Coming Soon on Criterion Blu-ray - Marshall Deutelbaum alerts to the release of THE UNKNOWN (Todd Browning, USA, 1927)

One of the October Criterion releases will be Todd Browning’s The Unknown. 

It’s a great movie! It was thought for many years to be a lost film. All that time a print of it was at the Cinematheque Française in cans labelled “inconnu” (“unknown”). People thought it was an unidentified movie. 

Only when someone opened a can to look at the film was it discovered that it was actually the Lon Chaney film. Criterion have probably used the Eastman House print for the transfer. 

I haven’t seen the movie in more than 40 years and will be thrilled to see it again. Lon Chaney plays Alonzo the armless circus knife thrower who throws knives with his feet. Joan Crawford plays a woman who loves him because he can’t touch her. She hates to be touched. 

It’s wonderful.

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Editor's Note: The Unknown will be released in a three film package (cover below) along with two other Browning titles Freaks  (1932) and The Mystic (1925).

Good luck trying to to import Criterion to Australia but there are ways.

WARNER BROS TURNS 100 IN 2023 - David Hare welcomes some new Blu-ray editions especially MILDRED PIERCE (Michael Curtiz, USA, 1945)

Jack Carson, Joan Crawford, Mildred Pierce

 2023 marks the 100th anniversary of Warner Bros.  

And that event brings a massive flush of new 4K re-scan restorations throughout the year, among them Rio Bravo, North by Northwest and - hopefully The Searchers with color restored to original values.

And Criterion’s re-issue of their 2012 Blu-ray of Mildred Pierce is being toppled for the anniversary with this new 4K scan UHD disc.

Apart from noting the pre-eminence of Joan over Bette for snatching first place in the race to new media, my mind was cast back to the early days of DVD itself, to 2003 when Warner released a brand new “restoration” of Mildred by a then guru of the new digital media which committed every crime from the book of how not to digitize analog 35mm sources. Limitless sharpening to accentuate edge details in the image (high frequency noise), black boosting and tonal manipulation that gave the narrowest dynamic range possible (worse than VHS tape from digibeta ) and king hit with massive grain removal to render the image effectively into plastic, the very sort of plastic indeed that Joanie herself might have enforced on her own tyrannical household to protect the furniture in plastic covers from grubby, shat-upon Cristina. 

Or so might have Mildred to preserve her couches from Veda’s grubby paws (“that’s nice dear, what is it?” “It’s Chopin’s Valse Brillante. Mother. That means brilliant waltz.” “Yes dear.”)

Now all those digital crimes from 30 odd years ago are washed away with a new 4K from first gen elements. And Steiner’s big striding award-winning score in full blown lossles PCM mono.

I for one cannot wait.