Wooden Crosses (1932) Eureka (MOC)

[samdvd1]

Wooden Crosses Blu-ray



30th March 2015.

[pro-bassoonist]

Wooden Crosses Blu-ray REVIEW



The release is sourced from the same wonderful 4K restoration of the film, so obviously the foundation here is very solid. Also, the inclusion of the supplemental features from Pathe's release should make this release very attractive to English speakers.

It looks a bit too dark for my taste and ideally I would have graded it 4.75/5.00, but I should say again that the 4K restoration is indeed terrific. Hopefully, Criterion will soon upgrade their DVD release of Wooden Crosses so that people in North America can see it as well

Pro-B

[Marlow27]

Really looking forward to picking this one up.


Releases for lesser known films like this are one of the reasons I love Eureka.

[tenia]

Svet, can you tell us if the extras are in HD ? On the Pathé release, they were disappointly relegated to a dedicated DVD.
As for the luminosity, it seems to me there were a right middle between the Pathé (which has always seems too bright to me) and the MoC (which seems too dark indeed).

[pro-bassoonist]

Originally Posted by tenia

Svet, can you tell us if the extras are in HD ? On the Pathé release, they were disappointly relegated to a dedicated DVD.
As for the luminosity, it seems to me there were a right middle between the Pathé (which has always seems too bright to me) and the MoC (which seems too dark indeed).

1. I cannot check at the moment, but I believe they were in HD. However, I do not agree that Pathe's decision to place the extras on a DVD was disappointing. Excluding the restoration featurette, where there are some examples showing the difference between the French and International versions of Wooden Crosses and a few demonstrations, all of the content looks fine upscaled. There is plenty of very dated archival material here.

2. Pathe's brightness settings are clearly more appropriate. This is a restoration and reconstruction and there are different elements with different identities (which have also aged differently). The darker setting works fine for a lot of the outdoor footage, or at least the most healthy footage, but it is problematic for the nighttime/darker footage. As I wrote after I received the French release, it is very clear that efforts were made to rebalance the image as best as possible, but if you pay attention it is rather easy to tell where different elements were used as many transitions frequently have some minor contrast/of brightness bumps. Still, this is a very, very fine job from Pathe.

Pro-B

[tenia]

Originally Posted by pro-bassoonist

1. I cannot check at the moment, but I believe they were in HD. However, I do not agree that Pathe's decision to place the extras on a DVD was disappointing. Excluding the restoration featurette, where there are some examples showing the difference between the French and International versions of Wooden Crosses and a few demonstrations, all of the content looks fine upscaled. There is plenty of very dated archival material here.

My issues with Pathé placing them on a separate DVD are :

- The French disc is (as a whole) 34,798,022,847 bytes while the movie alone on the MoC disc is 33,766,628,736 bytes. There were plenty of space on the French BD, so they're selling a 2nd disc which was unneeded --> feels like done to artificially increase the selling price (24.99€ instead of 19.99€).
- some of the extras were produced in HD (about an hour I believe), especially the restoration featurette which is 24 min long ! What is the point of explaining the 4K restoration before / after in SD ?

It's not a deal-breaker for sure, but I do think it was not the best option.