hiss, but lost a little bit of high-end detail. Unlike The Killing, the difference's relatively mino.
Director: Robert Altman
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Cinematrographe's HDR grading is overcooked, which is a known VinSyn tendency. Additionally, their booklet mis-credits the encode to FiM.
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Cinematographe is an FiM encode
Director: Karel Reisz
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Cinematographe is mis-credited to be an FiM encode. It isn't. Neither the encode nor the color grading are entirely satisfactory.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
1.85:1: Kino Lorber 4K / Capelight 4K
1.66:1: Criterion 4K but low pass filtered
Comparison between the 4Ks, Criterion on the AR choice
Other discs have unnecessary filtering and sound worse, the difference isn't substantial but audible
Director: Dennis Hopper
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Flicker Alley 4K confirmed for 2027 https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.php?p=24404584&postcount=1
MoC audio is better https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=225532&page=3
Edit history
Every recommendation follows the same method — how these calls are made.