Criterion Blu-Ray Disc A Big Disappointment

I'm with you -- the picture quality was a bit disappointing.

As for new cuts, the one that stuck out happens somewhere in the second half -- there is a flash-cut of John Hurt's Billy remembering his chasing after a girl during "the good gone days."

Expectations must be tempered accordingly when viewing older films in high definition. Even with a pristine, faithful restoration we are still subject to the whims of the director and DP regarding image appearance. Modern HD has conditioned most to expect all HD video to exhibit a sharpness, clarity and "pop" that greatly exceeds standard definition. Not all films, especially those which predate HD home video, integrate these aspects into their overall look.

The 2K restoration for Heaven's Gate is splendidly accurate to how the film should look. It is supposed to bear a somewhat misty, dreamlike softness. That is how the film was shot (in the movie's intended appearance and the processing of the physical film stock). Contrast this with the appearance of even older films on bluray, like Gone With the Wind, Bridge Over the River Kwai, and even the recent re-release of Patton. All films were shot before Heaven's Gate, yet they bear the vivid color and sharpness aspects of HD because that is how they were meant to appear on the big screen. A 4K scan would not have brought these qualities to Heaven's Gate because it was never designed to look that way in the first place.

Of course digital tweaking can bring these HD features to the new restoration, though that is a fine line to walk when reproducing a faithful transfer of the original film. A film transfer can be digitally altered/filtered/sharpened only so much before it loses its unique identity.

I just wish there was a directors
commentary

I thought everything was perfect except I was hoping for more featurettes including the documentary The Making And Unmaking Of Heaven's Gate. And the theatrical trailer is zoomed into a 1.33:1 ratio. I saw a Widescreen trailer on YouTube and it was perfect.

@ carrotcake8. Obviously you have read Blu-ray.com's review of the Criterion release. Their reviewer awards the video with 4.8 stars and asserts it as a thing of beauty.

Your self-claimed ability to accurately compare what you viewed over 30 years ago with Criterion's effort defies credibility. For example, why would one make a statement that "the crystal clarity and sharpness just isn't there" when the great DP Vilmos Zsigmond's
intent was to provide the picture with a "unique dreamy look"?

I can relate to what you're saying, carrotcake.

I'm just watching it for the first time, from the Criterion BD, and I'm disappointed with the transfer. I understand that it was deliberately shot in soft-focus, and in most shots on available light (what looks like overcast or late-afternoon), on typically-diffuse 70s film stock. But there seems to be more than that.

Since it was scanned from the three-colour separation preservation negatives and then the image was composited from those scans, I'm wondering if part of the issue is slight misregistration between the component cans. Negatives do shrink and warp over time; in a lot of shots in the BD transfer it looks like this might have happened, -- you can see a slight fringing around objects, almost like edge-enhancement, except it's a think line of magenta down one edge of an object and a thin line of cyan down the other. The overall effect is a slight out-of-focus, underwater look that I find very distracting.

That's specifically why Warner Bros developed its digital re-registration software, to bring images scanned from colour-separated negatives back into alignment. I wish more companies would use it, or else develop their own.



You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.