On Criterion 4K UHD and 2K Blu-ray - David Hare discovers "A perfect rescue of a perfect movie" - TROUBLE IN PARADISE (Ernst Lubitsch, USA, 1932)

 Criterion's new 4K disc of Trouble in Paradise is a giant step up from the screening of a "new" restoration from Universal which I saw back in 2017 at Bologna. It was good, certainly better than the older UK and US Blu-ray discs. But it had quite a few work-in-progress problems. All the opticals - and they are very many - tanked the grain and density. The new print (I recall it was screened on 35) had tramline emulsion scratches through 80% of the picture, and there were sundry other problems. But it was good enough to bring the very youthful house that day to its feet in what must have been for them the first discovery of a total, seamless masterpiece, a perfect movie, and for me, a joyous reunion after first seeing it in a lovely 16mm print at the Trinity Church Wall Street Sunday cine club Screening Nites way WAY back in December 1971.

When Criterion announced this I wondered how much further they might go with restoration. In the interim Universal did a superb 4K restoration of Leisen's 1939 Midnight (another perfect Paramount 30s film) which played to a knocked out full house at Sydney Cinema Reborn back in 2023. That superb 4K was curated from a previously wrongly identified dupe nitrate safety fine grain and other elements which had been lying around mislabelled as safety 35 copies at the Library of Congress until Universal dug it out and discovered to their surprise near-pristine material.

Unfortunately Criterion released a Blu-ray of Midnight only back last year which was hugely underwhelming displaying massive grain reduction to near zero grain, lowered black shadow detail, softer edges and overall a really shitty encode. I had hoped Criterion would release Midnight as a 4K but given such a mediocre master like this what was the point. Maybe someday another label will risk the budget and coax a reliable 4K master for disc encoding out of Universal.

The story for Trouble in Paradise is the total reverse of Midnight. Universal appears to have gone full hog on this and Criterion has stepped up to what looks like a perfect 4K encode with a flawless 4K disc AND Bluray/2K disc. Everything sings. It's unbelievable, especially for a pre-1935 slower-speed-neg-film and faster lenses era.

The softness now is totally supported without a hiccup through the grain which while always visible is a part of the images' "lifeblood." One of the biggest surprises is not a whisper of density bumps in the opticals all of which flow seamlessly. Grayscale is total, whites and deep black perfect, silver and reflective jewellery and glass shimmer with nitrate sparkle.

A perfect rescue of a perfect movie. Essential to life.