Stray Dog (1949) and High and Low (1963) BFI 1/27/25

[James Luckard]

I bought these two BDs. They both use the recent Toho 4K restorations.

- Stray Dog comes from a 4K scan of a positive element, the negative is gone. It looks as good as it can. It blows away the ancient Criterion DVD. Since there's very little fine detail, a BD is as good as this is ever going to look.

It plays on US Panasonic machines with the STOP-TOP MENU-TOP MENU trick.

- High and Low comes from a 4K scan of the negative. It's superior to the 2011 Criterion BD.

That said, a word of warning to any Americans:

Watching High and Low is more complicated, follow asacmurr's directions below.

Originally Posted by asacmurr

High and Low works if you do STOP > TOP MENU > STOP > 1 > ENTER/OK. 2 for the commentary track, 3 for "Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create - High and Low". You have to do the top menu trick to load the menu first, and after that you can do the numbers trick.

Since this is a scan of the negative, a UHD would have shown more fine detail than this BD, and it would have been region-free too.