On 4K UHD - David Hare rhapsodizes over the Imprint Powell & Pressburger Box set

As I was test driving the four UHD/Dolby Vision discs of RED SHOES, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, THE SMALL BACK ROOM and TALES OF HOFFMANN, my heart temporarily jumped into my mouth when the HOFFMANN disc refused to load the menu page. Turned out the fucking plastic disc holder in the fucking boxes had led my clumsy hand to get a finger smudge over the disc which managed to half-blind the menu page. Anyway the usual window cleaner and linen tea towel rubbing center to out gig did the trick.

Some very short words then for anyone contemplating it: The hand of David McKenzie and FIM is all over these encodes. Gorgeous is not strong enough a term. Already great Dolby VIsion THE RED SHOES suddenly gains a step up in primary color pop and the sharpness is surgically exact down to ultra fine grain which never floats or sticks. The grain management is so beautiful thatI KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, whose UHD 8Bit encode released by Criterion which is already quite lovely now takes off into the realm of a pristine 35mm virgin 35mm print. The grain is again flawless even in the most disparate shots from DP Hillier shooting in Magic Hour for the exteriors.Image is so perfect you can perceive details within the detail of scrawling cumulus clowds while the sky and the shadow on the land change by the millsecond.I would rate this as one of the five best so far B&W Academy Ratio films to get an encode that seriously emulates to perfection the actual qualities of film emulsion .

THE RED SHOES is also a lift in several areas complementing the Criterion, itself a very beautiful transfer for their debut UHD release back a few years now. But wait: colors are popping like crazy and this is all happening within the enlarging envelopes of production design and costume. And then in the sequence when Vicky arrives at Monte Carlo, shot outdoors in daylight, the primaries really start to sing, and pop like crazy, all the while the wide shot opening is, for the first time I’ve ever seen, really sharp with Warner Archive level three strip alignment down to the microdot. When the figures moving to the hotel in the Criterion looked a tad soft, they’re now sharp as a pin in depth and the whole sequence looks like something out of first gen three strip registration. 

These are all perhaps little things but they carry on through the picture to the end giving what can only be a called a definitive presentation. And I have to say much the same for HOFFMANN for which this is the first UHD/4k disc ever, plus Dolby VIsion again. You really notice it in the fine detail, movements from distant to close retain razor sharp definition, grain breathes and lives without a trace of clinging and freezing. All this does however slightly magnify the color grading which is the same as the Blu-ray and which feels to me slightly gray edged to the skin tones and the baseline. But that’s for another day.

I decided to lash out on this if only for HOFFMANN and I’m glad I did but the steps up in rendition for the other three UHD 4K discs I think really make it worthwhile.