The Piano Teacher (2001)
La Pianiste
Drama, Romance • 2h 10m
Director: Michael Haneke
Cast: Isabelle Huppert, Annie Girardot, Benoît Magimel, Susanne Lothar, Udo Samel, Anna Sigalevitch, Cornelia Köndgen, Thomas Weinhappel, Georg Friedrich, Philipp Heiss, William Mang, Rudolf Melichar, Michael Schottenberg, Gabriele Schuchter, Dieter Berner, Volker Waldegg, Martina Resetarits, Annemarie Schleinzer, Karoline Zeisler, Liliana Nelska, Luz Leskowitz, Viktor Teuflmayr, Vivian Bartsch, Florian Koban, Thomas Auner, Andreas Donat, Gerti Drassl, Klaus Händl, Erika Kollmann-Till, Nina Kripas, Esther Pils, Petra Reichel, Arbesi Sufi, Marcus Zeuner, Eva Green
Best English-friendly & video release · updated 4 months ago
Overview
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
Director: Michael Haneke
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
2025 Curzon UK Blu-ray or 2013 TF1 FR Blu-ray (caps)
Curzon has a slightly better encode and preserves all the noise of the digital source, but ends up obscuring actual detail in some shots. Both are quite good, only caveat being that the TF1 disc is slightly cropped and has a black bar on top.
2008 Artificial Eye UK and 2025 Umbrella AU discs have incorrect pitch. TF1 FR disc is missing 7 minutes of audio in the left channel. See spectrograms.
Director: Michael Haneke
Video format: 1080p Blu-ray
Director: Michael Haneke
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 2k eclair scan
Director: Michael Haneke
Director: Béla Tarr
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Curzon 4K Blu-ray scheduled for October 2026 release
Supposed to have better translation than Criterion.
Director: Walter Salles
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Original matrixed Dolby Stereo: Curzon 4K Blu-ray
Surround mix: Vision Film Polish PAL DVD (2000)
The surround mix is fully discrete, not a mere decode or upmix of the Dolby Stereo LCRS track. This mix has never appeared on any other releases.
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean Vigo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Directors: Jean Vigo & Boris Kaufman
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: Joel Coen
Director's Cut: Disappointing UK StudioCanal/US Criterion 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: LaserDisc or 2001 UK Universal DVD
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=21782879#post21782879 - comparison. StudioCanal is a massive improvement to the Criterion but still flawed in some areas (chroma noise)
Director: Liliana Cavani
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Iain Softley
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Both 88 Films and Germany Capelight are superior to the Shout! Factory in HDR10 but their FEL layer may even things out. Objectively, the Capelight looks best as they avoided the chroma blocking that’s visible in 88’s disc but they in turn included an Atmos mix. I have the Shout! Factory, love how it looks and the 4K transfer is spectacular. https://slow.pics/c/vPmFQSAH
Shout! Factory has the exclusive The Beauty of the Baud and the You Can't Stop Us All featurettes.
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Bruce Robinson
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has stronger encode than Criterion
Director: Olivier Assayas
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Encoding is clunky on both Arrow and Criterion BDs but Arrow at least included the original stereo mix in addition to the 5.1 remix, while Criterion only included the 5.1 remix.
Director: John Woo
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
review: Disk Kino
Both have better encoding than Disk Kino, some shots are better on Shout! Factory, others on Arrow
Shout Factory still has the best video while Arrow did a questionable regrade. Arrow definitely has less grain in most shots, has a worse encode and is cm v2.9 compared to Shout’s cm v4.0.
Shout! Factory/Arrow 4K Blu-ray has the original mono
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