On Blu-ray - David Hare looks at CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (Mike Nichols, USA, 1971) and THE BIG HEAT (Fritz Lang, USA, 1953)

 

Two Indicators and a Criterion

Let’s start with Carnal Knowledge. This is a fabulous, visually flawless delivery of an early 70s Panavision/Technicolor “serious” American post MPAA “adult” feature from Mike Nichols, shot for greater arthouse cred by the great Giuseppe Rotunno. I bought the Indicator edition not only because it beat the Criterion by two weeks but because I think Indicator’s extras have the edge. I gather the encode itself which was done by Dave McKenzie/FIM is also the basis for the Criterion. 

Having said all that I still can’t fathom the mountains of cinephilic dedication given to a movie about an unrepentantly toxic man, his trippy, passive buddy and a string of women who don’t seem to mind these appalling men. All the players are great, especially the women, but Nichols never lets the sponge rise beyond Jules Feiffer’s sour, unedifying screenplay. Nichols would go on to much better things - Primary Colours and The Birdcage are unalloyed comedic commentaries on post 70s America, and both are very much enhanced by the contribution of Elaine May.

Which leads us to compare Indicator’s terrific Blu-ray edition of Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat from only a few years ago, and the new Criterion 4K UHD disc. The Indicator is so good as a 2K delivery I am really fighting to find reasons to call Criterion’s new 4K (from Sony) as “better.” But this is always the impossible crux of things. In Dolby Vision, slightly more than HDR, the image is slightly more detailed, but with it the lighting (by the great Charles Lang ex Paramount Noir) becomes revelatory. 

One of the things 4K can resolve and display is grain, and especially the way it disperses light. The new 4K is startling in the way it makes the depth and sheer lighting quality quasi-three dimensional. It certainly emphasises Lang’s decision to shoot every sequence except one in the studio where he and Charles Lang can control not only light and shade but the small, constant camera movements, mostly circular which seem to affirm a dialogue of chance fighting with fate. This is a definition of Lang of course from the very beginning to the very end, and I dips me lid to everyone else who’s called this Lang’s greatest American movie. Watching this again, the penultimate scene with Debbie and Banion had me in tears, as the two of them remained totally alone, and totally without any peace with the furies. What a masterpiece, and what staggeringly beautiful home video deliveries of this masterpiece.