Abraham's Valley (1993)
Vale Abraão
Drama • 3h 7m
Director: Manoel de Oliveira
Cast: Leonor Silveira, Luís Miguel Cintra, Ruy de Carvalho, Cécile Sanz de Alba, Luís Lima Barreto, Micheline Larpin, Diogo Dória, José Pinto, Filipe Cochofel, João Perry, Glória de Matos, António Reis, Isabel Ruth, Dina Treno, Dalila Carmo, Sofia Alves, Beatriz Batarda, Júlia Buisel, Laura Soveral, Miguel Guilherme, Marques D'Arede, Mário Barroso, Nuno Vieira de Almeida, Argentina Rocha, Rui Oliveira, Ricardo Trêpa, António Vaz Mendes, Isabel de Castro
Unreleased restoration or DVD
Video format
Best English-friendly release · updated 1 year ago
Overview
Ema is a very attractive but innocent girl, so pretty that cars crash in her presence. In her youth she marries Dr. Carlos Paiva, her father's friend, to whom she is not attracted. They move to the valley of Abraham. Carlos loves her, but decides to sleep in a separate room to avoid waking Ema when he has to return late at night. As time goes by she begins to feel unhappy about her marriage, so she finds a new lover.
More Drama on Blu-ray
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Director: Martin Rosen
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Director: Nicolas Roeg
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab)
Criterion 4K Blu-ray poor compression, otherwise Second Sight has best Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
> BFI 4K Blu-ray. caps Criterion presents the master as originally graded in SDR whereas FiM added HDR / Dolby Vision for the BFI.
Criterion 4K Blu-ray's audio mix has more detail than BFI’s and same applies to the subtitles, covering both English and France spoken word
Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
BD LPCM 5.1
The DTS-HD on the UHD has been dynamically compressed, has had its center channel boosted, and surrounds lowered (typical modern nearfield mix for soundbars). Very different from the BD and DVD tracks. The BD LPCM is basically just a lossless version of the DTS and AC3 from the original DVD (the AC3 actually being the superior mix on that particular release).
Directors: Emeric Pressburger & Michael Powell
Imprint 4K Blu-ray
Sources: Criterion Forum (opens in a new tab) · filmalert101.blogspot.com (opens in a new tab) · slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
FiM encode and none of the low-pass filtering present on the Criterion 4K, resulting in more detail and better handling of highlights on Imprint
Review, comparisons
All HD and 4K sources use the same 2009 restoration. Criterion's master (also used by Imprint) is a bit more rolled off, though the difference is minor.
Director: Tony Scott
The 70mm 6-track mix has a higher bitrate on the Paramount 1998 DVD, but is more limited than on the THX LaserDisc The Paramount 1998 DVD also has open matte versions in fullscreen 1.33:1 and widescreen 2.00:1 instead of the theatrical aspect ratio of 2.39:1, but the 2.00:1 widescreen presentation is non-anamorphic. The THX LaserDisc is available in both fullscreen 1.33:1 and widescreen 2.00:1 variants.
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